SINCE the election in May I’ve seen much talk online regarding the Alba Party from SNP officials, members and supporters. Indeed, in the immediate wake of the election we saw the rather disgusting sight of senior SNP officials cheering at what they thought was the death of another wing of the independence movement.

Since then we have heard the incessant drip, drip, drip from SNP fundamentalists demanding that people who voted Alba should now return to the fold and unite as one, abandoning their concerns and principles in the process. I’m afraid that ship has sailed and there’s as much chance of that happening as there is of the Yes movement heeding calls from British nationalists to abandon independence because they won the referendum in 2014.

READ MORE: Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: Frustration within the Yes movement is costing us

Gordon McIntyre-Kemp hit the nail on the head in his column on Thursday when he said that the SNP are highly successful as a political party but not as a part of the Yes movement. The unity of the 2014 campaign came from the atmosphere generated by the movement, the feeling that everyone had something to contribute and something to gain, and that although we all desired the same aim in one respect we were not of one hive mind. Bearing that in mind, perhaps it is not the Yes movement which must surrender to the SNP, but the other way around.

Many eyes have been opened to the internal chicanery of the SNP, and when you see that kind of behaviour laid bare and take a principled stand against it, then it is highly unlikely you can stuff that particular genie back in the bottle. The shadow of careerists, bottom-feeders and carpet-baggers, along with kangaroo courts, police investigations and missing “ring-fenced” money looms large and long, and perhaps in those circumstances the best we can hope for from the SNP is that it becomes more transparent and honest internally, while at the same time holding out an olive branch to the Yes movement and learning to work with its allies in the independence movement, not against them.

Instead of running lemming-like towards a cliff, the SNP must now pause and take stock or fall into the abyss. Should they do so they will take the independence movement with them, and that must not be allowed to happen.

Jim Cassidy
Airdrie

A HUGE chunk of the electorate decided that the SNP manifesto and the Green Party manifesto were the way for Scotland. Now, however, a very few – those with bombastic voices and tiny, tiny ability – are attempting to rewrite history by implying that they have more influence than they actually have.

Certainly in Holyrood they have none, and they only have MPs at Westminster because after jumping ship those MPs are to scared to face the voters in a by-election.

So please save us the Stalinistic rhetoric on preserving the independence movement, because your manifesto along with your leaders and their lieutenants were resoundingly rejected by Scotland.

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It is not politics you are engaged in but petulance. It is not debate you seek but dictatorial control. It is not a realisation of unity but more a return to 1930s ultraism that you seek.

You claim to be of the people but denounce the very same when you are rejected. In short you say you are for democracy, but decry the democratic result.

Who exactly is the party of Salmond and who are the financial backers?

Cliff Purvis
Veterans for Independence 2.0

I HEAR Mike Russell, I hear Ian Blackford, I hear Nicola Sturgeon. As a financially contributing SNP member, I have two messages for them. In the terms favoured by the Boris Johnson they so criticise: facta, non verba, and to paraphrase slightly the earthier challenge of my native Ayrshire: it’s time to put our money where your mouth is.

Ian Duff
Inverness

I ENJOYED Joanna Cherry’s article on Friday (Why some serious work now needs to be done to build fresh case for indy, July 16. The SNP have become thunderously quiet on independence.This new ten-year plan with a formal committee seems to be a stagecoach to no place.

READ MORE: Joanna Cherry: We must build a fresh case for Scottish Independence

Joanna is restricted in what she can say before she gets into bother. I like people who spear the arse out of the barrow – it’s called democracy. Devolution has been great for the Scottish people also the politicians. I love reading about new ways and routes to gain independence. We have the know-how, so come on Scotland.

Ian Gordon
Glenrothes

WITHOUT a hint of irony about what he is saying, Dominic Cummings, who has never been elected to any political office, said the following to Laura Kuenssberg: “He [the Prime Minister] doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t know how to be Prime Minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem not because he was the right person to be running the country.”

Johnson, for good or ill, did win an 80-seat majority in December 2019.

READ MORE: Dominic Cummings interview: Viewers struggle to side with former Vote Leave boss

Cummings also complained about the PM’s then paramour, now spouse, saying: “The situation we found ourselves in is that, within days. .. the Prime Minister’s girlfriend is trying to get rid of us and appoint complete clowns to certain key jobs.”

There was me thinking the electorate had some sort of role in the whole political fiasco.

That’s what you’re getting if you want to stay in the “precious Union”... unelected advisers cum amateur opticians vying for power with grandes horizontales and multimillionaires.

John McArthur
Glasgow