PERHAPS the voters perceive the referendum campaign to be negative because the SNP has failed to offer anything distinctive and coherent to a sceptical but sophisticated electorate ("Debate on independence now 'steeped in negativity'", The Herald, May 14).

On the economic and financial questions, the party has lost every argument, substituting bluff and bluster for reason, as on the question of a currency union with rUK. But the biggest problem the Nationalists have is that they cannot define a distinctive culture. And that always and everywhere has been the vehicle of national independence movements. The SNP are a national party without any coherent nationalism. Instead, they define themselves in terms of their demons about England and the (London and south east) English.

The scholar Julian Huxley defined a culture as a mutually-supporting tripod of mentifacts, sociofacts and artefacts. The first two are inter-related as language, literature, ideology and philosophy, rituals, traditions and inter-personal relationships and communal practices. The third, artefacts, is the physical manifestation of the first two. The problem that the SNP have is that, as Huxley defined things, Scotland's culture is utterly British. Indeed British culture was defined by the giants of the Scottish Enlighten­ment (Adam Smith, David Hume, Robert Adam, Adam Ferguson, Thomas Reid and so on), by Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns and John Buchan, and by Victorian "Balmorality". Sir Edward Landseer was English by birth but drew his inspiration from Scotland. Scots went to London, became Prime Minister and built an empire that was, despite some lapses, a force for good in the world, twice doing just enough to save us from German totalitarianism. In leaving the Union, an independent Scotland would be abandoning itself. It would be breaking its commitment to a Union which was to be "for evermore"' (Article 1 of the 1707 Treaty). No wonder that people in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and across the world ask in total bemusement: "Whatever for?"

In your article, Alex Salmond, in his unhistorical way, tells us: to create "a country which has never (sic) and never will elect people like him [David Cameron] to govern us". There you have it: the chippiness, bitterness and class warfare of the 1970s student socialist, now living a life of luxury at taxpayers' expense in Bute House. And if, after an inevitably chaotic first term of spendthrift socialist independence, Scotland were then to elect a non-socialist administration of Conservatives and Liberals, what then? Independence would have been all for nothing.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.

THERE is an obvious answer to Gary McIntosh's difficulty with the "5-3-2" TV debate for the General Election in 2015 (Letters, May 14). The solution is to broadcast separate debates in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland when David Cameron is taking part in the debates which he has proposed. It is likely that in Scotland we might have a "6-3-2" format, and Mr Cameron will not be one of the final two parties left in final debate.

Sandy Gemmill,

40 Warriston Gardens, Edinburgh.

SINCE 1978, when inequality was at its lowest point, the political dogmas of Margaret Thatcher, and then Tony Blair, have efficiently promoted plutocracy, even kleptocracy. At the same time neo-liberalism and globalis­ation have entrenched inequalities and embedded a kind of hopelessness in remedying the social ills caused by such dense concentrations of wealth and economic power. In the UK the biggest failure is not uniquely a Scottish phenomenon but can be placed at the door of all left-of-centre parties, especially the Labour Party.

David Torrance ("A commitment to reducing inequality is buried in guff". The Herald, May 12) misses the point that non-SNP Yes voters, including many Labour supporters, are doing so because they believe that an independent Scotland ought not to be straitjacketed by Westminster uninterest in pursuing a social democratic model. He also mistakenly conflates the right to buy social housing and income tax levels, with priority measures for reducing inequality, when the central issue is more about accumulated wealth than income. Property price bubbles certainly contribute to this, as well as creating the conditions for a crash. The reduction of overall income differentials is only one strand of inequality reduction.

The Scottish Government is able only to tinker at the margins and it will take real self-determination at the same time as crystallisation of a suite of policies in Scottish politics to tackle inequality and make a real difference to our children's generation.

Tony Philpin,

Kinnererach, Isle of Gigha.