Humza Yousaf was set up for failure from the start

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Yousaf was forced to face reality, reset climate targets – and the rest is history (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

There are multiple reasons why Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf had to resign, particularly a startling lack of political know-how. But the key single reason dates back to Nicola Sturgeon, supported by the otherworldly Greens, setting ludicrously unrealistic climate change targets.

Deciding to aim for a 75 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2045 was never realistic. It was a choice made solely so the SNP could be seen to be bolder, more challenging, and more virtue signalling than the targets set by Westminster.

Under the nationalists, those targets haven’t been met in eight out of the last 12 years. Sturgeon, it seems, for all her determination to appear righteous and ethical, was only setting up her successors for failure. So Yousaf was forced to face reality, reset climate targets – and the rest is history.

Sturgeon’s vanity and the SNP’s obsession with playing puerile political games lie at the heart of Yousaf’s downfall.

Martin Redfern

Melrose Roxburghshire

Uncaring and unfit

If anything underlines how ideologically right-wing the Conservative Party has become, it is their blatant attacks on the disabled, depressed, anxious and most vulnerable in society. Has this party no heart?

David Cameron himself introduced the personal independence payment (PIP) purely to look after the very disadvantaged people in society who they are now singling out.

Some people in receipt of this benefit don’t just need facilities to help them by in life, they also need carers too. Some of these people are stuck in their homes because they lack mobility. Some of these people can’t even breathe without mechanisms because of asthma, COPD or even long Covid.

Yet these are the same very people the Tories are now targeting.

It proves that the Conservative Party is nasty, wreckless and unfit for public office.

Geoffrey Brooking

Havant

Starmer is keeping his powder dry

Gavin Taylor in his recent letter to The Independent, hits the nail on the head about Labour’s attitude to the EU.

Polls suggest that the majority now see Brexit as a huge mistake but Keir Starmer seems unable to utter a positive word about Europe.

Perhaps he is keeping his powder dry, but he could easily lose votes by keeping voters wondering.

It would help if politicians actually told us what they think. I’m waiting for someone to say they’d like a rapprochement with the EU or even float a possible rejoining plan.

Dr Anthony Ingleton

Sheffield

A tactical dilemma

Barney Davis’s recent piece in The Independent reveals that many voters in London struggle to even name Susan Hall as the Tory challenger to Sadiq Khan for mayor of London. Even so, the latest opinion poll shows she has managed to halve his lead since campaigning began several months ago.

Is Hall’s low-key campaign a deliberate ploy to convince voters that there is no need to vote tactically for Khan – allowing her to win by default?

This places voters who are thinking of voting tactically for Khan in a dilemma. Voting to ensure the Tory does not get in risks giving the impression of lower support for alternative parties to Labour and the Tories on the eve of a general election.

The votes cast for Labour are also likely to be portrayed by its leadership as an endorsement of their stance on issues such as proportional representation, watered-down climate policies and its failure to improve relations with the EU – by rejecting the commission’s recently proposed youth mobility scheme.

Starmer looks set to support the undemocratic first-past-the-post system for electing MPs to Westminster. That doesn’t necessarily stop individual Labour candidates from pledging support in the general election for proportional representation, a tougher approach to climate change and closer ties with the EU.

I shall be looking closely at what my Labour candidate says on these issues before deciding how to vote. Others will no doubt do the same in constituencies where Labour is the main challenger to the Tory.

Roger Hinds

Surrey

Our gravest fears have been realised

Gaza has become a graveyard and a living hell for women, infants and children. The number of those who have perished in this tragic and senseless war is appalling. The deaths are beyond comprehension and are significantly rising by the day.

The threats to children’s lives go beyond bombs and include dehydration, starvation, infectious diseases, lack of access to life-saving vaccinations, and malnutrition.

Above all, there are the physical and psychosocial traumas inflicted during and after the belligerent parties lay down their guns. Until that happens, the human consequences will last for generations to come.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London