Letter: Lib-Dem blinkers

If anyone is "blinkered" it must be Brian Mayes (Letters, 9 May). Either he is politically naive or, like Nick Clegg, who only seems to have learned lessons on the doorsteps during the hustings, he has been in some Rip Van Winkle-like trance if he did not foresee severe punishment for the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish and English elections.

Indeed, his letter verges on the arrogant, with his assumption that he is right and thousands of disillusioned ex-Liberal Democrat voters, myself included, are wrong.

People have not forgotten that in the leadership debates in the run-up to the general election, Nick Clegg denounced practically every policy David Cameron espoused when, just under a year later, he is overheard saying to Cameron that, as they were agreeing on almost everything, what were they to disagree on next time round.

I cannot agree with Mr Mayes that Clegg has been rendered powerless in coalition by the avalanche of lost votes, but hope that the severe kicking he has received will remind him that he is opposed to Conservative ideology and that he will, in his own words, become more assertive in expressing that opposition.

Now in my eighth decade, and a Liberal supporter all my adult life, like my family before me, I take no pleasure in this present debacle - and this old whiner sincerely feels that Tavish Scott should not be going. The wrong man has resigned.

John R Murdoch

Aldour Gardens

Pitlochry