IT should hardly come as much of a surprise to most people to read that Conservative and Liberal Democrat supporters may back Ed Miliband to keep the SNP out of Westminster in a first-past-the-post General Election (GE) system which punishes the spilt-voting within the Union parties ("Pollster: Tactical votes can save Labour from wipe-out", The Herald, April 11).

This is one of the main reasons for their current poor showing at the polls as their official policy is to promote their own distinct political manifestos and fight each other for votes in the belief that the GE is supposed to be about policies and not about nationalism in Scotland.

However there are other voices who want to be heard and they represent the hard-working activists who delivered the emphatic 55/45 No vote in the referendum and are not prepared to accept the party line of the Unionist parties to discourage tactical voting. On the contrary they do believe in tactical voting and have recently established themselves in a number of non-party campaigner organisations and are promoting their views through social media and print by launching their own campaigns throughout Scotland to keep the SNP out of Westminster. Nowhere has this approach created more potential interest and support than in Gordon where the LibDems have a strong candidate in Christine Jardine, who hopes to defeat Alex Salmond. In this instance it is of course the Conservative and Labour voters who are supporting the LibDems.

Nevertheless there is no doubt the momentum thus far has favoured the SNP. However, following the spectacular "own goal " by Ms Sturgeon demanding full fiscal autonomy (with an attendant £7.6 billion black hole), it could prove to be one of these defining moments which acts as a massive wake-up call for the Union voters to consider tactical voting on a significant scale involving all three Union parties. Indeed if one believes the activists promoting this form of voting it is still not too late for the silent majority who voted No in the referendum to "rise again" and tactically vote to stop the SNP using Westminster as a Trojan horse to destabilise the fragile economic recovery and claim they have a mandate for yet another expensive and divisive referendum.

Ian Lakin,

Pinelands, Murtle Den Road, Milltimber, Aberdeen.

IAN Bell's excellent article on the possible outcome and consequences of the General Election ("Why we might be progressing to another General Election", The Herald, April 11) should be mandatory reading for all Westminster politicians

The time of two-party politics may be extinct. Call another election, and another, and another, but the SNP/progressive/ independence vote is not going away. Therefore the Westminster politicians need to recognise this and they may even begin to look for a solution to the impasse. To ignore it is to condemn a large part of the electorate, especially in Scotland, to being ignored.

But by ignoring the reality it is they who will plunge the UK into years of uncertainty. The sooner they address the new reality the better for Scotland and the better for all the UK.

George Rhind,

5 Dalbeattie Road, Dumfries.