LIKE many SNP voters, I am desperately hoping that Nicola Sturgeon has some clever strategy to deliver independence and rescue us from the catastrophe the chancers in the English/UK Government are about to inflict on us with Brexit and a dodgy US trade deal that sells out the UK farming industry and the NHS and makes us all poorer into the bargain.

I have kept faith with the SNP as they have won election after election and mandate after mandate but I must be honest, I am starting to wonder whether yet another mandate from the voters of Scotland in 2021 will take us any closer to independence.

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Certainly the Tories, who have not won an election in Scotland since 1955 yet who still have total control over Scotland and its resources, have nothing to lose by denying Scotland any right to decide its own future against a backdrop of all the broken promises they made in the run-up to 2014.

With the former Yes campaign disbanded, all our hopes appear to be tied to this one political party, and anything that makes them a target in the Unionist media that dominates Scotland, such as the Alex Salmond trial, potentially impacts on the independence movement as a whole.

The SNP are playing a dangerous game in my view, and they will end up increasingly losing the support of their up-until-now loyal voters if they let us down because they get the “strategy” wrong. If I were were Nicola – who is undoubtedly well respected internationally as well as at home – I would stop playing by Westminster’s rules and start using its own parliamentary procedures to frustrate this despicable Tory government who have been imposed on us by voters south of the Border.

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The Tories are known for various underhand tactics to prevent bills they don’t like from being passed, from endlessly filibustering debates through to literally refusing to leave the lobby during votes. They have even called for, and got, votes on whether the House is quorate (a minimum of 40 MPs must be present) when it’s perfectly obvious the House is packed with standing room only, in order to stop legislation they don’t like from seeing the light of day. That’s because a vote in the outdated medieval lobby division system takes more than three hours while in Holyrood a similar vote takes just a few minutes.

As the excellent SNP MPs (47 in mumber) are virtually ignored and ridiculed by the 533 English MPs, what chance has Scotland got of having its voice ever heard in that place? However, if the SNP MPs made it their mission to delay, block and frustrate every single piece of legislation the Tories wish to enact by using exactly the same methods the Tories themselves have used so often, our MPs would not only be taken seriously but would become a thorn in the side of the English government that wishes to hold Scotland prisoner in its Union for various reasons ranging from dumping its toxic waste here to squandering our precious resources on tax breaks for billionaires.

If we think the English government is all about “cricket and fair play” then I am afraid to say we are going to lose any chance of preventing the huge damage still to be inflicted on us by people we did not elect and people who have already wasted Scotland’s huge oil bonanza of the last five decades.

We will not gain our independence by letting our opponents ride roughshod over us. We need to start making our presence well and truly felt to a point where they will be less willing to put up with us and eventually let us go our own way.

Another good start would be for Nicola to make it clear that because the English government continues to refuse to let us have “permission” to decide our own future, we will make the 2021 Holyrood election a binding vote for Scotland’s independence with the clear message to our Tory dictators that if the SNP wins yet again, that will be our referendum and Scotland will become independent as a result.

I am certain many countries will see that as perfectly reasonable in the circumstances and will immediately recognise us as an independent nation.

Peter Jeal
Dalbeattie