SO Boris Johnson, in an interview with the Daily Mail, says that Scottish independence "is just not going to happen". This from the man who declared that there were no parties held at Downing Street, and he hadn't attended any of them. Mr Johnson also would have us believe that Douglas Ross, the lightweight leading the Scottish Conservative featherweights "is doing a very good job".

Mr Johnson is infamous for his opinion that "government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context", and that devolution had been "Tony Blair's worst mistake". One can only presume that Mr Johnson considers the illegal Iraq war preferable to the establishment of a democratically-elected Scottish Parliament.

And of course, Mr Johnson believes that "a pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde". On his visit to Scotland, as in all his sparse visits to Scotland, Mr Johnson was cushioned from meeting Scottish voters; however, if he had taken the trouble to meet the people who live, work and vote in Scotland, he might have found that they consider that Scottish independence is a matter for them to decide, not for a Prime Minister who has no mandate here and is held in hearty contempt not only by the voters, but also it would seem by the leader of his own party in Scotland.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

INDY NOW THE ONLY OPTION

NOW that Sir Keir Starmer has copied the LibDems' Sir Ed Davey in saying that Labour is no longer the party for rejoining the European Union ("Labour leader Starmer says there is no case for rejoining the European Union", The Herald, February 15), Boris Johnson is not the only reason to leave Westminster control.

Therefore, independence is now the only option Scotland has left if we want to boost our economy rather than remaining in a high-inflation, low-growth isolated little Britain with a poor state pension to look forward to.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh.

LISTEN TO THE EU EXPERT

ALEX Gallagher, in a typically doom-laden letter (February 14), criticises Graham Avery as being "extremely optimistic" in his analysis of how long it would take an independent Scotland to gain entry to the EU (“How long would it take an independent Scotland to rejoin the EU?”, The Herald, February 11).

At the time of the Scottish referendum back in 2014 Mr Avery, then the Honorary Director General of the European Commission, and an expert on entry to the EU, appeared before an all-party committee at Holyrood to give his views on possible entry at that time of an independent Scotland.

As he said then, the only thing that matters is whether or not a country aspiring to membership meets the criteria. Scotland clearly did, as Mr Avery stated. This was a view supported by Dr Fabian Zuleeg, Chief Executive of the European Policy Centre.

Mr Avery sees no reason, given reasonable and largely technical negotiation, why the situation would not be the same now. On the one hand we have Mr Gallagher's view of it possibly taking 20 years for Scotland to become an EU member; on the other we have the view of the man who oversaw entry to the EU of the last 14 member states of it approximating Finland's between two to three years.

I think I know whose view the objective observer would support.

But isn't it sad, irrespective of whether one supports independence or the status quo, that Mr Gallagher thinks so little of his own fellow Scots that their country would fall so short of the required standard?

Roger Graham, Inverkip.

UK CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO DEAL

GEORGE Rennie (Letters, February 15) suggests using the same protocol for negotiations on independence between Scotland and Westminster as is used between candidates for EU membership and Brussels; ie, negotiations first and referendum second.

There is a superficial attraction for such a process until one considers the difference between the EU and the UK. The EU is (mostly) an organisation with an open mind which tends to welcome progressive change, and so can be expected to be even-handed, while the UK is a regressive near-one-party state living on imagined past glory, determined to hold on to what it has at all costs. Pre-referendum negotiations with such a state would be impossible.

John Jamieson, Ayr.

SNP AND THE CORPORATIST STATE

HOW interesting that Neil Mackay ("The SNP are now just Tartan Tories with a smiling face", The Herald, February 15) should mention that "the ScotWind deal auctioned the nation’s seabed to private and foreign companies… a Thatcherite fire sale of national assets". But Margaret Thatcher did not sell off utilities to commercial outfits alone. She introduced a huge privatisation scheme in which private citizens were able to participate, on the model of a "property-owning democracy".

In this case, it was to be a share-owning democracy. Individuals were allowed to apply for shares in utilities, British Airways, BP and much more. Some of us remember the tiresome "Tell Sid" promotional adverts on TV, to try to win subscribers to British Gas. Whether people agreed with this policy or not, it certainly wasn’t simply an example, as ScotWind is, of a government selling off utilities to commercial outfits, some of them foreign.

But then we know that the SNP in general, and Nicola Sturgeon in particular, dislike private enterprise and individual choice, preferring large monopolies, particularly those owned by the state, which are turning us into a corporatist state in Scotland. It is not healthy – economically, socially or politically.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

* I AM not a member of the SNP, but feel obligated to add some balance to Neil Mackay’s regurgitated, and disappointing, “Tartan Tory” smear. As self-titled “Yessers”, I find it odd that both himself and Kevin McKenna relentlessly target the main pro-independence party, above all others. If the SNP is Tory-lite, what does that make the Scottish LibDems and Scottish Labour, as the SNP is far to the left of either of these two parties on policy? If in doubt, it can be contrasted and compared with the Welsh Labour Government on a whole variety of issues (I have the greatest respect for Mark Drakeford).

And now that Labour has “outed” itself as a pro-Brexit party, presumably it will now be referred to as a party of “separatists and narrow nationalists”?

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

PUTIN HAS A VALID CASE

I AM old enough to remember the terrifying tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when we genuinely feared World War Three was imminent.

In 1962 the US could not condone Soviet nuclear weapons in nearby Cuba. At the same time, the Soviet Union couldn't condone US nuclear weapons in Turkey, at that time on its borders.

Mercifully, following negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev on the new "hot line", both sides backed down (the Soviets more publicly than the Americans) and removed these assets. One must conclude that the two leaders agreed that having strategic weapons just across the border of either country was a major risk to world peace.

Are we not facing much the same issue today, 60 years on? If the Ukraine joins Nato, which the US encourages and Russia opposes, it is inevitable that western strategic assets would be moved into the Ukraine, right up to the border with Russia – just as Kennedy did in Turkey and Khrushchev did in Cuba. Déjà vu?

Both sides agreed in 1962 that such proximity was not conducive to world peace. What has changed in 60 years to make the US believe that it is now okay? Or is it just that the US now sees itself as having the upper hand because Russia has not re-established assets in Cuba or some other place close to a US border?

Vladimir Putin is right to argue that peace is best served by Russia agreeing to remove its threat of annexing the Ukraine in exchange for the buffer state of Ukraine not being aligned to Nato.

Two significant footnotes: First, a message is emerging (with whatever justification) that Ukraine could not meet requirements for Nato membership for another 20 years. Secondly, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, among others, has said there is a “very real risk” of the US withdrawing from Nato if Donald Trump wins a second term. Either of these situations surely leaves one asking why the West/US would risk going to war with Russia over an almost certainly irrelevant Nato issue.

Ian Gillies, Houston.

Read more: Russia's fear is understandable

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