Democracy lost to the winds

Sir, – Two letters caught my eye in The Courier letters column of August 6.

Jim Barrie succinctly presented the democratic process for the replacement of the hapless Jackson Carlaw.

In the Johnson/ Cummings takeover of the Scottish Conservative Party democracy was simply thrown to the winds.

Former Scottish leader and Remain MSP Ruth Davidson charmingly announced on July 26 that her greatest regret was ‘not putting the boot in’ to the SNP and the wider independence movement.

On July 30 the now Leave supporter is presented with the leadership role until her elevation to the peerage after the next Holyrood election.

In May former Remain MSP for Moray and now Leave supporting MP Douglas Ross resigned from a junior post at the Scottish Office as a result of the infamous lockdown breach by Cummings.

On July 23 Boris Johnson makes a much ridiculed trip to Scotland as a panic reaction to polls showing a leap in favour of Scottish independence.

One of his stops is in a heckle free zone at RAF Lossiemouth in Moray. Any rift between Johnson and Ross has obviously healed.

On July 30 Carlaw is dumped.

The media are given strong hints about new roles for Davidson and Ross which have now been confirmed.

Significantly nobody in the Scottish Conservative Party has raised opposition to the haste with which this has been rushed through.

William Ballantyne’s letter rightly pays tribute to the part played by the late John Hume who brokered the deal which virtually brought an end to sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and accurately quotes him as saying “Ireland is not a romantic dream”.

However, he mistakenly assumes that this remark was an attack on Irish nationalism.

John Hume was a leader of the SDLP, an Irish nationalist party with social democratic ideals, the exact Irish equivalent of the SNP.

The Ireland which his quote referred to was a united Ireland free from Westminster interference.

It is not a romantic dream and neither is Scotland.

Ken Guild. Brown Street, Broughty Ferry.