WHEN I last had coffee with Jim Sillars, a thick book on the internals of the Pakistan Army graced his armchair. That was one book at the top of one reading pile and there were many, many piles. When he reaches a conclusion it’s a considered position, as demonstrated in his response (Letters, October 19) to Allan McKinney’s rather lame critique (Letters, October 18).

Two years ago, our 80-year-old Mr Sillars was derided for warning about the threat posed to jobs by artificial intelligence, not now. This year he faces appalling online abuse for questioning the SNP Government's policies on Europe, fracking and Named Persons. A confident SNP would take note of his comments and adapt, instead, a party riven with contradictions has reacted with hurt and venom.

Within the current SNP leadership, there’s virtually no collective memory of life before the European Union and no desire to imagine anything different. Most of the Scottish cabinet joined the SNP in the 1980s when the poll tax fired their sense of injustice and Mr Sillars’s “Independence in Europe” was the socialist shield against the separatist barb from Labour. The European Scot had its genesis in that period: Scots, like Alyn Smith MEP, who cheer every European intransigence on a Brexit deal over the Scottish national interest.

Brexit changes more than the political orientation of the UK within Europe, it challenges the very being of a modern Scottish nationalist. The European Union comfort blanket is being tugged away from the angry European Scots, and the cold floor of realpolitik awaits. Mr Sillars’s “paradigm shift’ has happened and we will soon be standing on a political landscape looking more 1975 than 2017.

Nicola Sturgeon has failed to update her political satnav accordingly; that’s why there's no credible roadmap to independence for the Nationalists. Mr Sillars created the SNP’s Independence in Europe policy, and it’s not “treacherous” to say it’s now redundant. Instead of the lazy move on him, the SNP should move on to the hard work of policy development. I have a friend who could lend the necessary background reading material.

Calum Miller,

24 Polwarth Terrance, Prestonpans, East Lothian.

WHILST Jim Sillars’s research into both the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (Efta) is commendable, it really is a smokescreen as, in my letter, I did not mentioned these organisations and the possibility of any movement of Scotland’s position to such organisations is a totally different debate.

However, I recognise it was the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon that made him re-appraise his position when, as he says, "it became glaringly obvious that member states do not share sovereignty but transfer it to central EU institutions".

Indeed, that was the central part of my initial letter in which I pointed out that the idea of "Independence in Europe" in the 1990s was a non-starter from day one and I included extracts from three speeches, between 1950 and 1957, which clearly underlined the drive for a federated Europe.

The sovereignty issue was never really explained to the British public and indeed Viscount Kilmuir, then the Cabinet’s leading lawyer, advised Harold MacMillan and Edward Heath that the loss of sovereignty would be considerable, were the GB to join .

Mr Gaitskell, in his address to the 1962 Labour Party conference, recognised the loss of sovereignty and then further developed this issue by saying "that powers are taken from national governments and handed over to federal parliaments ... we are no more than a state, as it were, in the United States of Europe...".

In other words, indeed the point I made initially, Independence in Europe in the 1990s, despite protestations, was never a reality.

Alan McKinney,

10 Beauchamp Road, Edinburgh.

I AM in wholehearted agreement with your correspondents such as Ruth Marr (Letters, October 19) regarding a second referendum once the terms of Brexit are known.

Likewise, I am sure that she will be in agreement with me that should there be a further Scottish independence referendum (after a generation has passed), that too should be subject to a second referendum once its disastrous

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road, Jordanhill, Glasgow.

RUTH Marr states that Iain AD Mann's "call to Theresa May to hold a second EU referendum is a non-starter". The wraith of the SNP is present in her letter. The SNP fears the precedent of re-running a referendum lest there is a narrow Yes in a future independence referendum.

Incidentally ship-building and steel-making at Hunterston were not sabotaged by Margaret Thatcher but by the Scottish Left.

William Durward,

20 South Erskine Park, Bearsden.

SO Nicola Sturgeon has once more been out-manoeuvred by Downing Street. Theresa May has made clear again that all EU citizens will be able to remain in the UK after we leave the EU. She has added the process will be hassle-free and the cost "as low as possible".

Mrs May has been consistent in stressing that EU citizens could stay. Yet ever since last June, Ms Sturgeon has attempted to use EU citizens living in the Scotland as pawns in her divisive "them and us" games with Westminster, unnecessarily stoking up fears and anxieties. Why?

It's thought EU citizens in Scotland voted heavily against Ms Sturgeon's ambition to partition the UK in 2014. With support for separatism ever declining, it seems the Nationalist leader is determined to attempt to build support for her independence dreams wherever she can.

The rights of EU citizens are beyond Ms Sturgeon's remit. It will be welcome news for all EU citizens that Downing Street has now further clarified how welcome they are in the UK.

Martin Redfern,

Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh.

DAVID Davis has said that if we don't get a Brexit deal we will just grow our own food so we don't have to import it. We couldn't grow enough food during the Second World War, so how could we grow enough food now when we have a bigger population?

And where exactly would we grow this food? Would that be on the fields that are being covered in concrete by developers building more and more houses and turning every green area into, as Billy Connolly described it, "a desert wi' windaes"?

The Home Secretary says we can't have a "no deal Brexit". David Davis says we can. No wonder Britain is the laughing stock of the world.

Margaret Forbes,

26 Corlic Way, Kilmacolm.