A magic kingdom

The dangerous and desperate lack of UK leadership, whether it is the farcical handling of Brexit or countless billions being spent on the HS2 rail project, the crumbling Westminster and Buckingham Palaces and the upgrading of Trident, is extremely sad and shameful. These projects will certainly bring greater prestige, prosperity and wealth to the London establishment, while Britain slides further into trillions of debt.

As change defines life, the endless platitudes and empty rhetoric of the old unionist parties are now unacceptable to a weary and sceptical electorate in a faltering UK.

Compared to the shambles of a fractious and divided Westminster, Holyrood, with managerial competence, led by a united and popular SNP, aided by Greens and socialists, has produced good and stable government in Scotland for ten difficult years. This SNP government has indeed been busy “getting on with the day job” – opening bridges, dualling roads, banning fracking, creating a National Investment Bank, scrapping the public sector pay gap and so much more.

The steady leadership of Scotland’s First Minister and her united and competent band of ministers is in stark contrast to the United Kingdom’s hesitant and powerless Prime Minister and her disunited and incompetent band of squabbling ministers.

With the narrow Brexit vote in England dragging the rest of the UK out of Europe, it is not Scottish Nationalism but extreme British Nationalism which will lead inevitably to an independent Scotland rejoining the world family of nations, free of the need to be at the top table of world affairs, slavishly following a divided America and the ludicrous nostalgia for a so-called benign and glorious British Empire, with all its inequality of privilege and prestige.

GRANT FRAZER Cruachan, Newtonmore