Is the UK heading for a split with Scotland?

THE great socialist reformer of the past, Gordon Brown, is now attempting to choose our next Premier: ‘Why i fear the break-up of the United Kingdom is closer than it’s been for 300 years’ (Mail) Brown rifled hard-working people’s pension funds and brought Britain near bankruptcy. On a recent visit to Dumfries and Galloway, l asked a canny Scot what he thought of independence. He said: ‘We would be bankrupt in half an hour.’

ClIFF NEWTON, Bowness-on-Windermere.

MR BROWN believes Boris Johnson as PM will mean Scottish independence. The problem with this forecast is that the SNP will keep demanding referendums in the hope one day they will succeed, regardless of who is in No. 10. Mr Brown also glossed over the injustice of the Barnett Formula, which gives Scotland about 20 per cent more in grants for public services than England. No wonder the cost of education, social care, etc., is far cheaper than England.

JAMES WIGNAll, Accrington, lancs. GOrDOn BrOWn did as much as anyone when he pushed for Scottish devolution in the nineties. He does not seem to understand that if national devolution — with all it entails in terms of renewed national identity and selfconfidence — is good enough for Scotland, then it is good enough for England, too. As for the funding formula he wishes to protect, its originator, the late Lord Barnett, disowned it. The prime threat to the Union is unfair treatment of England.

IAN HOlT, Gloucester.

IF BORIS JOHNSON becomes our next PM, 53 per cent of the Scots say they’ll vote for independence. N. Ireland will probably follow suit, meaning just England and Wales will be left. How ironic that all the ‘patriots’ who voted for Brexit will have also caused the break-up of the UK.