Sturgeon 2.0?

Douglas Cowe shouldn't shoot the messenger, Dr Azeem Ibrahim (Letters, 22 November). He has acknowledged that British civil servants did all the COP26 heavy lifting, that Scotland is in a mess – much of it due the SNP misgovernment – and the Scexit case is bust.

But his point is brutally true: despite all that, a weekend poll of voters from all parties said 62 per cent of Scots want Nicola to stay in power until 2026. and no other SNP contender polled more than seven per cent; if we're to have them for another five years it might as well be the devil we know –Nicola Sturgeon – at the helm. This paradox – the worse things get, the more popular she is – is only partly explained by the SNP'S fantastic media machine. Just as the failed 2014 campaign roadtested the subsequent Brexit and Trump campaign methods that left their unsuspecting rivals stunned and sprawling, SNP 2021 is an emerging model for controlling a country without descending to Putin or Xi methods.

Faced with this, our people, politicians and broadcast media are like indigenous American natives who had no antibodies to the diseases brought by European colonists. And as long as Douglas Ross feels driven to criticise Boris Johnson, can't brush off a £43 train ticket and can't "whataboot" Ian Blackford’s £270,000 second job earnings, I'm afraid we will have at least five more years of this.

And if the SNP machine creates Sturgeon 2.0 – Kate Forbes – that's the ba' well and truly burst. Poor old Scotland.

ALLAN SUTHERLAND

Stonehaven, Aberdeen