No need for panic

There has been much attention paid to the fall in the number of SNP MPS from 56 to 35, it has been seen as disaster for the party. However, let us put this into perspective.

The SNP still won more seats in Scotland than all other parties combined, obtained the largest number of votes and delivered the second best result ever for the party. Before the electoral tsunami of 2015 the largest number of SNP MPS was 11 and going into the election two years ago the party had just 6.

Yes, a number of “big beasts”, primarily Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson, lost their seats and will be a massive loss. However, it was always going to be difficult to get anywhere close to the 2015 General Election result, which was a once in a generation outcome. The SNP, it should be noted, still form the third-largest party at Westminster.

The Tories, who stood on a sole platform of opposition to a second independence referendum, lost the election in Scotland and lost their majority in the UK. Indeed, the SNP have more than double the number of Scottish seats than the Tories, who have been heavily defeated.

Instead of strength and stability, the Tories now seem headed for an extended period of infighting, with Brexit negotiations set to begin in a week.

Both the Scottish and RUK results show a big rejection of Tory austerity and an extreme Brexit. This result – combined with the hung Parliament – makes Scotland’s influence pivotal at Westminster.

ALEX ORR Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh If at the 2015 general election the SNP had won 35 seats it would have been regarded as a major success, an outstanding achievement. There was never any likelihood of them being able to hold onto all of their 56 seats, but the fact that the SNP still has more seats than all the other parties in Scotland put together shows that there is still a substantial number of people in Scotland who wish to live in an independent Scotland.

Theresa May said now was not the time for another independence referendum. Nicola Sturgeon did not ask for an independence referendum now, but for one between the autumn of 2018 and the spring of 2019, when the negotiations to leave the European Union should be complete.

I accept that at the moment there is a majority of people in Scotland who wish to remain part of the UK, but do they really believe that those of us who fear for the future of our country, Scotland, being ruled by this xenophobic, far right Tory party, should sit back and do nothing?

I believe that when this disastrous Brexit has happened, more and more people will wish to live in an independent Scotland and be part of the European Union.

In closing, I would like someone who voted SNP in 2015 and Tory in 2017 to tell me why.

WA ROSS Broomhill Avenue, Aberdeen The arrogance of the SNP knows no bounds as it starts to put its spin on the outcome of the general election in Scotland (“Scots result may not have been indyref2 rejection – Sturgeon”, 13 June).

Time after time the SNP have reimagined the outcome of a series of elections and referendums, whether these were for Scotland or the UK as a whole, to suggest they give further justification for the SNP ambition to separate us from the UK. Scotland knows that the clear majority of people intended their general election vote to at least in part signify their rejection of an independence referendum rerun in the foreseeable future. Yet Nicola Sturgeon chooses to describe this conclusion as “an overly simplistic analysis”.

The First Minister’s misguided plans for a second independence referendum have already come at a great cost to Scotland. Public money has been spent on preparing legislation and conducting a consultation exercise, the results of which have still not been made public. The Scottish parliament has used up much of its limited time on this matter and government resources have been distracted from their primary roles.

If the First Minister plans to continue to hold the threat of a second referendum over us despite the clear message of the general election result in Scotland, she is simply using SNP and Scottish Green seats in the Holyrood parliament to overrule the will of the people of Scotland.

KEITH HOWELL West Linton, Peeblesshire Andrew HN Gray (Letters, 12 June) should perhaps allow for the politicaly volatile times in which we are now living. Support for independence, according to some recent polls, is now higher than support for the SNP. They have lost ground for some of the reasons he notes but their giant leap from six to 56 seats between the 2010 and 2015 elections was a freakish development, as some in the SNP have themselves admitted. It may, however, also suggest to us that ground lost so dramatically can be regained if the SNP reconsiders its strategy, and if a lame duck Prime Minister’s Brexit negotiations unravel disastrously, both for Scotland and for the UK.

IAN S WOOD John Street, Edinburgh