Does SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon have a mandate for Scottish independence referendum? - Yorkshire Post letters

From: Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

PATRICK Mercer’s column about the SNP was excellent, and if this is an example of views of senior politicians down South, I am reassured (The Yorkshire Post, December 27).

The SNP’s election campaign leaflets focused on stopping Brexit and locking Boris Johnson out of No 10, and didn’t mention independence. A total of 2.7m votes were cast out of a electorate of 4.3m Scottish voters. The SNP got 1.24m votes, 460,000 less than the 1.8m they would need to win a referendum.

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Nicola Sturgeon is pushing for a second referendum on Scottish independence. (Photo by Neil Hanna/WPA Pool/Getty Images)Nicola Sturgeon is pushing for a second referendum on Scottish independence. (Photo by Neil Hanna/WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Nicola Sturgeon is pushing for a second referendum on Scottish independence. (Photo by Neil Hanna/WPA Pool/Getty Images)

They do not have a mandate for a referendum. Scotland’s problem is Labour has been a busted flush for years and the Lib Dems float along.

The Conservatives’ reliance on their being the most anti-independence plays well but fails to win them power. They have no policies for a better alternative to the SNP, who are seen as the best of a bad bunch.

Until that happens, Scotland is heading for a ‘high noon’ Holyrood election in 2021 when the SNP and Greens will win a majority of seats, more than 50 per cent of the vote and a moral and numeric case to hold a horrible, divisive, possibly violent referendum that tears the UK asunder with no upside.

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Anything Mr Mercer can do to get his Conservative colleagues to vastly up their game will be very welcome up here.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

From: Ian Richardson, Railway Street, Beverley.

PATRICK Mercer writes: “It makes not one whit of sense to be passionately against union with your closest neighbour and equally passionate about union with a distant bloc, with whom you share neither a common language, nor a currency.”

On the contrary Mr Mercer, it makes every sense. You are getting your Brexit, but be in no doubt it is largely an English one, built on misguided English values, coupled with arrogance and delusion about national sovereignty and greatness.

Scotland voted overwhelming against Brexit, because millions of Scots have far more in common with most EU states, in terms of values, than they do with an England that has never treated them as equals and seems intent on following the ideas of Donald Trump.

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So enjoy your Brexit whilst you can, but don’t expect to preserve the UK as well. The convoluted mendacity of Mr Mercer, accusing Nicola Sturgeon of xenophobia, is quite staggering. I accept my side has lost the political arguments down here, but thankfully there is a lantern in the North to hopefully show us a better future.

From: John Fisher, Menwith Hill.

I HOPE the following wishes for the New Year will be succesful.

The end of the first past the post election system which has produced minority governments and a lack of stability for the country. That the UK will have a succesful future outside the EU. That the UK will remain united.