First Minister is boxed in at SNP conference by problems of her own making
Nicola Sturgeon is choosing classic diversion tactics at the Scottish National Party’s Aberdeen conference. She is ignoring reality in order to deflect the conference talk away from the growth commission deb ac le ( ‘Brexit failed to boost the case for Scots independence’, Scotsman, 8 June).
Ms Sturgeon insists the Growth Commission report came too late for inclusion in the main debate. This simply ignores the fact she delayed its publication to engineer this situation.
Now she is using Brexit as a threat to Westminster, to please her supporters. The damage that the Supreme Court could do to the SNP has been cast aside in a desperate move to grab the headlines. With pressure mounting on Shona Robison, Ms Sturgeon is being boxed in by problems that she has created.
The backdrop of an increasingly restive core support core not help. It is going to take something rather special from Ms Sturgeon in her speech today to smooth all this out. The hawks are circling.
GERALD EDWARDS Broom Road, Glasgow
I can’t help thinking the review of Scottish miners’ strike policing is timed to coincide with the SNP conference and an attempt to revive anti- UK and Thatcher sentiment, woo Labour voters, put a beleaguered Police Scotland on the back foot and scrape together a few more reasons for independence. the announcement emphasised that ten per cent of strikers were in Scotland but they incurred 30 per cent of the arrests, the suggestion being Scottish miners were more victimised.
Successive Conservative and Labour UK and Scottish Governments have, for defendable reasons, refused an inquiry into criminal acts carried out during an illegal strike, and I assume that those arrested went through the tried and tested Scottish Court system.
So why now when most of the participants will be in their late 60s and some over 80?
ALLAN SUTHERLAND Willowrow, Stonehaven
It appears that there are no official plans to discuss the Growth Commission report at the SNP conference this weekend, because the report “was published after the agenda was drawn up ”( Scotsman, 7 June ).
This is nonsense from them; if they wanted it, the matter would be aired. I almost feel sorry for SNP activists having to listen to this. The whole SNP raison d’etre is independence, and not to discuss the report officially leads one to suspect that the leadership has something to hide!
WILLIAM BALLANTINE, Bo’ness, West Lothian