English local election results have given a gift to the SNP

Let Labour claim victory in Blackpool rather than acknowledging that it was won for them by consecutive Conservative catastrophes and the Reform UK vote-leak. One can only pray the delusion lasts.

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Let Sunak claim that the mayoral win in Tees Valley is his. Lord Houchen did not acknowledge either Sunak or the Tories in his victory speech. The Independent called it “a snub”.

Let the media crow about larger gains for Starmer than for the old war criminal, Tony Blair.

Peering through the murk of the recent local elections in England, any long-term political creature will see what this is – simply the most anti-incumbent impetus of the UK’s post-war political era.

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Let’s be honest, when the time comes, the people who will count are the ones in the middle, the undecided or floating voters and don’t-really-knowers. Maybe even a handful of Ant and Dec viewers (I’ve-lost-my-critical-faculties-get-me-out-of-here) will leave the sofa on polling day.

If the SNP can focus on one simple, straightforward, digestible message – the one just handed to them on a plate – let it be this:

“A Labour vote may oust a Tory government. Only SNP success will end Tory policies.”

Loud and clear. On repeat. Until the final vote is cast in the upcoming General Election.

Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

ENGLISH Labour’s Viceroy-in-waiting Ian Murray wants an election now. He slams the Scottish administration’s record but doesn’t say that Scotland not only has the UK’s best-performing NHS but has avoided strikes while the English NHS has had almost continual strikes since 2022.

And look at Labour-run Wales. The new Welsh Labour leader accepted £200,000 from a company owned by a man prosecuted for illegally dumping waste, the Welsh NHS isn’t functional according to the Welsh BMA head, and 80% of Welsh GPs complain of excessive workloads putting patients at risk. But you won’t hear Ian Murray calling for a Welsh election.

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Then we have yet another English Labour U-turn, this time a roll-back on pledges relating to workers’ rights. This makes a complete mockery of the promise by English Labour’s northern manager Anas Sarwar to “always be on the side of working people across Scotland.”

But we know whose side English Labour is really on – the side of its corporate donors who, the Financial Times reports, are really now “quite relaxed” about Labour’s plans.

There’s no way English Labour will deliver anything positive for Scotland. There won’t be a return to the Single Market and, despite saying the Union is “voluntary”, Sir Keir says Scotland has no democratic way out and no right to self-determination.

What Scotland needs now is not an election, it is an end to our nation’s exploitation and subjugation by its larger “partner”.

Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh

I AM indebted to Brian Lawson (Letters, May 4) for the Churchill quote from 1948, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

I believe the origin of this quote is from The Life of Reason (1905) by the philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Alternatively, the German philosopher Georg Hegel wrote around 1837: “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”.

Or, going further back in time, Confucius wrote: “Study the past if you would define the future”.

Essays to the editor by the end of the week, please!

Alan Bell
Edinburgh

GREAT to read the output from Hamish MacPherson and the piece on April 28 on King David I of Scotland. The young Earl David spent some of his formative years in the Ettrick Forest area much loved by Scots kings and the nobility. When in the area he was, even as a young man, especially fond of Selkirk, which he referred to even in the early years of the century as “mein auld toun”. He wrote these words in 1113 or 1114, when he was an earl and never expected to be the King of Scots.

At this time he granted land to the burgh of Selkirk to be used to build an abbey and brought monks from France to be in charge of the great building when it was opened for worship. He, presumably with his father’s permission and with his help, declared Selkirk a royal burgh in 1113, around the same time that Roxburgh was also listed as one.

I, of course, am grateful that Hamish mentioned Roxburgh and Berwick but a bit disappointed as a Souter o’ Selkirk that our “auld toun” – which is still standing as a reminder of King David and also still standing despite the horror and needless slaughter of Flodden in 1513, 400 years after the young king – was not mentioned.

Kenneth Gunn
Selkirk