ON Sunday morning at about 8.30am, while frying a tattie scone, some ham and a couple of eggs, and changing TV channels between the BBC News and Sky News, I stumbled on to the Parliament Channel.
It was showing a recording of a recent Westminster Hall debate. SNP MP Peter Grant was making an impassioned and rather interesting speech on the subject of children’s reading and library provision. In the very large, wood-panelled room there were possibly five assorted MPs, three observers and a couple of parliamentary staff. There was no vote at the end of the debate –if you can call it that – and any potential collective wisdom unearthed will be lost forever.
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Recently SNP deputy leader Keith Brown MSP very very briefly suggested that the SNP MPs' continued full-time presence at Westminster could perhaps, maybe, possibly, at some time in the indeterminate future, be reduced in some small way.
In response there have been various very loud outpourings from SNP sources, including leader Humza Yousaf, that this is a really bad idea and that we need the SNP’s “strong voices” shouting loudly for Scotland including, and especially the so-called privilege of asking a few questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time. The fact of the matter is that strong voices shouting loudly are only required in order to be heard over the combined background noise of around 600 Unionist MPs.
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While the SNP cats are away at Westminster, most days the Labour mice are free to campaign back here in Scotland. The mice have indeed been busy. They appear to have already eaten away a substantial part of the SNP’s vote. They reduced it to less than 25% in a recent by-election in Glasgow.
It does not matter how loudly the SNP shout at Westminster. The rest of the 600-odd MPs might even be hearing them – but they are most certainly not listening to them.
Brian Lawson
Paisley
THE world media watches Westminster. That is why the people of Scotland’s position on the Gaza crisis, expressed through the action of the SNP’s MPs in Westminster, has brought Scotland out of the shadow cast by English domination of the Union.
If they walk out of Westminster, Scotland will retreat into the shadows. There will be no constitutional crisis for the world media to report, the pro-Union UK-based arm of the international media will not rock the Westminster boat.
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Westminster has shrugged off infighting in the Tory party that has imposed Brexit and a number of “unelected” prime ministers, with more changes of Cabinet-rank ministers than ever before.
If the 43 SNP MPs, now forming the third-largest party in Westminster, want to remain in the public eye they must stay in Westminster.
They and their predecessors have been the thorn in the side of the Westminster establishment for decades. If they walk out, the Unionists will have achieved their goal.
As far as pursuing Scottish independence is concerned, it is now clear that all routes available to the Scottish Government within the UK, through parliament and the courts, have been exhausted and it is now justified in seeking internationally recognised alternatives.
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These will take time, in which the Scottish Government must work to increase support for independence to a level that leaves no doubt in the minds of other governments that the sovereign people of Scotland really do want to regain their independence and take responsibility for their own affairs, as do all the other independent countries around the world.
Our SNP MPs must remain in Westminster challenging the new Labour government while taking every opportunity to show the international media that Scotland has distinctive policies based on improving the lives of people rather than policing the world.
Unlike Ian Bruce (Letters, Mar 12) I do not believe that the world media would follow the SNP’s MPs back to Scotland or that their readers and viewers would be greatly interested in reports on dialogues between groups on the various routes to independence.
John Jamieson
South Queensferry
I AM screaming silently now. The radio is not listening, I’m not on social media and I don’t have a TV.
Call an election Sunak, you fool. I’ll forgive you your uselessness and fawning to racists, bigots and mad people and all the incompetence and money-wasting and even not scrapping Johnson’s lunatic Rwanda scheme.
I will even let go the billions wasted by you and your party during Covid on useless PPE contracts that enriched your mates. Buy Michelle Mone another yacht. I do not care, only call an election. Call an election.
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In my student days I dreamed of a utopian three-day week, full employment and an end to sexism and racism. Now I just dream about an end to collective national madness and hopelessness.
Put us out of our misery. No-one knows what that will, bring we all just know it cannot be this hell.
Call an election. Call an election.
In case I have not made myself clear... CALL AN ELECTION.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
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