Avoiding Sturgeon

If it be true, the reluctance of the Prime Minister to become involved with Nicola Sturgeon in any meaningful way since March of this year is more than understandable (your report, 22 July).

Scotland’s First Minister has, with her obsessive second referendum shenanigans, shredded the nerves and turned off many of her own supporters – amply demonstrated in the general election – let alone a UK leader trying to juggle Brexit and a wafer-thin majority.

Ms Sturgeon is reaping what she has sown and about which she was given multiple warnings. Her judgment has proven to be suspect in the extreme.

It was most interesting to read Alex Salmond’s interview in the same issue of your newspaper. If any further reassurance were needed that a second referendum is drifting further and further into the long grass and the possibility has perhaps gone entirely, it was the forecast of the seat-less Mr Salmond, with his well-known predictions constantly and irrevocably going horribly and sometimes laughably wrong.

ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh Let’s be honest, who can blame the PM? Who’d want to have to sit and listen to the SNP leader endlessly moan about matters beyond her solely domestic remit, punctuated with regular demands to hold another separation referendum, according to the nationalists’ timetable? That’s what the reduced ranks of SNP MPS are for.

Ms Sturgeon’s spin doctors predictably have shifted into overdrive, claiming Theresa May isn’t “confident” enough to be in the same room as the nationalist leader.

Nonsense. Ms Sturgeon’s wings have been clipped by the electorate and it’s increasingly clear there’s no point in pandering to the nationalists.

Ms Sturgeon admits that for her “independence transcends everything – Brexit, oil and the economy”. How can Mrs May hold meaningful discussions with a politician who can’t let go of her teenage dreams?

MARTIN REDFERN Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh