DEAR Nicola,

As you head into your annual SNP conference I would like you to take with you a message from people like me, who are great admirer of all you have achieved as leader. My message is don’t be so cautious, because like all powerful political leaders, you have gathered too much power to the centre and are not encouraging enough of the talents of your many MSPs to address the multitude of problems you face.

That dangerous trend leaves me, and thousands like me, as wobbly voters who, if an election came tomorrow, might not cast our vote for the SNP, because your dithering is making us nervous.

Nicola, there has never been a better time than now in British politics, with the Tories about to implode. Go for it and be assured even the wobblers will be with you.

People forget too easily the wonderful things you have achieved: free prescriptions; free hospital car parking; free university education; free bus passes for the elderly and the under-22s; hundreds of new schools and so much more.

BUT, like all politicians, you are stuck in a rut, believing that we the public will not tolerate increased taxes, when to us that is the only way to solve the major problems your are facing. Taxing people fairly according to their ability to pay must be your new mantra. Doing everything you can to eradicate the tax-dodgers, closing the legal loopholes that allow business to hide away billions in offshore territories and deny us all of the funds we desperately need to make our country more prosperous.

We need more tax to address the gross underfunding of all health care; including paying staff proper salaries, training thousands more nurses, doctors, mental health specialists and those that can deliver top-quality care in the community. Also to address the scandalous housing shortage and the runaway rent rises of private landlords. The transport problems and more.

Your government must improve its ability not only to listen to the people, but to take far more seriously what they are telling you. Never more so than on as issue like drug deaths. I and many others have for decades submitted many possible solutions, yet not one of them has been taken seriously. You know only too well that alcohol is without doubt our biggest drug problem, yet for too long your government has given that industry every opportunity to exploit every loophole to profit from our citizens’ ill-health, without contributing to the damage they have done. The fact that the alcohol industry is a massive source of tax should not prevent it being held to account for the problems it creates. Until we are independent we have to live with the fact that most of that tax goes to the UK Government to squander.

The horrendous fact that suicide is the number one killer of under 25s must be addressed URGENTLY. We will only achieve that if we make serious efforts to find the cause. My poem from 1996 suggests how:

Once we learn to listen to our children,
We will realise that they are like mirrors,
Reflecting back to us,
What we have done to them.

We have both the amazing Young Scot National Youth Information team and the Scottish Youth Parliament long established in Scotland. They should be commissioned to get out there and find a way to listen to our children and come back to your government with the possible solutions. We have thousands of young Greta Thunbergs and Marcus Rashfords across our land. Listen to them, act on what they are telling you. Unlike so many adults they will not let you down.

Max Cruickshank
Glasgow