IN offering his prescription for the salvation of the SNP, Neil Mackay ("Yousaf will be history if he doesn’t tackle SNP’S past", The Herald, June 13) flippantly reiterates that Alex Salmond is "one of the most loathed figures in political life" and that he is "utterly sullied by association with Russian TV".

Perhaps he was loathed after the hatchet job done on him by his successor, but anybody who saw his recent recent appearances on Question Time and Debate Night will have remembered that the man is head and shoulders above the current gang of careerists – of all parties – at both Westminster and Holyrood. There is no question that UK politics in its entirety have manufactured a political class which has no experience of "real" life, no hinterland, no grasp of history or literature. It has in fact come to resemble the department store mannequins populating the US Congress. I say this having worked both on Capitol Hill and at Westminster. How fortunate I was to meet politicians of the calibre of Denis Healey, Sir David Price, Sir Antony Meyer and others.

As far as being "sullied"' by having the RT platform to broadcast his independently-produced show with Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh, the idea that Vladmir Putin or any Russian had any editorial input into it is laughable. Following the invasion of Ukraine they suspended the show immediately.

Presumably Mr Mackay is a fan of the sleaze-ridden comedian and actor currently exhorting us to start the Third World War, but that's another subject entirely.

Marjorie Ellis Thomson, Edinburgh.

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• SO Alex Salmond is trying crawl back into the mainstream by suggesting the Yes parties link to form a Scotland United ("Cherry backs Salmond call for pro-independence party pact at general election", The Herald, June 10). How ironic that a man who created huge divisions is now wanting unity.

Even more ironic is Pete Wishart’s suggestion that the SNP “would be severely punished by the electorate if we partnered a toxic party on 2% of the vote which has never won an elected representative in any election”.

At first I thought he was talking about the Greens, but he meant Alba. Silly me.

John Gilligan, Ayr.

A matter of priorities

IT was revealing to read our thankfully-former First Minister's tweeted comment following her arrest: "I would never do anything to harm either the SNP or the country".

As ever with the Nationalists' priorities, it is party first, country last. What a disgraceful but sadly predictable mindset.

Steph Johnson, Glasgow.

Read more: Yousaf bound for history's trashcan if he doesn't tackle SNP's past

Rescue for UK, but not Scotland?

BOB Hamilton (Letters, June 13) reminds us, as have so many Herald contributors on both sides to the independence debate, that the most important factor is the economy. Like so many of his predecessors he turns a blind eye to our current, uncertain predicament within the Union.

Sir Keir Starmer recently declared that “the route to making Britain a clean energy superpower, slashing energy bills and creating tens of thousands of quality jobs runs through Scotland”.

Would unionists have us believe that our renewables, oil and other resources can rescue the UK economy but are insufficient to sustain that of an independent Scotland?

Alan Carmichael, Glasgow.

Westminster must carry can

BOB Hamilton claims that voting for a party supporting independence (as more than 40% do, not 30% as he erroneously claims) is “selfish”. On that basis presumably voting for any of the other three must be altruistic. Does this include voting for the Conservatives, whose record of sleaze must be one of the sleaziest in the history of Westminster?

Mr Thomson describes the economy as “the most important factor” in the “circle of life” which drives everything – investment, employment and public services and infrastructure”, so in his view it’s pretty important. Given this, one might have thought he would be clear who controls the economy in Scotland, and that it’s not the Scottish Government.

Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act makes clear that such as taxation (with some exceptions, mainly income tax), trade and industry, financial and economic matters including monetary policy, consumer protection are all matters reserved to Westminster and determined there by a party with little more than limited support in Scotland. Indeed even employment law and health & safety are reserved.

This is not to claim that the performance of the Scottish Government in this regard (or indeed any regard) is as good as it should be, or how we would want it to be, but if we, and Mr Thomson, want to understand why the performance of the Scottish economy is not better, it is to Westminster that we should first look for an explanation. One of the first things we would learn is that in regard to management of the economy the Scottish Government's role is marginal to the point where the sort of argument proselytised by Mr Thomson is not only misleading but downright wrong.

Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.

Labour won't work for us

YOU recently (June 7) published a letter from me praising Brian Wilson for an article on the ferries debacle. I included the caveat that I don't normally pay much attention to him because of his relentless anti-SNP tirades.

So, normal service resumed today ("The SNP’S threat to Labour shows how irrelevant they will be", The Herald, June 13), only pushing Labour more pointedly because of the likely by-election, which allows for his wild statements to be challenged. So, if Labour won the next General Election it would be "forming a radically different kind of government for the whole UK". Not from anything Sir Keir Starmer has so far said, radical he ain't. He twists himself into knots to avoid saying anything radical.

And Rachel Reeves was "talking sense" when she u-turned on the idea of a substantial investment in energy transition. When the world at this moment is on fire.

The belter was "Until a government is in the door it does not know what it has to spend on anything". What? So the pitch is: just vote for us and we'll decide after we've won what we'll spend the budget on. That's going to make for a simple manifesto, no commitments to anything, just that we think we're better than the other lot.

I can't see many people falling for that in Scotland where the Labour "branch office" mentality is still evident. The best way to effect change is still to underline from the ballot box that London rule does not serve Scotland well.

Sandy Slater, Stirling.

Read more: SNP threat to Labour is a cry of irrelevance

Ferries have no bearing on indy

COLIN Allison (Letters, June 13) misrepresents my point of June 12.

The mismanagement of the ferries contract is totally relevant to how well Holyrood is performing as a government of limited power. As such, I don't ignore it. I do not turn blind eyes or deaf ears to it.

It is irrelevant as to whether Scotland should or should not be independent. In that respect such arguments are tedious and boring.

Iain Cope, Glasgow.

This is no democracy

WHAT is lost in coverage of the current spat between Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson about those on whom the latter wanted to bestow life membership of the House of Lords ("Johnson and Sunak spat over honours", The Herald, June 13) is that the whole tawdry affair highlights the complete lack of democracy in the complete Westminster set-up.

What we have is the current Prime Minister and a former Prime Minister who has just resigned rather than face the truth, both having played major roles in Government that holds power despite having gained the support of less than 30% of those entitled to vote in the last General Election, squabbling about who will be kicked upstairs to a sinecure in the Lords. Not only does our present first past the post voting system in General Elections practically guarantee that the winning party will govern not having gathered 50% of the possible votes, the reality is that general public has absolutely no say in who sits in the second chamber, the House of Lords.

Does that sound like a democracy to you? It doesn’t to me.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

• SURELY Sir Tom Devine ("Leading historian says Johnson honours row ‘tarnishes’ his own knighthood", The Herald, June 13) realised that all knighthoods both past and future were "tarnished" when Gordon Brown awarded one to Senator Edward Kennedy (albeit the honorary version as a US citizen).

John Birkett, St Andrews.