Readers' Letters: So is it now OK for any country to attack another?

The answer is no, yet Sir Keir Starmer has taken Ms Patel's advice and now allowed the US to “take defensive action” from RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia.

How is it defensive when America and Israel launched an unprovoked and sudden attack without declaration of war? How is it defensive to bomb a primary school and kill 165 girls?

This is Netanyahu's war. He has tried for years to bring the United States to war with Iran and has now succeeded. President Trump is Netanyahu's useful idiot. Trump has said plainly that he wants regime change in Iran. This is fascism in action. If a regime won't comply with US demands it will be bombed into submission just as Israel laid waste to Gaza – and then only because of US help and hardware.

If this is the new international order, where will it end? If the US can try to effect regime change in Iran what's to stop China doing the same to Taiwan, or Russia assassinating the entire Ukrainian government with its unstoppable hypersonic Oreshnik missiles?

William Loneskie, Oxton, Lauder, Scottish Borders

Common sense

On one side we have Farage and Badenoch. On the other side Starmer, Swinney, Ed Davey and Zack Polanski and the Scottish Greens too. The battle is really concerning “international law”.

Let us use some common sense here. The politicians on the left keep quoting theoretical breaches of this ethereal creation, international law, as a reason to basically do nothing about Iran’s very dangerous “foreign policies”. This threatens us all but those on the Left just cannot bring themselves to admit that waving legal documents in front of someone with a machine gun or worse, a missile, is not going to be very effective. We need grown up sensible politicians in this country. All of them are on the Right, in both senses of the word.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Policy to unite

There's a new political phenomenon sweeping Scotland. Anas Sarwar has told Scottish voters to “hold your nose” and vote Labour to remove the SNP from power.

Apparently, the Hold Your Nose Party will target “Old” Labour supporters who shunned the Blairites of New Labour to support the SNP. It may be an absurd policy, but it is at least a policy other than Mr Sarwar's only other policy of just attacking the SNP.

At present, a Labour Party that gave us the welfare state and the NHS is effectively two parties under the discredited banner of Blairism. It badly needs a policy old and new Labour supporters can unite over. I would suggest Mr Sarwar forgets the gimmicks and starts to campaign for a fairer tax system, beginning by replacing the unfair council tax with an income-based alternative on a sliding scale, so those who can well afford to pay much more should, and those who are struggling could pay a little less. Replacing the unfair council tax is long overdue and is a policy that a badly disunited Labour Party neglects at its peril.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh, East Lothian

Trump tribute act

One thing that screamed out loud and clear from the Gorton and Denton by-election, is that Reform UK are bad losers. The ink had barely dried on the result before their candidate Matt Goodwin complained about “family” votes and Nigel Farage moaned about the Greens “stealing” the election.

If this all sounds so familiar, then that is exactly what it is, a Trump-sized groan. He still goes on about the 2020 election being stolen by Joe Biden. It would be laughable were it not so serious.

Reform UK, despite a lacklustre and negative campaign, expected to win the by-election. Fingers crossed, this may well be a turning point in their fortunes. They have, hopefully, peaked, and the electorate is beginning to see through Farage as a Poundland Trump – buy one, get one free.

Without cheating, the Greens have shown them the way.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Accentuate positive

Excellent article by Joyce McMillan on Lord of the Flies (Perspective, 2 February). A great book, written for very sound reasons, that fully deserves its place in the canon of English literature.

But why revive it now, of all times? We can really do without any further negative, divisive or hopeless views of humanity. We hear more than enough of that from current so-called leaders and politicians every time we switch on the news.

These days, more than ever, we need believe in what we can achieve when we act together, for good.

Alistair Allan, St Andrews, Fife

Respect young

What a perverse assessment of the views of young people from Jill Stephenson, who rather arrogantly prioritises narrow self-centrism over broad egalitarianism (Letters, 2 March).

Instead of apparently being obliviously indoctrinated into believing that the rapacious greed that drove British colonialism was for the good of conquered peoples, many of whom were slaughtered or compelled to serve an expansionist Empire, the young today generally have a more informed and objective view of the world we inhabit.

It takes a sadly limited perspective to suggest that showing concern through the expression “Black Lives Matter” has been corrupted to the extent that it is predominantly serving extremists who think that “white people should permanently wear sackcloth and ashes”. That same lack of wider understanding diverts attention away from rampant misogyny and the continuing abuse and rapes of many thousands of women across the UK by misrepresenting the general impact of gender recognition reform on women resulting from the protection of a small minority, more likely to be abused than abuse others and representing a tiny fraction of the threat from men.

Rather than the young airbrushing out the achievements of the Enlightenment, most young people I speak with take a balanced view of society’s development and see gains have sometimes come at huge costs for those outside of Britain's wealthy elite.

It is not the young who seem to seek every excuse to maintain a UK constitutional status quo that is failing the people of these islands democratically, economically, socially and morally. It is not the young who refuse to acknowledge that public services are struggling across the UK (even in Wales where Labour have been in power longer than the SNP in Scotland, and in England where the Tories had absolute power for more than a decade).

It is not the young who have given up on building a world where everyone is treated fairly and equally and where we manage the earth’s resources rather than relentlessly exploit them at the expense of our climate and the ambitions of future generations.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Trust young

As I grow older I turn increasingly to my sons to stem the tide of incipient senescence and any excess of the “what it was like in my day” phrase that can dominate the utterances of sad old blokes. They impart a great deal of hope for a better world, beginning with a better Scotland with alternative values from the Thatcher/Reaganism which permeated my formative and professional life, and my children’s early cultural conditioning in the “me first” meritocracy that wiped out the post-war consensus that blessed my infancy.

I was dismayed to read Jill Stephenson's characterisation of our challenged youth as bon viveurs involved in a whirlwind of “nightclubs, electronic devices and high-end restaurants”. It is very possible there is a grain of truth regarding the youth Ms Stephenson knows, but even these good folk born with a silver spoon from parents whose life has been dominated by "getting ahead” are beginning to reject their good fortune as a poisoned chalice, as they fall victim to existential angst.

Add to these the young people in our inner city areas of transgenerational deprivation and alienation and we have what some might regard as “doomed youth”.

A growing and unstoppable movement of young Scots is commiting a "double whammy" to the "good old days".

They want independence and a fair society and they will get it sooner rather than later, of that I am joyfully sure!

Andrew Docherty, Selkirk, Scottish Borders

Tricky coalitions

There is a growing swell of opinion towards coalition politics. In theory, such a move should lead to stable government, in practice the first thing you need to do is have the interested parties agree on what they intend to do, something that can be time consuming. When it comes to elections, you never have a new government, merely the old one re-elected.

The present situation is not perfect, but it at least gives the electorate the chance to voice their opinion on the actions of the party in government.

Charles Lowson, Fareham, Hants

Chewing it over

I must thank Gerald Edwards and Henryk Belda for informing me of the Greens’ shocking social policies (Letters, 28 February). Higher taxes for the rich, banning religious education in schools, the right to assisted dying and supporting drug use, apparently.

They’ve certainly made me think and I now know how my votes will be cast in the coming Holyrood elections. As social policies go, what’s not to like?

D Mitchell, Doune, Perthshire

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