Val McDermid (How could I back anyone but the SNP and the bolshie, buoyant Scotland it stands for?, 26 June) perpetuates the myth that the Scottish National party, Scotland and small European countries are all “progressive”. Free prescriptions are a middle-class subsidy. The poor already received these and the money lost on them is to the cost of other NHS services. The cost of university fees is met by taxpayers, many not well-off, and fees from foreign students. This results in many Scottish students struggling to find places. The SNP balks at taxing the excess profits of energy corporations and retains the tax breaks for private schools. Scotland is not particularly progressive, but conservative with a small “c”. The SNP currently has a deputy leader whose social views seem to me to be to the right of most of the Conservative party. As for the small progressive nations in the EU, McDermid is obviously oblivious to the growth of the far right in these countries and the opposition to immigration in Ireland. As is so often the case with nationalists, they share the same deluded exceptionalism of their counterparts worldwide. John Mason Cumnock, Ayrshire I am a Scot living in England these last 40 years, but how could I not agree wholeheartedly with Val McDermid’s support for the SNP? The media harp on incessantly about the independence issue, but fail to notice the support for a party with a pragmatic centralist heart that addresses the problems facing the people of its constituency: Scotland. It has offset the nonsense issuing from Westminster these past decades, offering support for the NHS, infant welfare, student grants, new railway services and infrastructure, and nationalising water utilities. The two major Westminster parties offer no comment, let alone policies, on the recovery from Brexit; indeed Starmer marched his MPs through the lobby to support Boris Johnson’s appalling Brexit deal. The Liberal Democrats proved disastrous under Nick Clegg by betraying their supporters, for which they paid the price. Where does a voter living in England go to get the type of choice that the Scots have in the coming election? George Elder Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire