Braverman has channelled Powell and taken the UK to a new low

What genuinely surprises me is that both Ms Braverman and Priti Patel come from immigrant backgrounds, and I would have thought that would they have shown a bit more understanding and even empathy in dealing with the issue.

We should all hang our heads in shame at allowing this to happen.

Keith Swinley, Ayr.

• IN light of the UK Home Secretary’s recent comments on immigration, migration and asylum, perhaps it is worth highlighting the following: the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats since 2018 is 2018, 299; 2019, 1,843; 2020, 8,466; 2021, 28,526; 2022, 45,774; 2023, 24,293 (to September 28).

Is it a coincidence that the UK left the EU on January 31, 2021? Until then there was an agreed process within the EU to return migrants amongst EU countries. The Tory Brexit deal removed the UK from this agreement. Organised crime gangs were then able to promise those wishing to cross the Channel that they could not be legally returned to the EU mainland.

Thus it is the Tory Government that is wholly responsible for this situation.

David Howie, Dunblane.

Read more: The SNP is now irrelevant: all that matters is getting the Tories out 

A reminder of duplicity

AFTER Tuesday's screening of Channel 4’s docudrama Partygate (based on Sue Gray’s report) no one can doubt the duplicity which lies at the heart of British politics at the very highest level.

Whilst there may have been an element of dramatic licence in the reconstruction of events during the period of lockdown the essential truth has been, at last, laid bare.

The sense of entitlement and privilege which underpinned (and probably still underpins) Britain’s centre of power can no longer be denied.

It is good that the programme has been broadcast during the Conservative Party’s Manchester conference. It is reasonable that party activists there should be confronted with the just some of the realities of the last 13 years of government.

However, it is very likely, in the current political circumstances, that the "lesson" that the party faithful will absorb will be that Nadine Dorries was right to seek to privatise Channel 4. After all, the proceeds of such a sale could have probably funded at least 100 metres of HS2 from Birmingham towards Manchester.

Ian Graham, Erskine.

HS2 axe tells us a lot

TODAY'S decision by Rishi Sunak to cancel the completion of HS2 surely gives the lie to any idea of the "United" Kingdom being a unit in anything but name ("Rishi Sunak axes HS2 but will invest funds in Scottish roads projects", heraldscotland, October 4). The contrast with not just our European neighbours but with most major developed economies right around the world, is stark.

The most galling contrast though must be with France. Post-war France was a country riven with division, cultural differences, and even languages, both north to south and east to west, especially after the Second World War, and it was the French government's desire to unify its people that was one of the main impulses behind the TGV network. This is a process known to political scientists and historians as nation-building, and Westminster's actions stand in dramatic contrast to other nations more serious about national unity.

If successive UK governments over the last 60 years had cared as much about the whole of the UK as it does for the south-east of England (the Home Counties as they used to be known), then there would have been high-speed trains stretching from Cornwall through London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds and onward to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen years ago. Their actions give the lie to their hypocritical statements of wanting to defend "our precious Union".

John Jamieson, Ayr.

• RISHI Sunak's remark about Nicola Sturgeon during his party conference speech today ("Rishi Sunak Conservative conference speech: the key points", heraldscotland, October 4) chas taken despicability to a new low. Surely the people of our Scottish nation, regardless of their political allegiances, will ensure that this wretched man and his party will be rejected out of hand.

Willie Maclean, Milngavie.

We don't need another vow

THANK you to James Quinn (Letters, October 4) for pointing out that "whatever the colour of the next UK Government, neither Labour nor the elitist Tory Party has any inclination or motivation to legislate for a second Scottish referendum". The colour of the next UK Government will either be a deep, dark blue or a washed-out, faded pink, but whichever one it is, and although a lot of water has flowed under the constitutional bridge since 2014, their joint script is that Scotland is not to be allowed a second chance to choose our own future.

They also tell us that Scotland is a member of a voluntary union, but not how we can volunteer to leave. Nobody stopped David Cameron from holding an EU referendum and unionists don't complain about Scotland being dragged out of Europe despite voting strongly to remain.

The reality is that Scotland has a Government which has one arm permanently tied behind its back, given pocket money by the superior people at Westminster and then criticised by the Scottish branch offices of the Westminster parties for not making the pocket money stretch in every direction and mitigate the wrong and often cruel policies imposed on Scotland by the Government we didn't elect and haven't voted for in nearly 70 years. We don't need any more synthetic sweet talking, we don't need another false vow, but we do need to take control of Scotland's future and put it into Scotland's hands.

Ruth Marr, Stirling.

Read more: What a trick the SNP missed in backing Yousaf over Forbes

Stenhouse has it spot on

I WANT to congratulate Guy Stenhouse on his wonderfully clear exposé of the litany of abject failures of the Scottish Government, CMal et al in the sorry saga of the Arran ferries ("Somebody has to take on the responsibility for ferries fiasco", The Herald, October 3).

He laid bare the eye-watering amounts of taxpayers’ money that have evaporated with little to show for it. Just imagine the good that £400 million could have done in our communities?

What is more, Mr Stenhouse has bravely and clearly pointed the many fingers of blame in the correct directions, and all but named the individuals who over the piece should have fallen on their swords a long time ago. This article should be made compulsory reading for all the citizens of our benighted country. Hopefully some resignations and/or sackings would follow in short order.

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Colin Allison, Blairgowrie.

• WHAT would your Wednesday readers do without Guy Stenhouse to remind us of a new shortcoming of the Scottish Government, or in this case to harp on for the umpteenth time about the same ferry fiasco?

He contrasts the lack of resignations with that highly principled government in Westminster. The fact that he has to go back to 1982 and the resignation of Lord Carrington to find a principled Tory minister says all we need to know about the current Westminster Government.

Sam Craig, Glasgow.

Cheap shot at Kate Forbes

YOU have been printing comments from Kate Forbes about her constituency and constituents, which is what I thought MSPs were supposed to do. However, it has given Alistair Richardson (Letters, October 3) the opportunity to take cheap shots at her because of her faith.

It would have been politic of Ms Forbes to keep her faith a secret just as barrowloads of MSPs and MPs have kept tawdry secrets over the years and who knows, she might well have become First Minister (why she would want I have no idea). There is no way a committed Christian like her would do that and yet she is mocked by some for having the courage to do so. Why are these people threatened by her?

Mr Richardson then proceeds to denigrate her and her constituents by posting that she was using a code "for the local popularity of weird religious cults not, mercifully, found elsewhere". So not only is Ms Forbes a "burning martyr" but Christianity is a weird religious cult not found anywhere else but the Highlands of Scotland?

Ian Ramsden, Paisley.