CHRIS Deerin writes that “The good ship Boris Johnson is, it seems, finally about to slip beneath the waves” (“Good ship BoJo risks being scuppered by blind ambition”, The Herald, September 19).

Mr Johnson has in the past admitted to “sandpapering” a quote and been told by broadcaster Eddie Mair: “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” Yet, he’s still here.

A Tweet yesterday argued we should stop calling him “BoJo” as it makes him out to be nothing more than a clown. Tom Gordon’s assessment makes the dangers of this very clear: “Behind Mr Johnson’s clown act, you sense a sly, calculating intelligence at work.”.

Chris Deerin puts integrity and ambition forward as necessary qualities for a prime minister. I would agree but, at the same time, and particularly in these days of spin doctors and image management, we need to be aware that these qualities can conflict.

This is particularly so at the margin, where, to take forward ambition a little integrity, or possibly a lot, might need to be sacrificed. Is Mr Johnson content to take forward his ambition regardless of the damage to his integrity?

Despite what has been said of it since June last year, he is standing by the Brexiters’ much ridiculed £350 million a week claim – even if it’s now that the UK would “control” that money, rather than get it back from the EU.

What Chris Deerin seems to have missed, though I am confident Boris Johnson has not, is the developing leadership vacuum on the “hard” Brexit side: the view that the UK can tell the EU to get lost, and that this will not only be alright but also the best thing the UK has done for many years. As Tom Gordon has noted, Mr Johnson has “a sly, calculating intelligence”.

He can see the looming difficulty for colleagues going back to the electorate to say, “well, completely leaving the EU is not such a great idea after all, so we will be paying it buckets of cash to be able to continue to trade with it on beneficial terms, but not for a few years because there will be a transition and, by the way, we will have to accept immigrants from over there”.

For hard-line Brexiters this will play badly. Who better to defend the Brexiter’s ideal than Mr Johnson?

Crucially, to encourage others to think of him as finished or a clown, is to do us all a disservice; we should never forget that he has “a sly, calculating intelligence”, allied to a virtuoso talent for survival.

Alasdair Galloway,

14 Silverton Avenue,

Dumbarton.

DONALD Trump and Boris Johnson.

Erraperr.

Errarerrperr.

Tina Oakes,

Hanover Court,

Stonehaven.

ALL of this talk of a power grab by Westminster/Whitehall is so much pernicious nonsense. Neither any representative of England nor of any UK devolved government has signed a European Union treaty. It was Brussels that established Scotland as a region; we have never been a member state.

The Scottish Lord John Kerr was appointed Secretary General of the Convention on the Future of Europe and, in that capacity, he signed the draft treaty that, with slight modifications, became the European Constitution governing all 28 member states.

He is reputedly responsible for Article 50. But he was not representing Scotland. We joined the EEC as a unitary state in 1972 and in 1975 the signing was endorsed by a nationwide referendum. The UK joined as a nation and can leave only as a nation.

Nor is it reasonable to condemn the national Government or its several departments for being dilatory or incompetent in not having dealt, even in broad terms, with the monstrous convolutions of the Acquis Communautaire, the body of EU legislation that covers almost all aspects of our lives and ran to some 13,000 pages in 1972; at present the estimate is in hundreds of thousands pages.

Independence supporters must face the fact that individual “competences” (Euro-speak for powers) cannot be returned piecemeal to this country’s twelve EU regions.

Brexit really does mean Brexit and the logical way to cope with what will be a lengthy and painful process for the UK is to deal from a position of solidarity until the country is in a position to concentrate on its domestic affairs.

Mary Rolls,

1 Carlesgill Cottages,

Westerkirk, Langholm.

ON the third anniversary of the independence referendum, not to mention the infamous “vow” and the assurance that our place in Europe would be safeguarded if we voted No, David Mundell has declared that not all powers will be devolved to Holyrood post Brexit (The Herald, September 18). The Scottish Secretary must indeed have feared the fallout, as he delayed making his power-grab speech until he’d arrived in Paraguay.

Announcements on Scotland’s future should be made in Scotland, even although Scotland’s future is not yet in Scotland’s hands.

Ruth Marr,

99 Grampian Road,

Stirling.

I WAS perplexed as to why David Mundell, Secretary of State for Scotland, would be sent on a trade mission to Paraguay.

I was less perplexed when he announced that the UK Government would keep some of Scotland’s powers after Brexit, which he had vehemently denied until now.

The fact that he was able to make this statement from the other side of the world was a bonus, throwing a stone from a safe distance. It will be interesting to see the trade gains for Scotland of soy beans, wheat and beef.

Will the cost of this jaunt be charged against the Scotland Office, whose budget has soared?

Jim Lynch,

42 Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh.

I LIKE the idea of a second referendum as proposed by the Liberal Democrats (“Sir Vince urges Sturgeon to back campaign for second Brexit poll”, The Herald, September 19).

When will we be able to revisit the option of independence for Scotland?

What’s that I hear Willie Rennie say: “You had your chance in 2014. The issue is settled. No need for a second referendum”

There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the LibDem position on second-chance referendums.

Willie Douglas,

252 Nether Auldhouse Road,

Glasgow.