Has Gordon Brown transposed his own personal failure onto his country?

Gordon Brown is actually yesterday’s man. His presumption that Westminster and the Union are abune them a’ is the Unionist Labour attitude akin to Rees-Mogg’s diatribe against the Tories at Holyrood and Gove’s put-down of Ross. The Union-upholders are fighting one another.

Gordon Brown is now out of place and out of time. A fifties man, stuck in an Atleean mode of thinking in Labour, a centralist who cannot move on as Dewar did when he alluded to devolution being a process with no end point.

Brown still cannot shift from a No 10 mindset. He has no answer to changing the fundamentals of the Incorporating Union, in effect Greater England, which is reality as “Anglo-” is used to stand for UK in treaties with other nations, for example.

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He cannot even attack the Johnsonian power grab, as that would mean negating the absolutism of the unwritten Union constitution and showing the hollowness of the claim that the Union is one of equals. In fact, he scurries away from overt current criticism of Westminster as it would be an attack per se on the Union. He has not even come to terms with Labour’s collapse in Scotland. A walking Rip van Winkle still disorientated.

He falls short because he is thirled to the Commons and to the assumption that the Commons is sovereign. The mythology of the “Precious” Union is his, and with it the denial of the Scots’ absolute Claim of Right. For Brown that “right” can only operate within the English-dominated Union even when, as we see now, the vast majority of Scottish MPs are SNP and not Unionist! Brown cannot see that, and thinks Labour should rightly be in power.

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He supports the democratic deficit and is silent when its abuses are prevalent.

He has, for all his histrionics and theatrics, not been able to rid himself of a “subservient cottar mentality” and an inbuilt genuflection for the need to doff his bunnet to Westminster and its elites.

Perhaps this is due to his abject failure as an PM, who was traumatised in office. His losing his one and only General Election campaign as party leader has imprinted on his tortured psyche that, as a Scot, he is a failure and he mistakenly transposes that onto the country.

His Vow was a sham and he was ceremoniously dumped by Cameron in 2014 after being duped into supporting Better Together. He foolishly trusted the Tories and showed bad judgment, after which Labour in Scotland declined.

It is Labour that is no more, not Scotland.

He is more to be pitied. No longer in Parliament, in office or event relevant.

John Edgar
Kilmaurs

MIKE Russell is right that the vital issue is not who is in 10 Downing Street (Getting rid of Johnson is simply not enough for Scotland, Jan 15). The vital issue is that the UK is only a partial democracy. It has an unelected second parliamentary chamber, and an unelected head of state who is outside party politics but exercises powers at the peak of politics.

In October 1963, Harold Macmillan announced he would resign as Prime Minister. He advised the Queen that his successor should be the Earl of Home. On October 18 1963 the Queen invited the Earl of Home to see if he could form a government. He was able to, and so became Prime Minister on October 19. Was he effectively elected by only two people?

Four days later he renounced his hereditary peerage, and became known as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. For 20 days, until he won a by-election on November 7 1963, the UK’s Prime Minister was not a member of either parliamentary chamber. Should the SNP, Scottish Greens and independence supporters use this example as often as possible to show the untruth that the UK is a democracy? I say “Yes”!

E Campbell
East Renfrewshire

EVERY now and again there’s a letter or an article that just “hits the nail right on the head” for the reasons for independence. Mike Russell’s article on Saturday for me was that article. A one-page leaflet of this article should be printed in its thousands and posted through every letterbox in the country.

Thanks, Mike.

Ken McCartney
Hawick

FURTHER to Derek Thomson’s letter (Jan 15) suggesting that learning Gaelic could be considered a political act, this is exactly why I started learning Gaelic – to annoy the narrow-minded Unionists who were griping on about Gaelic road signs and promotion of the language being a waste of money (or, a political act – more commendable!) But then something peculiar happened: I fell in love with this beautiful language and want to learn it for its own sake. It is such a wonderful, expressive language and I plan to keep on learning and studying it. So yes – do it!

Jane Phillips
Dundee