Letters: Tory friends and foes will do PM down

The LibDem victory in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election suggests to me that although Ian Black-ford prophesied that Mr Johnson would be the last UK Prime Minister, it is more likely his term will be the shortest in that office. His unstable and hardly-respectable personal life combined with a track record of ill judgments indicate someone I personally could not trust to negotiate a healthy trade agreement with the EU leadership.

Having experience of divorces he seems happy to walk away, acrimoniously, from our marriage to the EU and into the arms of Donald Trump. Since our Prime Minister was born in the United States he is bound to have an innate affinity with that country anyway.

I am convinced that since Mr Johnson has surrounded himself with what appears to be largely people with sycophantic tendencies, I feel that this will quickly bring about his political downfall as no one will have the courage to remind him that he is not a God. Would Sajid Javid phone the police if he heard his neighbour shouting at Carrie?

Bill Brown, Milngavie.

YOU can’t have missed it. It’s the current preferred mode of attack on Scottish independence. Using a script you will see repeated consistently, it goes something like this: “Look at how difficult Brexit has been; it’s a complete mess. We’ve been members of the European Union for less than 50 years; imagine how much more difficult it will be to leave a union we’ve been members of for over 300 years.”

It’s simple, it’s seductive, it’s easy to communicate, but it’s also inherently dishonest. The problem with this "logic" is that it’s a false equivalence. It simply doesn’t follow that making a mess of trying to leave one union will automatically mean making a mess of leaving another, especially when you justify it by relying entirely on the respective time spent in each union. It’s disingenuous and distracts from the real issues.

It also creates a false narrative. The British nationalists pushing this myth hope that by dishonestly linking people's genuine concerns over Brexit to their threats of “much worse to come” with independence, they will sow seeds of doubt where hope is growing.

The Brexit shambles has nothing to do with time spent in one union or the other, and everything to do with how the process was managed, or in the UK’s case, mismanaged.

1. The UK Government had no plan for Brexit. Not only did it not have a plan but, according to Brexit minister Lord Bridges, it didn’t even have objectives for what it wanted to achieve.

2. Westminster then triggered Article 50, starting a time-critical process it was highly unlikely to achieve.

3. It further minimised the chances of success by laying down tits “red lines”; thus creating the Irish Backstop issue.

4. Prioritising the demands of the extreme Brexit wing of the Tory Party seriously constrained Mrs May’s capacity to succeed.

Where in the UK Government’s cocktail of incompetence does the number of years the UK has spent in the European Union have any relevance to the Brexit shambles?

Where in that cocktail of incompetence does the number of years Scotland has spent in the UK have any relevance to “how much more difficult” the process of independence will be?

It’s a myth, and the politicians who are touting the myth know it to be so. They must be challenged on their deception and so must everyone you hear repeat it. Tell them the truth.

So, enough of the false equivalence diversions please. Face up to the reality: Brexit has been a shambles because the UK Government made it so. This is a clear case of reaping what you sow and there is no reason to suppose the Scottish planning and negotiating teams will make the same atrocious blunders, based either on their level of competence or, far less, based on our “time served” in this failing Union.

Phil McCloy, Milngavie.

AS Boris Johnson's new Britain prepares to abandon Europe on Halloween and Scotland is in danger of being crushed by right-wing English nationalism along with the final break-up of the imperial United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the following thoughts prevail.

In the Victorian era the growth of empire was phenomenal. The 19th century can rightly be called Britain's Imperial Century where a quarter of the earth's land surface and a fifth of the worlds population was subject to British rule – an empire where the sun never set.

At school we were taught that our benign empire was driven by exploration, science, commerce and good faith, exemplified by the exploits of Christian explorers like David Livingstone whose motto was "Christianity, commerce and civilisation".

We heard nothing of Indian massacres, first ever concentration camps in South Africa, exploitation and enslavement of peoples in North America, Africa, Australia etc. The fact is the British Empire was no better than any other empire where the illegal and immoral acquisition and rape of other peoples lands were made.

In the 21st century my vision of an independent Scotland is for an open, fair and tolerant society where the people who live and work there chart its destiny and build a land where the smiles of the young and old mark its progress and prosperity.

Grant Frazer, Newtonmore.

IN April Judy Murray had a wee rant about a London doughnut shop’s non-acceptance of a Scottish bank note because it was not valid legal tender. Been there; who hasn’t?

On the day the Eton Mess zip-wired into Scotland and showered us with Pfeffel-piffle, I checked out the Bank of England’s web-site definition of “legal tender”. Some readers may be interested to know that Bank of England notes are of course legal tender south of the Border but not in Scotland. As we are constantly reminded, Scottish bank notes are not legal tender down south but, moreover, are not even legal tender in Scotland. Scotland’s only legal tender are Royal Mint coins.

So after three centuries of Union, Scotland has no legal folding money but we are allowed the change. I suppose this is a step up from beads and probably more practical than barter.

During the upcoming Indyref 2 debate when Nicola Sturgeon is inevitably asked what we Scots intend to do for currency, the answer becomes clear. We can simply use shiny things like we’ve been allowed to do for the last 300 years.

Ian Wilson, Perth.