Nats provide that sinking feeling

JOHN Dobbins in his entertaining nautical allegory (Debate, 25 September) about the fate of Scotland is himself sunk when he collides with the nationalist iceberg, for he ignores two facts.

The first is that a vote for SNP is a protest against the apparently abandoned Tory/Lab/Lib vessels, and not a popular demand for independence. The second is that the SNP officer class is very comfortable with the status quo and so is delaying change as long as possible. Independence will mean its whale has been harpooned and SNP’s raison d’être (and associated cushy numbers) has drowned with it.

With SNP redundant, Scottish politics will revert to business as usual and proceed full steam ahead with three parties: left wing, right wing and wingless.

TGP Flinn, Garvald, East Lothian