I WAS impressed with the analysis by Daniel Sanderson ("The battle for the heart of Labour's heartland roars to a fraught finale", Election 2015, The Herald April 1).
However I am not fully in agreement with his suggestion that "Labour's decline has been longer than six months in the making. The current crisis can be traced back to the Iraq war".
It always seemed to me that the problem was one of the shaky identity of Labour as a radical left wing party and I believe this was seriously undermined by Tony Blair when he embraced the ideologies of a New Labour and the Third Way. I feel in particular that the dropping of Cause Four - referring to pursuing common ownership for the working people - from the Labour Party constitution was the start of mass disappointment with the new aims of the party. It may be that Mr Blair's use of John Prescott as a mascot to camouflage the very serious move from the left fooled no one who was watching. Many felt that champagne socialism was perhaps fine - but only if everyone could afford champagne.
It is little wonder that the public have become tired of the last few years of the UK Parliament. The usual scenario at Prime Minister's Questions time is the two front Tory men, David Cameron and George Osborne, in a mutual exchange of badinage across the floor of the House with Labour's Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. I expect that the reason it appears so predictable and orchestrated is that all four of them learned their trade at Oxford University. All represent the public but none is representative of the British public.
I believe that the supposed threat to Labour by the Scottish Nationalists would only become a very real one if the SNP were to renounce their aim of independence from the rest of the UK. When one considers for example that crude oil is now hovering around $50 a barrel, whisky sales are down and the Scottish public are stuck with the nationalised and heavily loss-making Prestwick Airport, surely even the most ardent Yes voter must realise what an appalling risk Scottish independence would have been.
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive,
Milngavie.
YOUR front-page headline ("Poll: almost half of voters fear more powerful SNP", The Herald, April 1) will not surprise anyone involved in the election campaign. It is common to be approached, while campaigning, by voters asking urgently what they must do to keep the Nationalists out, although the sentiments expressed are not so much fear as resentment.
Voters, being democrats, are furious that the SNP dragged us through years of division to have their referendum and then, having lost, they just ignore the result and plough on with their mission of destroying the UK as if the will of the Scottish people is of no account or concern to them. Electors see the blatant attempts to annoy our fellow countrymen by threats to "hold the country to ransom" as an attempt to create, within the UK, the same division and grievance that characterised the referendum campaign.
Having been subject to these tactics for decades, the Scottish people can see through them better than voters elsewhere in the UK. If Scots do have any fears it is that the Nationalists, having shown their main strategy is the spreading of unwarranted grievance to create division and resentment and having revealed their anti-democratic tendencies, are prepared to take all that divisiveness UK-wide in an attempt to get, by other means, what the Scottish people denied them by a democratic vote on September 18, 2014.
Alex Gallagher,
12 Phillips Avenue, Largs.
YOUR correspondent Ian Scott (Letters, April 1), seems to regard the devolving of responsibility for public service broadcasting in Scotland to the Parliament at Holyrood as a threat to democracy. However, he does not appear to share the same concern for the current situation whereby the BBC operates under a royal charter licensed by the UK Government.
The arrangement means that the UK Government effectively holds the purse strings in relation to the funding of the BBC, and the trustees of the BBC are appointed by the Monarch on advice from Government ministers. This gives the government of the day considerable influence over the corporation and it does not seem very democratic to me. Also, we all witnessed the fate of the BBC management and staff when they crossed the Blair Government regarding its "dodgy dossier".
Given the foregoing circumstances, I do not share Mr Scott's confidence in the status quo.
Gordon Evans,
5 York Drive, Burnside, Rutherglen.
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