Okay, SNP, you’re allowed one line in your next manifesto

NICOLA Sturgeon claims that the next General Election will be a de facto independence referendum (“Stakes high for Sturgeon as indy legal bid falls apart”, The Herald, November 24), but that is not only dishonest, it is impossible.

A referendum is a poll to directly answer a single key question. That simply cannot happen in a General Election, where parties are expected to address a range of different issues across a manifesto. People rarely agree with the entirety of these expansive documents and their wide range of topics: they place their vote according to their balancing of the preferable to the disliked. You might support the Tories backing Ukraine but disapprove of their NHS policy; you might support Labour’s housebuilding strategy but disapprove of its immigration laxity. You might support the SNP’S transsexual agenda but there is no logical link between that and the completely separate topic of independence. A General Election vote for the SNP is not, in itself, a vote for independence: and that vote would be especially suspect when an election manifesto contaminates the question with a host of electoral public spending bribes that distort people’s reactions further. Did they vote for independence or for a bus pass?

The only way that Ms Sturgeon can be correct in her blind insistence that up is down, black is white and elections are referendums is for her to run a truly single-issue election – to the very letter. The 2024 SNP manifesto can only be one sentence long: “We campaign for independence”. At the leaders’ debate, Ms Sturgeon can only repeat the same single line the entire night: “I refuse to answer that question as I only want to consider independence.” The moment she can’t help but stick her oar into another policy issue, her referendum becomes invalid.

Robert Frazer, Dundee.