Pragmatic and emotional reasons for not voting Labour

First, I'm not a nationalist but I try to be a pragmatist. Independence won't solve anything and in itself isn't particularly desirable, but I think it is now inevitable. With more powers already coming to Holyrood under the Scotland Act 2012, and still more devolution promised after the Smith Commission, the settlement between Scotland and the rest of the UK is no longer stable. The nail in the Union's coffin came from David Cameron on the morning after the referendum, when he emerged into Downing Street to announce English Votes for English Laws (Evel). When that happens, as it assuredly will at some stage, Westminster can no longer function as a parliament for a united kingdom.

My second reason for voting SNP involves the personalities. Nicola Sturgeon has been impressive during the campaign. Her greatest asset is that she speaks "normal," as indeed does Nigel Farage. In contrast, those who speak for the main parties use an odd Westminster village dialect: stilted, scripted and over-rehearsed. They are career politicians, generally from comfortable backgrounds, very often from public schools and Oxford University. I had to laugh the other day when, in a TV appearance alongside Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, George Osborne mentioned that Ms Harman went to the same school as he did; says it all about the elites of the main political parties, really.

My other reason for not voting Labour is a personal one and concerns immigration. Over the last few years, sometimes I've switched on TV or radio and heard a politician saying scandalous things about immigration, and assumed I was listening to someone from Ukip; but often it has been a Labour spokesman. Amazingly, the best defence of immigration I've heard recently came from Michael Gove. In trying to appear tough, Labour has come across as callous, uncaring and vote-grubbing.

My voting preference remains Labour, just not this Labour Party.

Doug Maughan,

52 Menteith View,

Dunblane.

FEW can regret the predicted imminent demise of Labour power in Scotland, and consequently in the whole UK.

They have only themselves to blame. They had 21 parliamentary years (13 at Westminster, and eight at Holyrood) with every conceivable power at their disposal, reserved and devolved, and unlimited funding from cheap credit-driven GDP growth, over 100 stealth taxes, the £5bn "windfall tax" on pensions funds and, not content with all that, they built up a £160bn cumulative borrowing deficit of overspending, to fix absolutely everything. Manifestations of their financial mismanagement include the leaving of obscene levels of child poverty, around 970,000 of youth unemployment (the majority of whom were educated wholly under Labour) while trying to saddle the new Coalition with the whole million when the numbers reached that level.

Their "settled will of the Scottish people" was doomed with the SNP Holyrood victory in 2007. Their leader Wendy Alexander engineered what became the Calman Commission with the remit of making Holyrood more accountable. And so it did - the 10p income tax rate transferred here with its £5bn proceeds was a sleight of hand manipulation, as the £5bn would come off the block grant, therefore a virtual status quo on our funding. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the hated Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to get the Scotland Act through Westminster.

Normal hostilities resumed between them and against the SNP, but they cosmetically closed ranks again under the referendum campaign banner of Better Together - with the infamous last-minute Vow and the consequential contradictory Smith proposals.

They did not realise that the vitriol they ranged against the SNP was not aimed at some giant amoebic poisonous blob that would contaminate all who indulged, but a considerable, 45 per cent of voters who would not readily forget the invective - and they did not, hence Labour's current plight.

But the significance of the completely bogus "all pals together" act, was that these associations of the parties' leadership did not have the approval of the grass roots memberships. Labour supporters were incandescent at the communication with the Tories, and there would be Tories who were not best pleased at the camaraderie with Labour, having trecked countless miles with leaflets supporting their cause.

In my view, it was that which drove vast numbers from these parties to, either join the SNP, or to reflect their support in opinion polls for either the SNP, or for independence.

That means that the SNP, with that range of support within their ranks, now represent the type of coalition that many crave in this multi-party confusion that predominates,

So, far from the need to have tactical voting, the Unionist parties have unwittingly created a new brand of tactic, with their erstwhile supporters voting SNP.

And with the threat to England of being dominated by a Labour/SNP cabal, I guess that they will vote overwhelmingly for a Tory majority next Thursday, so no need for a Westminster coalition.

Douglas R Mayer,

76 Thomson Crescent, Currie.

SANDY Gemmill (Letters, April 30) adapts a proverb in suggesting that as the Liberal Democrats have flown with the crows (Conservatives) then they will be shot with the crows. However, the Liberal Democrats are not flying with the Conservatives at this General Election and should miss the grapeshot.

Dr Alexander S Waugh,

1 Pantoch Gardens, Banchory.

IT was a sight more exciting to read that 900-year-old copy of an earlier sixth-century Boethius Consolation of Philosophy text had Scottish associations ("Researcher uncovers the origins of 12th-century document", The Herald, April 30) than reading and listening to our politicians' repetitive promulgations. If only they could do better than employ oversimplified sound- and write-bites or lengthy perorations.

The latest irritation is our First Minister's aim to "make Westminster sit up and take notice", which has little meaning All the grand notions hit the buffers of the large fiscal deficits and accumulated debt which must be managed down a great deal more before austerity can be said to have ended.

So the issue is how to do this equitably without yet further impacts on those who are needy through no fault of their own. We are not all in it together; Labour seems to have to the best approach to protecting the more vulnerable while steadily reducing the annual deficit. Borrowing massively and going over our heads to get more growth depends on being able to cover the costs of the new debt from the unproven future returns, a gamble par excellence.

Joe Darby,

Glenburn, St Martins Mill, Cullicudden, Dingwall.

IF the latest opinion poll is right, and the SNP could win all Scottish seats in the General Election ("Labour on attack as poll predicts a wipeout", The Herald, April 29), then there will be three inevitable consequences.

First, there will be no independence because the SNP have been too frightened to seize the opportunity of wresting any sovereignty from Westminster by making this General Election a mandate for independence, and for another referendum. Unlike Sinn Fein in Ireland in 1918, the SNP are a bunch of middle-class wimps who feel more comfortable in an armchair than in a revolution.

Secondly, the SNP has thereby acknowledged Westminster's constitutional ownership of British sovereignty and that a separate Scottish popular sovereignty does not exist. Westminster, and Westminster alone, will decide the issue. It will never desert the majority of voters who correctly rejected the stupidity of separation last year.

Thirdly, and most delicious of all, the SNP will have destroyed the Labour Party. This will cause a flight of hard lefties to collectivist nationalism, as has always occurred in Europe since the end of the First World War. And Labour's implosion will probably ensure that the Scottish Conservatives become the main opposition party here. Such an outcome would not be an undeserved fate for the party that invented the spurious notion of a democratic deficit back in the 1980s in order to demonise the Tories, and then foisted the dog's breakfast that is devolution on the UK. But even better, such a sweeping SNP victory on May 7 will guarantee at least a minority Tory government at Westminster which will get the active support of Ukip, of the Democratic Unionists and of what, if anything, remains of the Liberal Democrats.

No doubt the SNP will claim that a Tory government will make independence inevitable. But why would Westminster allow the break-up of the UK? No other democracy would destroy itself like that. And what will they do then? Storm Barlinnie in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity? Don't make me laugh.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.

AFTER hearing the various parties' pledges on income tax, maybe they could explain why "the hard workers" pay 12 per cent NationaI Insurance on earnings in excess of the princely sum of £8,060 per annum. Meanwhile this drops to two per cent on earnings above £42,380.

Why not get rid of this charade and combine it with income tax? It's not as if it is hypothecated. The low-paid would benefit and it would be easier for the Government to administer, easier for employers and would be more transparent.

Jim McSheffrey,

61 Merryvale Avenue,

Giffnock.