A Poem On The Occasion Of The SNP Conference 2016.

Game Over.

The light of independence grows ever dimmer
As the oil and gas fields run down exhausted
The GERS figures grow annually grimmer
Leaving just remains of your pledges uncosted

Project Fear is proven to be Project Reality,
The White Paper its anagram Fraudulent Costs,
We saw not Scotland’s Future but SNP venality
You bet the family croft and coo on it – and lost

But mind the time you were the queen of the land
Swanning in a helicopter through Scotland’s skies
With selfies, and numpties eating out of your hand
While you pulled the tartan wool over their eyes

That was then – this is now: Nicola, you’re past your best
Game over, get on with the day job, and just back to your desk.

Herald letter: Coalition idea is a non-starter (no £wall)

JOHN Milne (Letters, October 8) suggests a pact between Labour and the SNP. This would face two enormous hurdles.

The first would be that the SNP would need to suspend the clause in its constitution which sets out its aim of achieving independence from the UK. Labour could not support that aim: it would be a betrayal of everything we stand for as set out in our own constitution: “By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone.”

The second hurdle was best described by Harold Wilson, when he was asked about coalition with his opponents: “Only when they stop telling lies about us and we stop telling the truth about them.”

Peter A Russell

Herald letter (no £wall) – The people of Scotland backed Westminster control of foreign affairs

THE SNP has no cause to complain about the status of Holyrood in the forthcoming discussions with the EU about the terms of the Brexit Bill (“SNP furious as Holyrood told it will have no vote over Brexit”, The Herald, October 4).

It has always been clear that as Holyrood is a subsidiary devolved UK administration, foreign affairs remain an issue reserved to Westminster, as Scotland’s UK government. Furthermore, when the SNP asked the Smith Commission to recommend devolution of EU negotiations to Holyrood, this was rejected and the SNP itself agreed when Smith’s final report did not do so.

Finally and crucially, in 2014 one of the main proposals of the SNP’s independence White Paper was that Scotland should have sole control over our foreign affairs. Surely no-one needs to be reminded that people of Scotland rejected that proposition. There was no exemption for EU membership on the ballot paper, and accordingly in the EU referendum the same question about membership was shared by all of our fellow British citizens throughout the UK.

Peter A Russell,