Tories need to stand up for principles

BUSINESSES, national and local government departments and the NHS have changed their names and logos at great expense, without one iota of improvement in the goods and services they provide. So why does Murdo Fraser believe a change of name will revive the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party?

What is required is strong leadership and a clear declaration of policy, sadly lacking in recent years.

The malaise is evident at Westminster too, even though we have a Conservative Prime Minister. David Cameron might have had an outright majority in the House if he had provided proper opposition to the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, making clear to the voters what he stood for. Eighteen months in office, and still no-one knows what Mr Cameron stands for. He gives the impression, as do his colleagues in Scotland, that he wishes to please all the people all the time, with the result that he pleases nobody. We need leaders of principle who command respect, but these, alas, are becoming more and more difficult to find.

William W Scott

St Baldred’s Road

North Berwick

THE much publicised intervention by composer James MacMillan in the Scottish Tory re-branding debate, is worth analysing in detail (your report, 8 September).

Mr MacMillan seems to favour a continental, 1950s-style Christian Democrat party for Scotland.

However, CD parties, in the narrower sense, have largely become eclipsed in Catholic Europe, whether in France (where Charles de Gaulle’s RPR Party eclipsed the Christian Democrats) or in Italy (where various scandals led to the demolition of the DC Party in the early 1990s).

Oddly, the current CDU chancellor in Germany, Angela Merkel, is herself the daughter of a Protestant pastor and the product of the Communist-era DDR (East Germany). The problem for the Labour Party in Scotland, as for the broader Labour movement here (eg, trade unions in Scotland), is that it has increasingly been seen outside its Western heartland as “the Catholic party” where selection of candidates seems to have depended more on what school was attended or hooped jersey prominently favoured.

And yet ironically the population of Scotland itself has moved on: not least Catholic voters in Scotland who have been voting for the SNP in droves.

Ignoring this, machine Labour politicians and union leaders running the Labour Party and movement in Scotland seem unable to change its out-dated and rather sectarian ways.

I suspect that a broad section of the Scottish population will not favour a Christian Democratic party here but certainly a broadly based, non-sectarian and anti-Nationalist party of the moderate right is overdue a place in the Scottish political landscape as a serious choice for voters.

It may require re-branding or formation of a new, moderately conservative party but the narrowly sectional Labour Party and a destructive SNP intent on smashing up the UK, should not be able to contest future elections as relatively unchallenged adversaries for Holyrood government office.

Angus Logan

Coates Garden

Edinburgh

AT THE ripe old age of 32 and with a massive four months’ on-the-job training as an MSP, but little experience of the real world before that other than her admirable TA service, Ruth Davidson aspires to lead the Conservatives in Scotland. She and her supporters might reflect on another young Tory with similar leadership ambitions promoted well before his time – William Hague.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews