Andrew McKie tries a little too hard in making the case for the centre-right in Scotland ("Tories should consider what they stand for in Scotland, The Herald, October 3).
He mentions a number of unexceptionable ideas that he seems to see as the exclusive preserve of the centre-right and claims there is perhaps a majority of voters who share them.
It is, apparently, only the vilification of the Tory brand in Scotland that prevents its resurgence. If only.
The idea most closely associated with the Conservative Party in the minds of Scottish voters is one Mr McKie chooses not to mention – free-market fundamentalism, formerly known as laissez faire capitalism.
Add to that the attitude revealed by remarks like “there is no such thing as society” and “unemployment is a price worth paying” (who pays it?) and there should be no surprise about the Tories’ electoral position in Scotland.
But a further central consideration, also overlooked by Mr McKie, is the Conservatives’ past and, for some, still present opposition to devolution. That remains to be forgotten or forgiven by many voters.
As the senior partner in the Coalition Government, the Conservative Party is, if anything, reaffirming the assessment of it by voters in Scotland. Whilst there is cross-party agreement about dealing with the public sector deficit (thank you, deregulated markets) the Tories have deliberately chosen to deal with the deficit through a policy born of the old-time religion.
Mr McKie thinks that the centre-right constituency in Scotland is “almost certainly very many more that the 420,000 who voted Tory at the last election”.
In fact, as Mr McKie must know, the last election was for the Scottish Parliament in May, where the Conservatives achieved a vote of 276,652 or 13.9% of the popular vote.
That was despite the benefit of a proportional system, which somewhat undermines Mr McKie’s argument about Tories voting tactically. There is, incidentally, a rich irony in the fact that all the candidates for the Tory leadership in Scotland are only in the Scottish Parliament because of a proportional system they still oppose in principle.
If the Conservatives in Scotland place much faith in Mr McKie’s analysis, they will have to get used to their bit part in Scottish politics.
Alasdair Rankin,
11 Gillespie Crescent,
Edinburgh.
The headline above Douglas Meyer’s excellent letter is “Who’s best to lead the Scottish Tories in an obsolete Union?” (Letters, October 4). A more pertinent question might be “Who cares?” Today the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is an irrelevance.
The party now has only a few thousand signed-up members in Scotland, and in the last 20 years it has never had more than one MP at Westminster. In this year’s Holyrood election only three of its 15 MSPs won their seats by the constituency vote, and it got only 13.9% of all votes cast. Apart from Annabel Goldie’s feisty and witty performance at First Minister’s Questions and some decent speeches by Murdo Fraser, the Tories have been virtually anonymous at Holyrood.
Now they are tying themselves in knots over Murdo Fraser’s suggestion to re-invent the party with a new name, hoping to improve its image by pretending it is a national rather than a unionist party.
I don’t think Scottish voters are so easily conned. I’m afraid the Tories’ days as a major political voice in Scotland are gone forever, and changing the name or the leader won’t alter that fact.
Nor is David Cameron helping his beleaguered northern colleagues. He keeps promising to show respect for Scotland, but there has been precious little sign of it so far. He will not persuade many Scots to support his party by pouring scorn on reasonable proposals for more economic and fiscal powers, or by dismissing valid presentation of the case as merely “gripe and grievance”. Perhaps the Scots are indeed a more tolerant people than the English, which Jackson Carlaw bizarrely claims as an argument for keeping the Union, but Mr Cameron is testing that tolerance to the limit.
It now seems likely that, in desperation, the Scottish Tories will elect Ruth Davidson as their new leader – a former media person who has been an MSP for only a few months, two of them over the summer vacation, and with no previous experience or involvement in politics. Good luck to her – she will need it!
Iain A D Mann,
7 Kelvin Court,
Glasgow.
As someone who is in my 44th year of continuous membership of the Labour Party, I am dismayed at the paucity of talent of those who have declared they wish to stand for election as the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland.
Barring a miracle whereby one of the candidates suddenly acquires some leadership skills and behaviour or someone like Alistair Darling enters the contest, abstention from voting is the only positive way forward.
Gordon Craig,
12 Deaconsbrook Road,
Mearns Grove,
Glasgow.
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