New right fears

Brian Monteith, already fronting a “think tank” founded by a rich Tory entrepreneur (Robert Kilgour), seeks more rich right-wingers to replace Sir Jack Harvie and other disenchanted financial backers of the Scottish Tories to bankroll yet another “popular movement” like the American C-PAC (Perspective, 19 March).

In describing his existing monthly Tuesday Club he gives a fascinating insight into this dining club. It is composed apparently of “people of genuine life experiences such as fighting in wars and running successful businesses” who meet over a “good meal and decent wine”.

There are many thousands of Scots at the moment who are having genuine – and painful – life experiences that do not include “fighting in wars and running successful businesses”, struggling to cope with economic pressures on themselves and their families, desperate to find work or cope with the pressures on social services being exacerbated by the Tory-led coalition and who would be delighted to meet over a good meal and decent wine, but can’t afford it.

They know where their support comes from, and where the solutions to their problems lie.

That is why they place their trust in the public services, the caring services, the Scottish NHS and the police, and why they delivered a massive political mandate to the SNP to protect these services, decisively rejecting the right-wing Tory brand that destroyed them in the past, and seeks to destroy them in the present.

As for his model, C–PAC, its heroes have included Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck and George W Bush.

It is enthusiastically backed by such as the American Rifle Association and Ross Limbaugh, a broadcaster who is anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-climate change initiatives and anti-environmentalist.

Peter Curran

Main Street

Kirkliston, West Lothian