Same old story
imply otherwise, Scotland is not. Ms Sturgeon, along with other opposition party leaders, also supports the notion that a Westminster crossparty committee should play a Brexit role.
This is more credible, particularly with a minority government in the Commons.
However, since the SNP has merely 35 of 650 seats, here in Scotland we must be grateful that we now have 20 MPS who either form part of the government or the official Opposition. They can influence matters on their constituents’ behalf rather than ineffectually carping from the sidelines, as the SNP in Westminster is seemingly consigned to do.
MARTIN REDFERN Merchiston Gardens, Edinburgh Some people are apparently shocked that the Conservatives should seek a deal with a party as openly anti-catholic as the Democratic Unionist Party. But there should be no surprise. The UK was, and remains, quite simply, a sectarian state.
The established church and official religion of the state is Protestant, with permanent, unelected representation in parliament.
Our hereditary head of state is barred from being Catholic. The monarch could not even marry a Catholic until 2011.
The UK has never had a Catholic Prime Minister. Tony Blair only converted after leaving Downing Street, viewing the faith as so politically explosive that he remained a “closet Catholic” until 2007. The ridicule and contempt which greeted his conversion only proved his suspicions to be, sadly, correct.
The stooshie which ensued in March this year after SNP MP Carol Monaghan attended House of Commons business with ashes on her forehead, a Catholic ritual on Ash Wednesday, suggests we have not progressed very far in the intervening decade.
Atory-dupdealisalsowidelybeingseenascompromising the UK’S status as an “honest broker” in Northern Ireland, but the British taking sides is hardly new. As Unionist leader David Trimble has said, Northern Ireland was a “cold house for Catholics” where systemic legal, political and economic discrimination was tolerated, or even welcomed, by London for decades.
During the Troubles, British military and security forces and the RUC colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to harass, intimidate, injure and even murder Catholics and nationalists. Not least among their crimes was the 1972 Bogside Massacre on Bloody Sunday in which 14 unarmed civilians calling for equal rights were murdered by British soldiers on the streets of Derry.
Alliances, therefore, between the worst of Westminster and the worst of Ulster are certainly shameful, but they are hardly new or inexplicable. John Major has warned about the TORY/DUP deal on two fronts; firstly, it may endanger the Good Friday Agreement, and secondly, that any financial favours may cause resentment elsewhere in the UK.
On the first point, if the deal is open and public, why should this stop the UK state being impartial on the matter? Indeed, they may try even harder to be seen to be fair.
On the second point, about financial favours - they already exist. Is not public expenditure in Scotland £1,700 per head higher than in England, which already causes resentment - yet we manage to live with this. WILLIAM BALLANTINE
Dean Road Bo’ness, West Lothian