Letters: May can save herself by holding another EU vote

All the European Union has to do is play a straight bat to whatever David Davis suggests, and time will eventual run out. Britain will be on its own, desperately trying to rebuild its trading relationships with such as the United States, India, China, which it already enjoys as an EU member and is walking away from. How crazy is that?

Theresa May has one last chance to rescue her premiership and secure her place in history (along with Margaret Thatcher) as Britain’s saviour. She must have the courage and the political strength to abandon her reckless pursuit of a hard Brexit just to satisfy a section of her own party.

Instead she must put the interests of the nation first and offer the British people a second decisive referendum when the final deal (or no deal) is known. I am confident that the British people will this time decide time to remain in the European Union and not be fooled a second time by such as Boris and his deceitful £350 million a week promises.

Of course this will bring the Prime Minister into conflict with some members of her current Cabinet and many back-bench Tory MPs, who for some inexplicable reason seem determined to ruin the nation they were elected to serve. But if she has the backbone to stand up to them, this is her one chance to go down in history as the woman who saved Britain from itself. I hope and pray that she has both the courage and the good sense to do so.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court,

Glasgow.

IN the run-up to the Scottish referendum practically every Westminster government department published a report giving their analysis of the effect that independence for Scotland would have on our future economic prospects. Each one painted a very gloomy prospect, not helped by the fact that they were mainly based on the premise that we could not, post-independence, expect any help or co-operation from rUK; indeed the opposite.

There was no hint that the future settlement between an independent Scotland and the rUK would be decided by a negotiation - a negotiation where Scotland actually had some powerful cards to play. Indeed the premise of that negotiation should have been that Scotland would have been on an equal financial footing as the rUK at that time. There were a whole range of arrangements and accommodations that could have been put in place to achieve that end.

There was also, sadly, no appreciation that Scotland would have just voted in an exemplary referendum following decades of a totally democratic approach to independence by the SNP.

Where there should have been a recognition of our right to self-determination, and even an expression of goodwill after all these years of Union, what we got was a deliberate stirring up of animosity against Scotland in the English press, and even the Scottish editions of these papers.

That is in the past, but should we not now expect that each UK government department now carries out an analysis and prepares a report giving their view on the effect that Brexit – any Brexit – will have on the future of the UK outside the EU as they see it?

And since Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain, following a referendum where Scotland was told that the only way we could stay in the EU was to vote No, the report should have a separate section on the specific effect on Scotland./

Nick Dekker,

1 Nairn Way,

Cumbernauld.

JIM Sillars, whilst challenging the First Minister’s “intellectual capability” (“Sillars urges Sturgeon to quit of more ‘intellectual’ leader found”, The Herald October 16), could perhaps advise on his own rigorous intellectual research that underpinned his 1990s slogan “Independence in Europe”.

In fact this slogan was simply an expedient to address the claim of the other political parties that an independent Scotland would be cast adrift from the world, but another member of the SNP national executive committee, Jim Fairlie, pointed out at the time this was no more than a slogan, unsupported by any serious intellectual research or meaningful fact.

By the 1990s Jim Sillars would have been aware that:

Robert Schuman (French Foreign Minister), at a conference on May 5, 1950, made it clear that the European Coal and Steel Community (morphing into the EEC and eventually into the EU) said “pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe ...”’

The Dutch Foreign Minister, J W Beyen, produced a document that sought to commit the original six ECSC members to establish a “united Europe by the development of common institutions, the gradual fusion of common institutions, the creation of a common market and the gradual harmonisation of .... social policies”.

Pierre Uri, one of the drafters of the Rome Treaty (1957) which created the European Economic Community, was on record as having said “this in the long run implied and was meant to imply fiscal, social, monetary and, ultimately, political union.

It is possible to go on but, from its origin, the driving force of this great European adventure has been to create a federal Europe and the various treaties along the route simply consolidated each particular step but clearly, at some point, this development reached the stage where Mr Sillars became aware of its objective and he ultimately campaigned, during the recent referendum, against continued EU membership.

So a number of questions arise – exactly when did he see the “light” and change his views of Europe? Where now is his vision of an Independent Scotland? What are his answers to the current Brexit negotiations?

Alan McKinney,

10 Beauchamp Road,

Edinburgh.

IF there has been a better review of the downside of Brexit and the irresponsibility of the Conservative party than that of Bill Mitchell (Letters, October 17), living in the real world, then I missed it.

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road,

Kilbirnie.