Readers' Letters: Scotland needs election now to end uncertainty

First Minister Humza Yousaf meets the Press yesterday after the SNP group meeting at the Scottish Parliament, the first since Nicola Sturgeon was questioned by police probing party finances (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

One might ask the question: “What shocks can we expect to hear about next from, or about, the SNP?”

To date we have become aware of an ever widening range of failures, or criticisms, of its part as a minority administration. The list is beginning to seem endless.

And now we learn of Nicola Sturgeon's interrogation by officers of Police Scotland. This is, of course, a follow-up to the arrests and questioning of her husband, and also the SNP treasurer, in connection with the missing SNP funds. And thus the plot thickens!

Surely the only answer to the SNP’s disastrous governance of Scotland is for a Holyrood election to be held in the very near future. We, the electorate, simply cannot be expected to tolerate any more political uncertainty from this administration – and having to wait until the spring of 2026 to be in a position to vote them out of office is quite simply not acceptable.

The SNP has had plenty of opportunities to change policies in Scotland for the better, but has failed miserably. And furthermore, their partnership with the Green Party, just to provide them with a working majority, has been a complete shambles.

We will have no more procrastination from this disastrous government in turmoil. Most certainly a change of direction is required right now.

Robert I G Scott, Ceres, Fife

Testing time

As if Humza Yousaf didn't have enough problems, tomorrow he faces the first non-opinion poll measure of support for his party and and his own leadership, a by-election in Paisley to replace disgraced councillor Jordan Linden. In last year's council elections the SNP won 40.8 per cent of the votes cast. It will be interesting to find out just how much this year's disastrous events have affected their support in one of the SNP's most loyal electorates.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Shallow inquiry

I am dismayed by what I've seen of the Covid inquiry so far, both from the media and a quick look at some of the vast number of government documents. I see little or no emphasis on questioning whether masks actually reduced the spread of pathogenic disease, or conversely, whether they increased the spread. Similar for lockdowns. I see no questions as to whether the £400 billion spent by government on things like furlough and Test and Trace could have saved more lives by being spent on things like cancer and heart disease. And there are many more elephants in the room.

The government should read the almost innumerable independent scientific publications that have been published on the matter.

Geoff Moore, Alness, Highland

Time to walk

While Scottish devolution (backed by almost 75 per cent of the voting electorate) is emasculated day-by-day by a right-wing Tory Government at Westminster, Anas Sarwar and the Labour Party in Scotland have nothing to say.

Others, via these pages, are still attempting to justify a UK Government Section 35 order to prevent a DRS backed without a single contrary vote at Holyrood, broadly consistent with other schemes in Europe and signed-up to by companies producing more than 95 per cent of the bottles and cans to be recycled. Further distraction has been provided through sensationalist reporting of the “arrests” of three SNP politicians as headline news across the UK but with few clarifications by the media, notably including the BBC, to explain that elsewhere such events would simply be referred to as persons invited for questioning by the police (without inference of guilt).

Of course, there are some who are content for devolution to be furtively dismantled while the people of Scotland are denied the right to determine their own future via a referendum, but all others must open their eyes to the fact that the United Kingdom of which they were once perhaps proud is no more.

The UK has become an international pariah in its approach to “processing” refugees, trade with our neighbours has significantly diminished, public services are seemingly in terminal decline, corruption at the highest level of government is ignored, genuine democracy has failed – but still the Labour Party in Scotland remain obsessed with criticising the SNP without honestly addressing the fact the Union is not only grossly dysfunctional but beyond salvation.

Scotland must now go its own way.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Indefensible

The proposal to remove gas boilers from domestic heating is simply indefensible.

We have already been warned our electricity supply will struggle to meet demand next winter, with the particular threat of still air from a high pressure system rendering wind farms redundant. Gas is a clean, efficient and relatively cheap source of domestic heating. That it should be denied consumers makes no sense whatsoever. There is no environmental benefit from this proposal, only massive costs to upgrade electricity supply lines and replace domestic systems.

Yet again our hapless politicians clearly require a reminder they exist to serve. This proposal is not in the public interest and must be dropped.

Hamish Hossick, Broughty Ferry, Dundee

Better off out

Hugh Pennington (Letters, 13 June) reckons we should be grateful for the Barnett formula that was introduced as a funding mechanism containing a mathematical formula that aimed to reduce Scottish funding in comparison to England’s. A 2021 study by the Fraser of Allander Institute and Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at the Internal Market Act which provides a new means for the UK Government to allocate spending in the devolved territories to areas which had previously been thought to be the responsibility of the devolved governments. The authors are clear: “The effect is to circumvent not only the Barnett formula but the devolved governments themselves.”

The UK Government promised its Shared Prosperity Fund would replace in full all EU funding lost to Scotland after Brexit. However, Scotland is missing out on more than £300 million in European support under the UK Government’s replacement funding programme. The Highlands and Islands previously received 19 per cent of Scotland’s share of European funding but under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will only receive 11 per cent. Over £350 billion of Scotland’s oil and gas tax revenues have gone to London but we have seen little UK government investment in modernising Scotland’s manufacturing base, including shipbuilding, which has allowed Norway and Denmark to become world leaders in renewable energy manufacturing.

As part of the UK, Scotland’s GDP is roughly half that of the prosperous, independent Republic of Ireland which last weekend announced funding for 250 nursing places in Northern Ireland to help out with Stormont’s budget constraints. This is the kind of neighbourly co-operation a progressive, energy-rich Scotland, as part of the EU, could follow after independence.

Mary Thomas, Edinburgh

Joyless

Unionists love to argue that Scotland is dependent on England for its survival via the Barnett formula. But occasionally their mask slips and they make the slam dunk case for Scotland’s independence, as Murdo Fraser did a year ago in an interview with GB News. “If Scotland leaves the UK, we lose roughly a third of the land mass of Great Britain, half of our territorial waters, we lose the magnificent resource that is Scottish fishing waters, we lose the opportunities from North Sea oil and gas, we lose the potential for renewable energy from Scotland’s coasts in the North Sea and the Atlantic, we lose access to free trade for Scottish whiskey and Scottish salmon, all these fantastic exports, the opportunity to study at the some of the world’s greatest universities in Scotland and the joy of having Scots as part of the British nation – why would you want to throw that away?”

Murdo says “we lose”, over and over again. That’s because he’s speaking on behalf of the British State, not Scotland. He knows the only loser will be England. If Murdo was really in Scotland’s corner, he’d be arguing that a Scotland liberated from the UK colonial prison would control its territorial assets to benefit the people of Scotland, not corporate elites; it would restore free trade with the EU; it would rid itself of nuclear weapons on its soil; it would rejoin the family of sovereign nations. And if we deprive England of the “joy of having Scots” as part of the UK, then it must find a way to create its own joy.

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh

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