Get radical

Kenny Macaskill (Perspective, 24 August) is right when he says Labour policy on Brexit is full of inconsistencies as Jeremy Corbyn wants to pull us out of the Single Market despite the devastating effect it will have on Scottish jobs, plus the threat to workers’ conditions, and his MPS should start backing Nicola Sturgeon’s sensible proposals.

Jeremy Corbyn is not even especially radical, as he wants to renew Trident and keep the House of Lords; while in Wales, Labour is in the process of increasing student tuition fees and doesn’t mitigate the bedroom tax or other Tory welfare cuts.

Apart from the fact that the SNP has spent £400 million mitigating Tory austerity policies in Scotland, Jeremy Corbyn’s attacks on the SNP only go to show that he still doesn’t understand how devolution works.

Due to Scotland’s limited fiscal powers, the only way any Scottish government can raise significant extra income is by substantially hiking Income Tax, but experts reckon that would actually produce less revenue due to tax avoidance in a devolution context.

He should also know that at the time Abellio won the franchise contract, the Scotthought tish Government had no powers to take Scotrail into public ownership.

If Corbyn really wants to replace the Tories at Westminster, why is he not campaigning in any Tory-held seats where Labour had an MP until 2015, such as in Dumfries or Stirling or Aberdeen South or East Renfrewshire?

MARY THOMAS Watson Crescent, Edinburgh The fervent Remainers who write to The Scotsman, like Mr Andrew Vass (23 August), are understandably sore losers. Like the EU Commission and the SNP, for example, they seem to want voting reruns until the “right” result is secured for them; as with the pre-referendum messages of economic and political doom, they view the post-brexit prospects as a disaster.

However, the truth is that no one knows what will happen.

One reason, perhaps the principal one, prompting the pro-brexit voters, was distrust of the “elites,” and of the EU’S anti-democratic personality and methods.

The EU, which we joined through our own elites’ stealth, has proved an expensive failure, which we must now leave. Best to wait and see, once we are free of the rather corrupt protection racket the EU has become, and “dree our ain weird”. CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road

West, Perth