Tories have learned little from decline in Scotland

AS A former Scottish Conservative activist and elected representative I was not surprised to read the recent gloomy forecast predicted for the party this May.

The party has learned little from its decline and, in my opinion, failed to have the guts to look honestly at itself and the reasons why it is unelectable. Each time there is an election defeat the cry goes out for something to be done, but little happens.

Your article ‘Taxi for McLetchie?’ (Agenda, January 12) is right to suggest that the Scottish Conservative Party is seen as an English party. This, coupled with any reference to the Union, is a turn-off for many people. Scottish Tories need to get back to their Jacobite roots and that means becoming a party for Scotland and the people of Scotland. I believe severing links with the UK party would be a good start.

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Given political independence, Scottish Tories would be free to set their own radical agenda. Ideas such as commitment to a federal Britain or Scottish independence would be vote-winners. Too many Tories, including David McLetchie are indeed living in the ‘comfort zone’. They lack real vision and have failed to come up with any fresh initiatives that will attract support or excite the electorate. McLetchie even proposed a coalition with New Labour at Holyrood after the election in May.

Scots are instinctively conservative in their thinking and a modernised Scottish Conservative Party without the the Union would interest many people.

Paul Leslie, Scone

YOU are, of course, entitled to advance political views in editorial terms, but surely you went too far in spinning away the findings of your own opinion poll (‘Election winners to be Labour - and apathy’, January 5)?

First, the rather dramatic nine-point lead for the SNP in the Scottish parliament PR vote was dismissed on the basis that the respondents didn’t understand the question. Opinion polls have been conducted on the basis of the two Scots parliament votes every month for four-and-a-half years now, and a real election took place with this system in 1999 - so why should this factor, uniquely, have invalidated the second question of the Scotland on Sunday poll?

Second, the news story told us the poll was ‘suggesting’ that half of Scots will not vote in May. But the real results - not referred to in the copy, and only covered in a table - showed that 64% of respondents are ‘very likely’ to vote, and 14% ‘quite likely’, giving a figure of either two-thirds or three-quarters who may vote.

If you refuse to believe what the poll respondents tell you, why bother asking people for their views in the first place?

Kevin Pringle, SNP vice-convener for publicity, Edinburgh