Party numbers

Colin Campbell (Letters, 27 March) seems unwilling to accept how democratic elections work. The facts are that in the 2011 
Scottish elections the electorate had the choice of 24 parties that they could vote for. Just under two million people exercised their right to vote.

Of that number 902,915 people voted for the SNP. That gave the SNP 45.3 per cent of the turnout vote, winning it 69 seats. The remaining 54.7 per cent of the vote was split between the other 23 parties.

Labour received 630,461 votes and the Conservatives 276,652. The Liberal Democrats came fourth with 157,714. Taken together, the three unionist parties garnered 1,064,827 votes, 161,912 more than the SNP.

Therefore, all they had to do to defeat the SNP was to come together as one entity. However, I don’t think that was ever going to happen.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Letters columns, when we are considering Andrew Gray’s capabilities as a defence analyst and the respective merits of Trident, we should remember that when asked just who Scotland had to fear from nuclear attack, this is the man who replied Pakistan and North Korea. Says it all really.

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh