SNP failure

I read Jim Sillars' opinion piece (10 May) with dismay. How easy it is for him to criticise strategy and allow his well-kent antipathy for Alex Salmond to be aired so publicly. No real Nationalist would follow suit, especially when he clearly had offered no great advice before the event.

I have had a trawl through Mr Sillars' columns in Holyrood magazine and, frankly, I see no foresight from his views both before or during the general election campaign. I certainly don't think that he went out of his way to contact anyone in the party's wider leadership to air his concerns or proffer a constructive approach.

I totally agree that the party has a wealth of talent including the likes of Stephen Maxwell, and each and every one is welcome to come forward for vetting as a potential parliamentary candidate.

However, if anyone in Scottish politics predicted Thursday's outcome before 6 May, I must have missed that. Jim Sillars is as much out of touch with political reality on the ground as he is with SNP membership.

GRANT THOMS

Local Government Convener

Quarrywood Road

Glasgow

As a member of the SNP for many years, I have to agree with much of what Jim Sillars says. The SNP's 2010 election campaign, with its puerile and ungrammatical "more Nats less cuts" slogan, was the worst I can remember since joining the party three decades ago.

I actually went to the polling station determined not to vote for the party but changed my mind in the polling booth, mainly because there was no Green candidate in Edinburgh West.

That the most arrogant, pompous and incompetent Prime Minister in living memory led the Labour Party to actually increase its vote in Scotland, when it imploded in England, is further comment on the poverty of the SNP campaign.

DAVID GARVIE

Gylemuir Road

Edinburgh

Few, even among the Nationalist faithful, could have witnessed the SNP's general election campaign/strategy and fail to agree with Jim Sillars' summation of the First Minister as being "delusional''.

Sadly, an unhealthy obsession with getting himself on TV seems more important to Alex Salmond than anything else, including the fortunes of his party or country.

ALEXANDER McKAY

New Cut Rigg

Edinburgh