Alan Cochrane is wrong to see the SNP and independence as one and the same thing
The UK decline will continue, and the need for Scotland to escape will become more widely realised.
The Editor
Letters page
Daily Telegraph
London
Sir,
Alan Cochrane asks how can so many people reject the SNP while the same opinion poll shows 47 per cent remain in favour of Scottish independence, and comes up with the answer that it is nothing more than a ‘touch of bravado.’ He is wrong.
Independence remains strong despite what is happening at the hands of the mediocrities in the SNP/Green government, because many of us see the need to escape from the serious decline in the post-imperial UK, in which its key institutions are in a state of manifest failure – as has been recorded in the pages of the Telegraph’s columnists and leader columns. The 2014 picture of the UK as the strong, powerful umbrella under which Scotland has to seek shelter, has been exposed as fraudulent.
Alan Cochrane makes the common mistake of seeing the SNP and independence as one and the same thing. Wrong again. The Sturgeon/Yousaf SNP is no longer seen as the only instrument capable of delivering the objective, which remains a live one. Whether it can recover that position is an open question, but if it fails, and it will with the present leadership, it will be replaced.
What cannot be replaced in the UK is the high quality of political leadership that used to be the norm. Sunak and Starmer: a watered- down British equivalent of Biden and Trump. So, the UK decline will continue, and the need for Scotland to escape will become more widely realised.
Yours etc.
Jim Sillars
Former SNP Deputy-leader