Scotland has been sickened by voting Labour and getting Tory

PETER A Russell (Letters, May 13) suggests that the Labour Party’s problems in Scotland began in 2014. It is certainly true that after this loss of support became a haemorrhage. However, is the cause only the referendum and Labour’s alliance with the Conservative Party at that time, or are there older, more deep-rooted reasons? Does the decline of his party to the point where winning a council that, historically, should be a matter of course, becomes a matter for celebration, not deserve a wider consideration?

In 1992, disappointment that a Scottish Parliament would not be along “in a tick” was exceeded only by having to thole yet another Conservative government for the next five years. In 2010, the Scottish electorate had voted for Gordon Brown’s Labour Party more strongly than the previous election, yet the outcome was another Conservative government (albeit in coalition with the Liberal Democrats) and austerity, substantially because the vote in England collapsed to 28 per cent (from 35% in 2005). How informative is the Einstein quote about doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome? Vote Labour, get Conservative? In the 52 years since 1970, at 14 elections the Scottish electorate voted for the party that formed the Westminster government only five times, two of them in 1974.

Thus, as well as 2014, the decline in Labour support may reflect a growing awareness, and refusal to thole a democratic deficit which meant that Scotland must accept a government which in most cases in the last 50 years Scotland didn’t vote for. Brexit has only accelerated this perception.

This undermines much of Mr Russell’s argument. Is it a good idea to be the “party of the whole of the mainland UK”? Elections since then would seem to suggest not. He repeats again that independence would mean “an end to redistribution from the wealthy south-east of England and London to Scotland”, a situation Professor Mark Blyth has compared to being on the dole. Some of us think Scotland could do better.

I would not dispute Mr Russell’s view about the difficulties of converting what remains of the Labour Party in Scotland to independence, but does he not realise that such dogmatism itself is another of his party’s problems? Alasdair Galloway, Dumbarton.