Confusion is worry

I was delighted to read the signatories to the open letter concerning the retention of the Union, for some weeks ago I had asked that role models might make themselves known in the debate.

However, my concern now is the comment from Nicola 
Sturgeon (your report, 8 August). You quote her saying: “We’re six weeks from the biggest moment in the party’s history”.

Now surely we are six weeks away from the biggest moment in the country’s history.

The confusion between state and party is something I have been suspecting for some time, and it fills me with great 
concern. State and party have been, and are, indivisible in most of the states that we in the West consider to be totally undemocratic, repressive and, indeed, 
totalitarian.

Are we to expect that the SNP and the Scottish state are to be seen to be effectively the same thing – as she suggests?

Back, it would seem, to the “True Scots vote Aye” argument, rather than a decision made on the facts, free, one might hope, from political dogma and 
infighting from all sides. I am truly worried.

David Gerrard

Spylaw Park

Edinburgh