It's heartening that the Guardian sees that the key question in the referendum debate is that “the UK's validity … must ultimately rest on whether [it] can supply social justice more or less reliably than independence can” (Editorial, 13 September). But your answer to that question is flawed. First, you claim that the political tasks of reducing inequality and protecting the worse off are “surely better done when risks and resources can be pooled across a larger population than a smaller one”. New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland and numerous other small countries show that, despite the apparent logic of your statement, it does not have to be that way.

More fundamentally, if we must rely on the union to deliver social justice, who is going to deliver it? The only possible answer to that question in the current UK political set-up is the Labour party – the party that has abandoned political activism, cosied up to the wealthy, pledged to keep the lowest corporation tax in the G7, supported renewal of the UK’s absurd and obscene weapons of mass destruction, and which is committed to maintaining Tory public spending cuts if elected next year.

But even with that manifesto, Labour’s chances of forming the next UK government are not looking good. So your position requires both a radical shift in Labour’s fortunes and a reversal of many of their current policies.

“Ah,” you will say, “but the SNP is no better.” That is unarguable. But your editorial position falls into the trap of assuming that a yes vote is a vote for the SNP and its policies. The many thousands of lifelong Labour supporters voting yes on the 18th will emphatically reject that interpretation. Those Labour supporters are yearning for their party to actively strategise, campaign and organise for just the kind of policies you think are vital for the future of the people of Scotland – and the UK. But their UK leaders’ agenda precludes that.

Far from being a vote for the SNP, a yes vote on Thursday could pave the way in the Scottish elections in 2016 for a complete realignment of Scottish politics, with many SNP members and supporters reverting to “normal” politics and joining other parties, the Labour party in Scotland rediscovering its roots and its core values, and a Labour-Green coalition posing a massive challenge to the SNP’s current dominance.

This would surely be a good outcome for England, Wales and Northern Ireland too. Both your editorial and John Harris’s piece (It's not just Scotland where politics as usual is finished, 11 September) recognise that the referendum debate has massively boosted the level of political engagement across Scotland. Far from abandoning like-minded people in the rest of the UK, a progressive independent Scotland could be an inspiration for similar grassroots-based revitalisation of politics south of the border.

Malcolm Spaven

Gladhouse, Midlothian

• As a geordie resident in Scotland I am more sensitive than most to notions of separatism. Yet having now lived through the most stimulating period of political debate I have ever experienced, I must take exception to your editorial stance on the Scottish referendum. When the campaign started I feared a descent into “blood and soil” nationalism of the worst sort, but this has simply not happened.

What I have come to understand is that it is not Scotland that has chosen to separate itself from the UK: rather it is the London-centric policies of successive UK governments – Tory and New Labour – which have departed from the postwar social democratic consensus, to which Scots (and geordies, and scousers) remain steadfastly loyal. It is precisely this departure that saw Labour’s vote in Holyrood elections shrivel in favour of the SNP. Whether or not their claims are sincere, they at least understand Scots well enough to grasp this key insight.

A yes vote would simply formalise a parting of the ways that was started under Thatcher and perpetuated under Blair. As for your claim that “Nationalism is not the answer to social injustice”: that is true of Hitlerite nationalism, but not of Gandhian, and it is the latter which the present debate in Scotland most resembles.

Paul Younger

Glasgow

• So it’s goodbye to the Guardian. Seems like you’ll support autonomy and self-determination for everyone except the Scots. I liked you because you offered many quality columnists, an intelligent and well-intentioned left-of-centre view of the world, and excellent book reviews. But you were also timid, anxious, shockingly London-centric, unchallenging of the status quo and ultimately too frightened of your vested interests and advertisers to declare your support for a small, vibrant, electorally engaged and questioning country that only wants to try and conduct its affairs in a way that is qualitatively different from those of Westminster. I’ve been with you since 1983 when you were handed round the fire at Greenham, and often wished that there was a Scottish equivalent. Well, maybe now there will be. Cheerio.

Alison Napier

Perth

• For some time, I have considered the Guardian to be the last bastion of integrity and credibility in an ever more untruthful, immoral and hate-filled UK media. It is therefore with some sadness that I condemn you for completely failing to understand and recognise why many of us in Scotland will be voting yes in Thursday’s referendum. Above all, a yes vote for me is an opportunity for politics throughout the UK to be completely reassessed, where we, the people, can be shown to be strong enough to shake up a system in an informed, peaceful, and democratic way. We have the choice to accept our lot, and condone how Westminster has controlled these islands until now, or we can let it be known that inequality, corruption and social injustice have no place in our society, and that we do not fear the consequences of making this known to our rulers through this ballot.

Ruari Gordon

Corriegills, Isle of Arran