LAST night I watched the STV hustings for the election tomorrow. I find there, not to my surprise, the lead candidate for my party asking me to support re-entry to the EU, whether before or after Scottish independence is achieved. He – on behalf of a cause which demands, first and critically, a constitution where laws in Scotland are made by a Scottish Parliament elected by Scots – wants to become a member of a parliament where the Scots elect six members or 0.9% of its power base.

He, and the party he seeks to represent, quite rightly reject a parliament where the Scots elect 59 members or 9.0% of its power base.

He manages to do this feat of simulation because of the “Independence in Europe” fiction – the proposition that Scotland can be independent while being a member of a union which creates and enforces laws made by a body in which they have one per cent of the votes (or 4% if you use the Council of Ministers).

Now I am clear, absolutely, that a truly independent Scotland will be able to choose to give up that independence. It is not something that I judged they would choose. And I find it even more difficult to find that the SNP would choose to abandon independence immediately after, even before, that independence has been achieved.

So I find myself on Thursday incapable of voting SNP on Thursday – and hoping, even expecting, more nationalists to do the same.

Gerry Fisher
Oban

GORDON Brown’s latest rant against independence is incoherent, inconsistent and illogical. It is typical of the man’s political nous.

Before the 1979 devolution referendum, I, as SNP press officer, and Gordon, as leading Labour light in Edinburgh, met frequently to discuss tactics in the Calton Studios in Edinburgh. As human beings, we got on well. I told him that trade union activists were coming to the SNP for people power to deliver their pro-devolution leaflets in the housing schemes because Labour No campaigners refused to do so. I said we could lose the referendum. He pooh-poohed the idea. We lost. It puts his comments on independence into context.

Gordon’s latest anti-independence statement points to the SNP being in favour now of a “hard” independence by not keeping the pound, by leaving the UK single market, and creating a separate social union. He’s lost the plot. During the indy referendum, the UK refused to countenance Scotland keeping sterling, and anyway most former colonies move to their own currency quickly; we would be better off with a market of 500 million people than the prospect of one with 60 million; we are already creating a separate social union through devolution, and it looks much fairer and more compassionate, more pro-poor and migrant-friendly compared to the broth of xenophobia and “scrounger” mentality down south.

Gordon also forgets the importance of democracy. Scotland is in the position of a colony with a political system which means that what England wants, Scotland gets – even if it’s against its democratically expressed wishes, as in the current situation with Brexit.

The vision being offered to all those who live in Scotland (note all) is that of a democratic independent state taking a full part in the EU which has kept Europe at peace since World War Two, boosted prosperity, and made our continent a force for good internally and in the world – which doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. The vision Gordon and his ilk offer for Scotland is continued poverty, being harnessed to an increasingly failed state we never vote for, and a decline into Union Jack-waving mediocrity. Which vision would our young people want?

Duncan MacLaren
Glasgow

I AM disappointed to read how many of your correspondents were taught little or no Scottish history at school. I can only speak about the three schools where I was in charge of the history curriculum and assure them that in all three Scottish history was well represented; not to the exclusion of British history, nor of some European and American history, partly because these featured prominently in external exams, partly because I thought it only right that we should not be narrow and stick only to our own country as happens widely in England.

The Union of 1707 was dealt with through a little play I wrote, made up largely of things actually said by the protagonists in the debate in the Scottish Parliament but with the language simplified. Pupils were aware of the events surrounding the union proposal, including the invasion threat. The pro and con arguments were then summarised and pupils were invited to vote on the proposal. For some the argument that there would be no more military invasions from England was the clincher, but most were put off by what we now call our democratic deficit.

Pupils were also told what a textbook written for the English national curriculum said about the Union, which was that the English generously admitted some Scots to their parliament and paid off our Darien debts, which of course was false on two counts. When I took this up with the publisher I received what can only be described as a BBC answer.

Andrew M Fraser
Inverness