Help the poor

Joyce Mcmillan (“A curse on Brexit and its creators”, Perspective, 12 April) argues for “a brand new version of the Scottish Government’s famous 2013 Scotland’s Future manifesto, shorter, better-argued, and more radical and farsighted in terms of resilience to economic and environmental change”.

I could not agree more. There is one overriding justification for independence and that is that an independent Scotland would be more likely to have as one of its founding principles a commitment to protect the interests of those at the margins of society. They have suffered enormously under a decade of Conservative austerity and I have little doubt that the economic cost of Brexit will fall on their shoulders and on their children.

Surely we must admit the possibility that independence would result initially in a degree of economic turbulence. In other words Conservative austerity + Brexit + independence present the possibility of further cruel reductions in public spending.

I therefore suggest those arguing for independence must provide a strategy, the purpose of which is to acknowledge the need to protect “the poor”.

JOHN MILNE

Ardgowan Drive, Uddingston