Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

Archive for category Holyrood

Progress, but at a snail’s pace

May 14

Posted by The Burd in Democracy, Holyrood, Parties, Society | 44 Comments

There is much to celebrate about the make up of our new Parliament.  Yes, we can lament the loss of experience but some of the gushing eulogies written about some of the departed stalwarts, particularly from the Labour ranks, need a reality check.  Such a sweeping clearout, whether the parties wanted it or not, brings in fresh blood which is, by itself, a very good thing.  Whether or not they will deserve the epithet *talent* remains to be seen…

But in certain key areas, the Parliament is making very slow progress indeed.

Dennis Robertson has found himself wheeled out at the forefront of the SNP group and the subject of much media interest because he is blind.  And even better, has a telegenic dog to guide him.  Dennis is canny so he knows what he’s doing and he deserves his election, not because of his visual impairment, but because he has a lot to offer.  He is clever and a great campaigner on issues that are often ignored or worse, patronised at Holyrood.  He has a careful decision to make – does he become a champion of disabled people simply because he is disabled or does he eschew such issues, as Anne Begg did in her early career, to avoid being defined simply as the blind MSP?  It’s a tough one.  And the bottom line is that it simply should not be remarkable that someone with a visual impairment can be elected:  it should be the norm.

But with Siobhan McMahon becoming the first woman born with a disability, joining Margo MacDonald whose disability has been caused by her long term condition, our Parliament is now more visibly, differently abled.  And hurrah for that.  They will bring a very different perspective and life experience to their work and that is what a more representative legislature is all about.

Readers will be pleased to note that progress was also made on the ethnic status and gender balance of Holyrood.  Women’s representation increased by a whole one, yes one MSP, taking us to nearly 35%. It’s nowhere near the nadir of 1999 but it is progress, if at a snail’s pace.

The Labour group by electoral accident rather than design has achieved almost complete balance with 17 out of 35 MSPs women.  The Conservatives have added to their tally too, with 40% of their group now women.  Margo, of course, achieves 100% while the Scottish Greens are perfectly poised with a woman and man MSP.  But it is the Lib Dems and the SNP who let the side down.

Reduced to a group of five, only one Lib Dem MSP is a woman, 20%.  And despite having a record number of MSPs – 69!  some of us still can’t quite believe it! – a shockingly low number are women.  Nineteen, but Tricia Marwick now doesn’t count as belonging to any group, so the figure is down to 18.  Would I have traded an extra woman MSP for the SNP Group instead of having a female Presiding Officer?  Of course not.  But even at 19, this equates to only 27%, slightly over one in four, SNP MSPs being women.  Disappointing doesn’t cover it.

Already the cry is that something must be done.  Shame no one made that cry before the election when candidates were being selected.  Severin Carrell of the Guardian deserves special mention for championing this issue and he is right:  we need “somebody” to sort this out.  And not just on gender balance but also on ethnic representation.  We have made some progress, going from 0 after the tragic, early death of Bashir Ahmad in the last Parliamentary session, to 2. But at 1.5%, the number of MSPs from the BEM community does not equate with the ethnic diversity of our population which is approaching 4%.

The issue of ethnic diversity is a controversial one – for everyone who comments that there are folk of Italian descent (Linda Fabiani and Marco Biagi being two) and many, many more of Irish descent, they are missing the point somewhat.  This is about melting pots, multi-culturalism and assimilation and ethnic and cultural diversity – far too complex for this post but perhaps worthy of a future one.  There is no one of Chinese or Polish descent, despite both being statistically significant commnities in our society.  Scots Asians yes, but no blacks either from African or Caribbean communities.  Our Parliament should be representative of all our people.  That should be a given.

So what to do, other than moan about it on blog spaces or in newspapers?  I agree with Sev.  Something has to be done and the parties seem incapable of doing it without support and guidance.  We don’t need a new body, there are a plethora of them, particularly on women’s issues:  Engender, the Fawcett Society, the Scottish Women’s Convention.  And now the Hansard Society has got involved.

It needs an all-encompassing organisation with a remit to promote democracy more generally, to address all the issues of under-representation of key groups and communities.  It needs to engage positively with the parties and the work has to start now, before candidate selections begin again.  There is a window open now in which to examine and explore possible solutions but the starting point has to be an acknowledgement by all the parties that there is a problem to be addressed.  And an agreement to work on a cross-party basis to achieve real progress.

