I HAVE heard Andy Maciver's argument out. The answer is a resounding never. Never, never, never ("Hear me out – what Scotland needs now is an SNP-Labour alliance", The Herald, September 22).

Conservatives, by their nature, prefer the practical and the empirical to the ideological and the abstract. Sometimes this works in their favour whilst, at other times, the failure to recognise conservatism, as an -ism, leads to the same short-term thinking that we deplore in progressives. It is at its best when both aspects are combined in a coherent vision for living well in the real world.

The primary focus of the (Scottish) Conservative and Unionist Party has been the preservation of the British nation, and in this sense, falls into the former category. The nation was, and remains, the primary thing in need of conservation. But Mr Maciver is right that the Scottish Conservatives must do more than be a party of negative unionism. In the 1980s the conjoining of individual freedom, economic growth and collective national purpose managed to overcome the grave existential threat posed by a foreign power. Today, the threat is posed internally, and Conservatives must forge and articulate a new political argument; one based on home, neighbourhood and nation.

There are those who like to pretend that the culture war is a figment of the right's febrile imagination. Try telling that to school children brainwashed with pornographic, gender wuwu; try telling that to the women who cannot screen a film at the once-great Edinburgh University; try telling that to all those who will get a knock on the door from Police Scotland's Hate Crime Unit for stating a scientific fact. The Red Flag may not be flying over the barracks, but the unwelcome truth of the matter is that in Scotland, utopian internationalism has won the day. Woke barbarians aren't at the ramparts, they have taken over the citadel's institutions. Scottish Conservatives must either accept this new reality or they must take a principled, and not just a personal, stance against it.

Mr Maciver's argument, that we need a Labour-SNP administration in Holyrood, will be heart-warmingly welcomed by the gradualist wing of the secessionist movement. Hardly a day goes by of late when we do not inch closer to the SNP's implosion. There seems, to me, no justification at all for throwing one's political opponents, let alone one's enemy, a lifeline. It should serve as a reminder that wets and progressive Conservatives, like Rory Stewart ("Rory Stewart says he's often thought about standing for Holyrood", heraldscotland, September 10), cannot be trusted with the Union. For that matter, they cannot be trusted with anything else either.

Graeme Arnott, Stewarton.

Read more: There’s still a long way to go on immigration

Tories standing up for the rich

GRANT Shapps claims the inheritance tax is “punitive and deeply unfair” as the Tories float plans to cut it ("Tories prepare to slash inheritance tax as councils told to prepare for election", The Herald, September 25). They’ve even copied the US Republicans in branding it a "death tax".

Of course, he doesn’t say to whom this tax that raises more than £7 billion a year is deeply unfair. Fewer than 4% of estates pay it, so he’s saying it’s unfair to the wealthiest when they are already taxed at less than half the tax rate of the least well-off – 21.5% vs 44%. Nor does he mention that £7 billion would fund an inflation-matching increase for 12.5 million UK pensioners or a full pay rise for all the UK’s doctors.

And he doesn’t remind us that King Charles, one of the wealthiest people in England, paid no inheritance tax on his private wealth after his mother’s death, thanks to Tory PM John Major, who thought it was important to protect the "independence of the monarchy".

The Tories always side with the wealthy against the workers, which is why they’ve been destroying the post-war welfare state. And Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party sides with the Tories, insisting there’s no money left so we’ll just have to accept more austerity, poverty, inequality and crumbling public services.

When is Scotland going to wake up and extricate itself from this unholy mess?

Leah Gunn Barrett, Edinburgh.

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SNP is out of control

IF one thing is clear from the SNP’s campaign in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, it is that discipline within the SNP has broken down. In the Sturgeon-Murrell years, the discipline and control exerted by the leadership over party members, MPs and MSPs was prodigious. But now the SNP’s senior whip at Holyrood has had to instruct MSPs to campaign in the constituency on the days off from Holyrood that they have been awarded, one group at a time, for that purpose. It seems that many of her MSPs are simply taking a day off ("Flynn urges SNP activists to campaign in Rutherglen amid claims over MSPs", The Herald, September 25).

This follows from the revelation that the SNP has had to enlist a commercial firm to provide staff to deliver leaflets for the party in the constituency. The Scottish campaigner Robin McAlpine noted a month ago that what used to be the mass armies of SNP rank and file campaigners has now "evaporated". Paid couriers, who are not necessarily SNP supporters, can deliver literature but cannot knock on doors and engage electors. Photographs of the campaign team feature prominently SNP MPs, but ordinary members are thin on the ground.

This was happening before Humza Yousaf left the party to cope while he went to the US to enjoy photo opportunities. It is difficult for an outsider to know exactly what power the Sturgeon-Murrell axis exerted over members and elected representatives: what sanctions could they threaten, beyond deselection? Yet their control was proverbial. Whatever it was, Mr Yousaf doesn’t have it. And if, as expected, his candidate loses in Rutherglen, he will have even less of it.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.

Demographics could hold key

DESPITE there being little prospect of it happening any time soon, there are daily contributions to your Letters Pages about the independence debate. On Saturday (September 23), two of these caught my attention.

David McIntyre claims there is no plan for independence. He highlights Scotland's ageing population problem and industrial decline, which reduces tax raised and increases public expenditure. He concludes these are worldwide issues and independence, of itself, would not make a difference.

On the other hand, Stan Grodynski makes reference to the latest census and suggests people from the rest of the UK are flocking to Scotland because life is relatively better here. However, he also notes that young people continue to leave Scotland to look for work elsewhere in the UK, implying independence is the solution to counter our London and south-east-centred economy.

If both are correct, it suggests that older people are migrating to Scotland whereas younger folk are emigrating. So, inevitably, Scotland will face an increasing and disproportionate burden on its public finances as the UK's retirement village.

Perhaps Westminster is content to encourage this trend in the knowledge that, in the long-term, demographics will increase Scotland's dependence? Now that sounds like it could be the plan.

David Bruce, Troon.

Read more: Real blame for the trams project does not lie with the SNP

Stop trying to over-regulate

YET again we have a call for targeted funding to improve equality, in this case for GP access ("Scots patients from deprived areas ‘get less time with GPs’", The Herald, September 25). Almost every day there is such a call, most particularly from highly-controlling MSPs who wish to take more and more of our money and decide how it’s spent.

Scotland has had years of governments who simply want to tax and spend, who have little or no idea how to create jobs and work with business, who don’t understand the implications of their seemingly well-minded intentions. For example, if you cause landlords to operate at a loss, don’t be surprised if there are fewer houses for rent. These years of tax and spend have done little to improve matters. Yet the answer from the Scottish Government, contrary to all evidence, is always to tax and spend more.

Some of the inequality might disappear if we taxed and spent less and became positive in respect of creating good long-term jobs, if we stopped trying to over-regulate, if we concentrated on what really matters rather than rights for vocal minorities that impinge on non-vocal majorities, on actually having a strategy towards net zero rather than anti-oil rhetoric (not that they are alone there).

Ideally, all parties in Scottish society should make and live with their own decisions and stop being condescended to by MSPs, who think they know better but most clearly don’t.

Angus MacEachran, Aberdeen.