Coalition in pursuit of status quo

Back in the sixties and seventies in Shetland, at election times, I sometimes heard Labour Party members saying that they intended to vote Liberal. Why?

It was because they thought there was a particularly talented Tory candidate in the offing, and that there needed to be a coalition of the ‘left’ against him.

It was a crazy argument, because there was never a talented Tory on the go. The Labour people who argued in this way were just too lazy to embark on an election campaign.

The situation in 2014 is ten times worse. In Thursday morning’s Guardian I find George Jacobson, “a Labour party activist who runs Shetland’s anti-independence Better Together group”, expressing satisfaction that Shetland and Orkney were the only places where the LibDems came top of the poll in the last European elections!

We now have a situation, in Shetland and Scotland, where there is a coalition between Tories, Lib-Dems and Labour in pursuit of the status quo.

My advice is: if you are a Tory, and think that things are going well, vote No in the referendum; if you think that the status quo is a disaster, socially and morally, cast your vote for Yes and change.

Brian Smith
Weisdale