Poll hypocrisy from the Tories

WITH agreement reached on Green MSPS joining SNP MSPS in Scotland’s Government it appears that some ardent supporters of the UK constitutional status quo have still not accepted the democratic mandate of the Scottish Government to hold a second Scottish independence referendum on terms previously agreed with the UK Government under the Edinburgh Agreement.

The proposition by Alister Jack that a threshold of 60% of sustained polling intentions in favour of holding a referendum should be required appear to indicate a devious intent to move the goal posts for the next referendum from what the UK and Scottish governments agreed – that a majority vote would determine the result.

Furthermore, the UK is governed through adherence to precedence and favourable polling was not needed to conduct the only UK referendum since 2014 and nothing more than a simple majority was required to bring about the UK’S withdrawal from the European Union in spite of the narrow margin in support of Brexit. Certainly, if a threshold of 60% had been required in the referendum itself the extreme outcome could probably have been avoided and we would not now be witnessing the potentially disastrous decline in Scotland’s food and drinks exports as well as increasingly empty supermarket shelves, but this is UK democracy.

For those who have remained silent through the whole Brexit referendum process dictated by an ideologically driven right-wing Tory Government (that even refused to include representatives of the devolved governments in the Brexit negotiations) to now proclaim the necessity of new standards for the holding of Scotland’s second independence referendum smacks of more than a little hypocrisy.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry.