Labour and the Tories have reduced politics to a sorry state

The populists attempt this by substituting demagoguery and sloganising for serious discussion of serious issues. Thus Mr Anderson's rant about Islamists capturing London, Ms Braverman's remarks about mobs and hate marches and Ms Truss's scapegoating of well, virtually every group in society: lefty lawyers, activists in the civil service, Supreme Court judges, the BBC, the National Trust and sundry other institutions which make up the "deep state" whose sole objective is thwarting the implementation of authentic Tory policies. (Cameron and Osborne's austerity must have been Corbynism in disguise.)

Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party on the other hand has become a party of apparatchiks and political managers; people who regard politics as a game, the whole objective of which is to win elections. They believe the surest way to achieve this is to say as little as possible, to avoid political controversy and real political difference. Above all say nothing to offend the Tory media and if attacked retreat as quickly as possible. Along with this goes an intolerance of internal dissent with "rebels" being swiftly dealt with. No doubt the chronic inability of Labour politicians to answer straightforward questions is due to the straitjacket they are required to wear.

This is what passes for UK politics; it is not that of a healthy polity or state.

Brian Harvey, Hamilton.

Councillors should resign

TO allow all of us to achieve our full potential, to be all we can be, it's clear that we need adequate health care, education, access to leisure and the arts, social care and support, affordable housing, transport, justice, democratic accountability and the means to earn an honest and decent living to support ourselves, our families and our communities.

Central governments in Edinburgh and Westminster have told us that we can't afford to pay for these basic needs.

This is a lie, we can.

By limiting budgets parliaments have coerced local authorities into doing their dirty work for them. Councils should not obey.

If necessary, councillors should resign en masse and let Holyrood and London apply the cuts, to libraries, leisure centres, housing, schools, health and dental care, old people's homes, fixing potholes, music and language lessons, class sizes, public spaces, parks, and cleansing services. Central governments have sown the wind and, as Hosea suggests, they should reap the whirlwind.

It's also obvious what we don't want, or need.

Just to pick a few: energy and other infrastructure companies and banks making gobsmacking profits from our national resources, bankers earning unlimited bonuses, Trident missiles that don't work, foreign state-owned railway companies syphoning profits from our privatised network, sewage in rivers, tax havens, private equity companies, asset stripping, domination of our society, legal system and government by a privately educated minority, online monopolies and a growing belief that social media is actually in any way social.

So, elections coming up.Who's going to fix any of it? Who are we going to vote for? And why?

AJ Clarence, Prestwick.

READ MORE: Yes, devolution is failing. But the solution is indy

READ MORE: Give us full fiscal autonomy to put an end to SNP whining

READ MORE: How can we Scots possibly respect or trust Westminster now?

We deserve far better

SOUTH Lanarkshire Council’s recently-announced plan to make swingeing cuts to dozens of community venues such as closing libraries and village halls raises the question: what is a council for?

If a small village like Thankerton, Coulter or Pettinain cannot even have its village hall retained, let alone maintained, how might local government be said to be serving it?

As to closing libraries, whether in small communities like Forth or larger ones such as Blantyre, this is sheer philistinism. As they always have, libraries provide a place for a wide range of community members to expand their horizons and better fulfil the potential not only of themselves but also their communities. Carnegie understood this. Mitchell understood this. Why cannot our elected local representatives?

The justification that councils are cash-strapped seeks to shift the buck rather than taking responsibility for serving communities as they deserve. There is a problem with councils having sizeable spending requirements imposed on them centrally while local revenue-raising rights are heavily constrained, albeit that locally-administered property taxes in the UK are obscenely high. There is also a problem with overly large councils serving predominantly urban or semi-urban areas making choices for small rural communities which effectively have no pull in them.

It is in nobody’s interests for coming generations to be fatter, worse educated, less intellectually curious and more poorly grounded in their own communities than their forebears. Yet such are the inevitable consequences of short-sighted decision making like this. We deserve far better from our representatives and ought to demand as much.

Christopher Ruane, Lanark.

Please stop the grandstanding

PERHAPS MSPs and MPs imagine that legislatures at Holyrood and Westminster are high school debating clubs.

The First Schoolboy of Scotland berated someone recently for failing to support "the SNP’s ceasefire".

Israel and Hamas don’t take their orders from Westminster or Holyrood. If the SNP wanted to declare war on Israel or Hamas, or force them to buy expensive armaments elsewhere than Britain, they might have a point. Hamas after all has spent millions in humanitarian aid on war against Israel. If any of that money were British it would be worth serious attention.

But serious attention isn’t the SNP’s thing. Its leaders are too busy posing as world statesmen to tackle the shameful scourges in Scotland of narcotics, poverty, broken transport. The NHS is precarious all over the UK, so why miss the chance to lead the world by reforming the NHS in Scotland?

Would people elected to run Scotland and England please stop using public resources to grandstand about issues outwith their remit? Championing their favourite causes abroad is factually idling and freeloading on salaries most people could not dream of getting.

They can campaign for other countries in their own time outwith the parliamentary grandstand. They are only trying to be noticed, and under a party whip in Parliament they are not even individually visible as they all would wish.

Tim Cox, Bern, Switzerland.

Indy backers running scared

CLEARLY my most recent letter (February 29) attracted the usual ostrich response from independence supporters (Letters, March 1) who appear to accept that the current system at Holyrood (under the SNP) is broken but yet are unwilling to look for a solution other than demand we overturn the democratic vote in 2014.

For example, Stan Grodynski preferred to engage in deflection by trotting out the old chestnut that somehow the UK Government in 1974 suppressed the McCrone Report which had highlighted the benefits of the North Sea oil and gas production. However, Professor Gavin McCrone had a different account of what actually happened: "There have been suggestions in the press that my paper was suppressed or in some way hushed up. This was not so. It was a confidential briefing for ministers and never intended for publication, just as other briefing papers for ministers are confidential."

Then Mr Grodynski dismissed full fiscal autonomy (FFA) as it would not turn the clock back 300 years. However, as he clearly has a high regard for Prof McCrone (and why not?), let me also remind him what he said about independence.

Professor Gavin McCrone (Image: Newsquest)

First, Prof McCrone suggests in his book, After Brexit, that the figures show that an independent Scotland would start life with a classic twin deficits problem which means we would be importing more than we are exporting and spending more money than generating in tax. We would therefore have unsustainably large current account and budget deficits which would require significant public spending cuts and tax hikes.

However the positive aspect about FFA (unlike independence) is that we could remain in the UK, with monetary union (no 30% discounted bawbee), keep the Bank of England as the lender of last resort, have unhindered access to the UK internal market and have no hard borders. One would think this would be red meat for the deficit deniers and those who rubbish GERS, especially as there would be no need for a block grant as all the revenues would remain in Scotland. But, no they are too feart they would be found out and end their independence-at-any-cost dream.

Ian Lakin, Aberdeen.