A spell in opposition would be good for the SNP

There has never, in my 74 years, been such a Labour Party, and under Sir Keir Starmer, Labour is no such beast. I suspect there will be enormous disillusion with Labour in government, and by 2026 Scottish Labour should not be counting its chickens. The SNP however, has genuine problems with strategy and direction and a period in opposition would do it good: so it could quit right now, fight an early election, and let a Labour/Tory/LibDem coalition do all the many things they said should be done while in opposition. By 2026 the SNP would probably have a landslide.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

Starmer is best avoided

RUTH Wishart's hard-hitting Hogmanay article blew away the cobwebs of 2023, and was a timely warning that there is precious little difference between the policies of Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.

Ms Wishart is right; Labour politicians are not "red Tories", they are "the palest possible pink", which I think is termed "blush pink", and Sir Keir should certainly blush pink given all the policy U-turns or watering down of policies which lie at his door.

I have relatives who lie buried with the red flag over their coffins; what an insult to their memories, and to all the great Labour figures of past times. The fact that Sir Keir is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher and takes advice from Tony Blair, who still reeks from his illegal war, should tell voters all they need to know; this man will be bad for Scotland and is definitely best avoided at the ballot box.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

Read more: Won't someone give Labour a lesson on socialist values?

Regime riven by inertia

THE year 2024 may have dawned but it seems that Scotland's NHS is still afflicted by the same problems evident for many years.

The revelation that almost two million bank and agency NHS shifts were advertised in 2022/23 indicates a staffing crisis of monumental proportions. NHS unions have also pointed out that in one instance 30 ambulances were parked outside a hospital with patients waiting for a bed, while patients being kept in corridors awaiting admission to wards were being issued with emergency call buzzers to summon staff. How can our Health Service be run in such an inefficient manner and what is the Scottish Government actively doing about it?

It seems the SNP/Greens administration is riven by inertia and useless leadership and there is no guarantee that 2025 will not see the same headlines appearing again in our newspapers.

Bob MacDougall, Kippen.

Read more: Israel must not be allowed to launch a new war

Stand firm against Iran

ON Christmas Eve a battle group comprising the fully-armed aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, Daring class destroyers, Type 23 frigates and smaller escorts raced out of Portsmouth Harbour. They were flying the Nato flag. They cannot be tracked with certainty but Operation Prosperity Guardian is clearly taking shape with the navies of Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, and Netherlands joining the two US carrier groups and the Royal Navy to protect the 50 ships a day passing through the southern Red Sea.

Iran has threatened the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean sea, which accounts for 15% of the world's global trade. Grant Shapps is right to say these threats will not be tolerated. Lord Cameron has warned the Iranian Foreign Minister Iran will be held responsible.

The Houthis continue to fire on a variety of commercial ships in the Bab El Mandeb strait claiming they are disrupting Israeli trade, though how do they justify the attack on a Maltese merchant ship (rescued by a Spanish warship), in the Indian Ocean, and the hijacking of another Maltese ship near a Yemeni island?

Danish Maersk and BP and other international operators are now avoiding the region while navigating around South Africa, which will lead to a hike in oil and other prices that we can ill afford.

It is fair to say that the conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine have meant we have taken our eye off the ball with Iran, which is locked in a war between its medieval theocracy and Generation Z. Twenty-five thousand people are imprisoned and these are schoolchildren, writers, sports and TV stars, rappers, journalists, musicians and the like. The Iranian Parliament has threatened to execute many, while the reports from Amnesty International of torture in Iran make for grim reading.

John F Kennedy said those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

It need not be this way. We know Iran has been supplying missiles to Russia and intelligence confirms many Cruise and drone missiles fired in the Gulf were launched from Iran. The fingerprints of Iran were all over the Hamas attack, which has smashed all hopes of a two-state solution in the near future. All the weaponry of the proxy groups such as the Houthis and Hezbollah is Iranian. The Director General of MI5 says Iran is threatening UK citizens.

Yes, we must allow Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others time to bring pressure to bear but, if not, Nato must not hesitate to take out all the launch sites.

John V Lloyd, Inverkeithing.

Benjamin Netanyahu (Image: PA)

Why support Netanyahu?

IN the Israeli newspaper Haaretz Moshe Zimmermann, an Israeli author and historian in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is quoted as suggesting that Israel’s current government is a “kakistocracy” - meaning rule by the worst citizens; "if there were rankings, Bemjamin Netanyahu would be competing for first place with Nero, Czar Nicholas II or Donald Trump”.

Haaretz has the third-largest circulation in Israel and is the only major left-leaning/liberal newspaper. It is constantly condemnatory of Mr Netanyahu’s government, especially its “blatant and crude campaign to turn Israel from a functioning, liberal democracy to an authoritarian, hollow democracy with bold theocratic strains”.

It is particularly critical of Mr Netanyahu bringing representatives of a “racist, violent party” into his government, making for instance a “clownish-thuggish Itamar Ben-Gvir, a thrice-convicted felon and head of an extremist Jewish supremacist party” the National Security Minister. Mr Ben-Gvir had circumvented regulations surrounding gun permits and ownership, distributing 14,000 gun licences to illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank before he was stopped by the Justice Ministry.

Furthermore Professor Daniel Blatman, a Holocaust historian also of the Hebrew University, has said in an interview also in Haaretz that as a consequence of such appointments as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Israel is hurtling towards fascism.

Are Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak (and Keir Starmer) aware of these facts? How can they not be? In which case why do they continue to sell, or support the selling of arms to, Mr Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing, theocratic regime? To a kakistocrat?

John Milne, Uddingston.

The dawn of greatness

LUKE Littler has had a great run at the World Darts championship and for a 16-year-old the second prize of around £200,000 will buy him a few beers to celebrate with - except that he's not old enough to drink them.

A great effort and only the start of a potentially fantastic career. Well done, lad.

Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Australia.