A voter from Dunoon, Eddie Kitson, has just sent us this sharply analytic letter and had it simultaneously published in the Press & Journal:

‘SIR, We seem to have a never-ending succession of elections nowadays. It’s getting hard to keep track. We have a Euro election shortly, so we get lots of communications from our politicians.

‘I am puzzled by the glossy leaflet that I have just received from the Lib Dems. I hope they don’t mean to deceive us, but it has a graph showing the performance of the major parties in Argyll and Bute – but from the last Westminster election. This was the best part of five years ago and has nothing at all to do with the Euro vote.

The Lib Dems were doing quite well then and held Argyll and Bute, but have fallen away very badly since. Nationally, they came in last of the four major parties at the Scottish election, losing Argyll and Bute to the SNP in the process and also came in fourth behind Labour, SNP and the Tories at the last Euro election.

If they were to give us an accurate graph, that is what it would show.

Do the Lib Dems live in a time warp?

They might do better if they treated the intelligence of the average voter with some respect’.

For Argyll received the same communication yesterday and was struck by the out of date photographs across the top banner of the letter. These showed Alan Reid, the sitting Westminster MP for Argyll with long-gone MSP George Lyon on some of the summer tours the pair used to undertake together when the Lib Dems held both the Scottish and UK seats for Argyll and Bute.

In reunified Berlin there is a phenomenon called ‘ost-nostalgie’ – wonderfuly caught in a magical film, Goodbye Lenin. The expressison accounts for the undercurrent of mourning felt by eastern members of the now integrated city for the simple rigours of life in the former East Germany. The gentle photographs of Alan and George, roaming Argyll in the summer carry the same sense of loss, the inevitable passage of time and the eually inevitable forward progress of politics.

These photographs do indeed represent an earlier, gentler and less professional time. The big change since then is in Argyll itself. This is evident at every level from:

• the major advances made by Argyll & Bute Council working with Argyll’s current MSP and Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, Jim Mather, to raise the economic performance of the area and take it into a leading international position in the renewable energy industry
• the recognition gained by the Council in Europe for Argyll’s role in these waters in a significantly raised public awareness of Argyll

• communities across Argyll taking charge of their own destinies – from large scale initiatives like the Islay Energy Trust; to Tayvallich bringing its post office, shop and filling station into community ownership to ensure its sustainabilty; to Sandbank and Furnace mounting mini-festival of their own to put themselves firmly on the Homecoming 2009 map; to the new initiative on the Isle of Luing, founding the annual Atlantic Islands Festival; to Rothesay on Bute taking advantage of productive new links with Rothesay in New Brunswick stimulated by the This Is Who We Are photographic exhibition
• serious and strategically planned developments in activity tourism from the focus on developing Argyll’s core paths – long distance walking trails, sea-kayaking, cycling, sailing and diving.

The central weakness of the Lib Dems is their inability to move forwards, to rise to the challenge of new times and more demanding circumstances.

It is hard to imagine why on earth the party thought it would be acceptable to voters to offer them, as their candidate to deal with the multi-national complexities of Brussels, someone whom they had already rejected as no longer capable of representing them at Holyrood.

It is profoundly sad to see the once great party of the Scottish Highlands which invigorated the politics of the entire UK with philosophy and personalites – from Jo Grimond to Charles Kennedy and to Argyll’s Ray Michie – so bereft today of ideas, talent and self-belief.

Related Posts

• Mulvaney reveals the game for Argyll & Bute in the coming General Election (11)
• SNP carries the fight to Bute (15)
• Jim Mather: over to us (20)
• Save Our Pool: the day Mid Argyll became a community (17)
• Loch Striven ship layups: rolling story (217)

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