With the SNP expected to win half of Scotland’s seats in the recent EU election, they will undoubtedly use this as more evidence to support their spurious and democratically refuted claim that Scotland yearns to be independent.

However, we have reached the point where it no longer matters. If I choose not to vote it will be used to support independence as it demonstrates my apathy with the current system – the one based in London of course; it’s never a statement on the SNP-led Holyrood. If there’s a low turnout, people are fed up with Westminster and only in an independent Scotland can democracy be revitalised. If I vote for another party, even a unionist one, I really want independence, I just didn’t know it.

No matter the outcome, the SNP will spin the result into a demand for independence with clockwork predictability.

The First Minister has made it quite clear that independence transcends oil, the economy and Brexit. It has also transcended democracy itself and every vote I have cast since 2014 no matter who it was for.

David Bone

South Ayrshire

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Blood pressure fears

This blasted Tory leadership contest is making my wife and I shout at the TV too much and it’s not good for our elderly blood vessels. Please can we have a reporting embargo until the Tory party has finished rearranging its useless deckchairs? I’m sure the 99.7 per cent of the UK electorate who aren’t members, us included, would be grateful.

We don’t mind hearing about other stuff in the meantime, especially if Westminster bubblists decide to have a general election and/or pause Brexit for a cool re-appraisal. That would be something to shout about.

Geoffrey Downs

Bradford

The dreaded alternative

Can anyone explain why, since Thursday, these two lines by Hilaire Belloc are going round and round in my head?

“And always keep a-hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse.”

Judy Marris

Bathford

Stand by your man

I will offer a little advice for those Conservative MPs who are openly opposing Boris Johnson for the party leadership, because they believe his support of a no-deal outcome will damage our country.

If instead a Remainer member is selected and a subsequent cross-party customs union deal is agreed, the Tories will be annihilated at the next general election, out of office, perhaps for a generation.

Moreover, the only alternative government possible in our flawed, two-party, first-past-the-post electoral system, is the self-proclaimed Marxist Labour leadership of Corbyn and McDonnell.

Now that really would take damaging our country to a new level!

Jim Sokol

Minehead

Trading with the big dogs

Many banking and retail companies tried to expand into the US market, including M&S, and all had to close down their operations. If this is anything to go by, then the UK/US trade agreement is likely to go one way: the US way.

America, like every empire, uses the same old principle of “divide and rule” and supporting British Brexit makes it easier to deal with smaller entities of Britain and the EU than with one big unit.

On this basis one could summarise Brexit as the UK choosing not to be a country with clout, leading and shaping Europe, but a poodle.

W Rachfal​

London

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No excuses

Spot on Jonathan Liew (Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Baku and why sport and politics cannot be separated). This nonsense of sport being “above” politics and, most usually, meaning turning a blind eye to horrendous regimes and human rights abuses is longstanding.

I well remember John Barnes being put before the press before an England friendly in Chile. He was pointed to the shortcomings and doings of Pinochet in that country and could only counter with the platitudes Jonathan is questioning.

I don’t blame John Barnes for this – it could have been any of them. Of course, England went on to play in a stadium where the pitch had been fertilised by the blood of probably thousands of opponents to Pinochet, including the teacher and songwriter Victor Jara. I won’t get started on South Africa (a popular place for footballers to ply their trade in the 1960s) and a whole host of other examples.