Why can’t Alex Salmond accept that Scotland really does not want Indyref2?

Nicola Sturgeon may have parked Indyref2, but she forgot to park Alex Salmond (“Salmond predicts Indyref 2 will come right as Brexit goes wrong”, 22 July).

On 8 June she was sent a message on Indyref2, but Mr Salmond also heard it loud and clear when his constituency booted him out of office.

Indeed, the kick he received was so hard that he landed lock, stock and barrel in a show in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Whilst Mr Salmond may have heard the message, it is not clear that he understood it.

The truth is that the people of Scotland don’t want a sec- ond divisive referendum, they want politicians of all parties to get on with the day job. In Edinburgh, that means building homes and creating good quality jobs.

Alex Salmond, however, is not interested in that. He’s only interested in breaking up the UK.

Like Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP MPS, MSPS and councillors, he fervently hopes Brexit will be bad for the UK and help drive Scots off his independence cliff edge.

That’s right, the SNP want jobs to be lost and mortgages to go unpaid in the hope that Scots will eventually think “surely breaking up the UK can’t be worse than this?”. Forget that no independent expert thinks we’d be better off outside the UK.

Fear is the only card the SNP have left.

The SNP’S “Ministry of Grievance” exaggerates any potential negative Brexit impact at every opportunity.

With all this fearmongering from the SNP, it is little wonder Scotland’s long-term economic growth is lagging behind the UK as a whole.

I’m glad, however, that Scots are starting to see what nationalism really is – an overpriced and ill-conceived Fringe show. In pubs and cafes across Scotland, the conversation is moving away from flags and currency and on to how we make our great country work for the many, not the few.

So let’s let Salmond be a Fringe curiosity whilst the rest of us deliver the progressive vision Scotland needs. COUNCILLOR SCOTT ARTHUR

City Chambers, Edinburgh In advance of his return to centre-stage, albeit on the Edinburgh Fringe rather than on the benches of the House of Commons, Alex Salmond reveals more about the SNP approach to a second referendum than he might have intended.

Back in 2014, the people of Scotland were unconvinced by the proposition Mr Salmond and his team put together.

Subsequently, much of that prospectus was widely discredited, as much of it was built on assertion and wishful thinking.

In the intervening years, the current First Minister has had various experts trying to come up with a more credible ‘Scotland’s Future II’, but nothing they have come up with has been judged ready for public scrutiny.

Instead, the case for Scotland’s permanent separation from the United Kingdom is apparently largely dependent on the UK government making a hash of Brexit negotiations.

Yet even if the Brexit outcome is at the more negative end of the spectrum, would the case for Scotland going it alone, quite possibly ending up outside both the UK and the EU, really be strengthened? Or might the importance of the positive interdependence between Scotland and the rest of the UK become all the more important?

Mr Salmond’s optimism that the SNP will get its way continues to rely on viewing the world with his own special brand of political blinkers.

KEITH HOWELL West Linton, Peeblesshire