Labour’s Scottish pains lie in the message

Sir, – Far be it from me to intrude on the internal squabbles of what passes for the Labour Party in Scotland, but your article (‘Clamour grows for Scottish Labour leader to give up post’, September 3) inadvertently highlighted why simply shuffling the deckchairs of the Labour Titanic won’t do.

You rightly highlighted that the party has had nine leaders since devolution (not including temporary leaders) compared to five for the Tories and three for the SNP.

A quick tally suggests 25% of the current Labour group has held the leadership post on either a permanent or temporary basis!

As Labour continued to plummet in the polls and the leader was changed with increasing regularity, did it not occur to them that the message may have been the problem; not the messenger?

For too long, Labour has jettisoned every policy that made the party what it was, in order to chase votes in middle England.

Scotland’s wishes were always secondary.

That is why Scotland, for example, must house nuclear weapons it does not want and suffer a Brexit it did not vote for.

Not content with that, Labour has set its face, not just against independence for Scotland, but the very right of Scots to even have a vote should they wish.

Labour’s challenges are many.

They do not oppose the Tories with the zeal they should, they ignore the rights of Scotland, the nation and her people, to have its voice heard and respected and they ditched policies popular in Scotland (abolishing nuclear weapons and the House of Lords to name but two) to make themselves electable in England, which has continued to shun them regardless.

There is a vacuum at the heart of the Labour Party where principle should be.

As the last 20 years of devolution have shown, a leadership change is merely window dressing which can no longer hide that fact.

Henry Malcolm. 331 Clepington Road, Dundee.