Letter: Scots Tories need to create a new party

This is something that I have objected to in the past, but it is increasingly clear that the party in Scotland lives very much in the shadow of its more confident southern big brother.

The Scottish Tories need to be able to formulate and articulate policies that are suited to Scotland, and also need to be able to counter the policies that could be advocated by the SNP in the run-up to a referendum. They have been very poor at this in recent years.

There have been some very good ideas, such as making Scottish Water a mutual organisation owned by its customers, but these ideas surface and then are forgotten before they have even made an impact on the electorate as a whole.

Most of all, the party needs new blood, and lots of it. When I was a constituency chairman, I was told at regular meetings of chairmen and agents not to say anything and not to ask questions!

Yet, a weakness of the party is that it is run from the top downwards by people who have failed to appreciate how the political landscape has changed and who do not wish the rank and file to express opinions or propose policies.

This can only get worse under a prime minister whose sole interest is power and hanging on to it. David Cameron is not my idea of a Conservative and I believe that he is really a closet Liberal Democrat.

He is not in the same league as Margaret Thatcher, who rescued the Falklands and curbed the power of the unions while also cutting our contributions to the European Union.

If he was a true leader, he would not countenance the open criticism of their Conservative colleagues by the Lib Dem members of the cabinet, who do not seem to have heard of the convention collective responsibility.

The party needs to reform itself and I fear that the only way forward is to create a Scottish Unionist Party that can have its own policies on anything and everything, even those matters such as defence that have not been devolved, otherwise it is never going to be able to counter the policies of the SNP.

In its new guise, it will not be a subsidiary of London and could attract pro-unionist support from a broader spectrum than at present.

David Wragg

Stoneyflatts

South Queensferry

Your leader calls for the Scottish Conservatives to "prove they are truly tartan Tories".

I have been an active member of the Scottish Conservative Party for the past 15 years, but I refuse to wear tartan.

The adoption of tartan as a symbol of the identity of Lowland Scotland, as opposed to just the Highlands, has much of its origin in the writings of Sir Walter Scott.

In the preface to Waverley, Scott stated his aim was to bring Scotland to the favourable attention of "her sister kingdom" to the south.

This was tantamount to placing Scotland in a formally subservient position in relation to England.

Highlandism, the representation of Scotland in terms of a romantic Highland image, stems in large part from this.

An equal union, based on shared British values and combined with respect for our Scottish identity, I can accept.

A union based on English patronage I cannot.

Richard A A Deveria

Market Street

Aberfeldy

Your leader recommending the Scottish Tories break away from mother is wise and timely.

Assuming independence, the SNP, having shot its own (and only) fox, must either vanish or morph into a mainstream middle-of-the-road party.

If that ground is already occupied by a slightly right-of-centre, jobs and exports-oriented party (the NEW Conservative Party?) then Sir Alex (as he will be by then) will have to stand for the presidency of the Republic of Scotland, or retire to write his memoirs.

Tim Flinn

Garvald

East Lothian