An old slogan

There’s been a strange reaction from some to the SNP calling for a “Tory-free” Scotland after the next election. Is it outrageous to remind the public that this Westminster election is an opportunity to pass verdict on a useless Conservative government?

Unsurprisingly, after Brexit, after Windrush, the Post Office, Covid contracts, Covid law-breaking, after three inept Prime Ministers in five years – two of whom are miles ahead in the competition to be the UK’S worst ever – most of the Scottish public has had enough of the Conservatives and will vote accordingly.

The unfair Westminster firstpast-the-post voting system can deliver an overall majority of MPS to a party with less than 40 per cent of the total votes and it can also deliver no MPS for the Conservatives in Scotland, even if their vote-share here is 20 per cent. That’s how it can work and the Conservatives don’t complain when they think it will favour them, as it often has.

Humza Yousaf was obviously referring to MPS and the potential consequences of a defective, out-dated UK voting system which denies proportional representation. This simple explanation did not get in the way of daft claims that the SNP was trying to deny democracy for Conservative voters. Even dafter to claim this really signalled an intention to drive Conservative voters out of the country.

In the past, Scottish Labour regularly made similar “Toryfree” calls without such a reaction – why this bizarre explosion of nonsense about Humza Yousaf?

Robert Farquharson

Edinburgh