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Holyrood newbies: ten to watch

May 13

Posted by The Burd in Holyrood | 32 Comments

Sworn in, berths claimed, security passes grinned for, offices allocated: there’s no going back.  If any of the 48 new boys and girls at Holyrood had any niggling doubts about what the next five years might hold, well it’s too late now.  You’re in and we’re stuck with you.

So, congratulations all and welcome.  The burd looks forward to making your acquaintance in the weeks and months to come.  The start of a new parliamentary session is always exciting watching the shiny new faces arrive and wondering who will be quick off the blocks to make their mark.

Over the years, far too many have allowed the size, scale and scope of the place and the role to simply swallow them up.  There is an artform to keeping and looking busy which many have perfected, but it would be good if we can break that mould.

For all the hullabaloo about a lack of powers, the issues which Holyrood controls or touches upon is of a huge range.  Yet, week in, week out, we hear about the same narrow faultlines.  Many important matters are kept hidden under a bushel, or rather out of the limelight, by accident or design.  If the burd could be so bold as to offer the new MSPs one piece of advice, it would be this:  find an issue, make it your own, shine a light into dark corners, generate public and media interest, make change happen.

Aside from settling in – please don’t settle down – there’s plenty to keep the newbies busy.  Who might shine and soar?  Here’s the burdz ten to watch:

  1. Margaret Burgess, SNP MSP for Cunninghame South. Margaret managed to get herself elected as a councillor way back in the mists of time when the height of the SNP’s ambition was the odd seat at Westminster and saving deposits was all the rage.  She’s been a party stalwart for years but has a rich and varied social justice hinterland in her working and personal life to call on.  A Citizens Advice Bureau manager for many years, she has seen what deprivation does first hand.  Holyrood needs more MSPs to articulate the impact of this recession and the difficulties that will result for many vulnerable families and groups in our society from cuts to public services.  She won’t want to make waves or trouble for her leadership but is canny enough to know that there are ways and means to making herself – and the voiceless – heard.  The burd for one is glad she has a berth deserving of her talents.
  2. Mike MacKenzie, SNP MSP for Highlands and Islands region.  Made it into Holyrood by the skin of his teeth, here is someone we could all grow to like:  a businessman with a social conscience.  He has been a successful entrepreneur, providing much needed employment and infrastructure in the Oban area, has supported modern apprenticeships and set up a successful community social enterprise.  Expect someone who thinks and sees issues differently, who is task oriented and solution focused.  He may find himself frustrated by the semantics and boundaries of politics or he may find the way to cut through the crap.  I hope it’s the latter.  We need MSPs to offer something different.
  3. Jenny Marra, Labour MSP for North East Scotland region.  Intelligent, talented, bright, vivacious.  Yep, the girl has it all.  Oh, and a USP as the niece of folk legend and Dundonian, Michael Marra.  This is one wee star who will soar.  Media friendly, with an intellect and the education to back it up, she may be a bit wet behind the ears and spent much of her life in the political bubble, but that’s not a detraction from her undoubted skills.  Expect lots of salivating journos beating a path to her door for feature pieces.  If she chooses her moments and issues carefully, she will go far.
  4. Marco Biagi, SNP MSP for Edinburgh Central.  Gonnae say that oath in Italian again, please Marco?!  Another with a ferocious intellect and the graduation certificates to back it up, Salmond referred to Marco as the party’s resident psephologist but the boy’s talents are much greater than this.  A policy wonk who will have to learn fast how to transfer these skills into people ones in order to turn a surprise win into a safe hold, Marco should do very well.  Here’s hoping he can orate as well as he thinks and liven up debates.  Or at least just bamboozle them with knowledge.  Preferably in Italian.
  5. Joan McAlpine, SNP MSP for South of Scotland region A high achiever by anyone’s standards.  One of the few women journalists ever to edit one of Scotland’s foremost blatts, Joan also formed one half of the SNP’s most glamorous couple, when married to musician and writer, Pat Kane.  Played a key role in the media team during this election campaign, she could be a contender for an early Ministerial role, something culture oriented perhaps, as Salmond is quite fond of pigeon holing folk.  She should be a super soaraway star but… there is a teensy risk that the transition from journalist to parliamentarian could prove an ultimately frustrating one.
  6. Graeme Pearson, Labour MSP for South of Scotland region.  One of the few MSPs breaking the traditional Labour mould, Pearson is a former high ranking police officer.  He was the first Director-General of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and as an Assistant Divisional Commander at Strathclyde, introduced the controversial youth curfew pilot in Hamilton and also the first CCTV cameras to Airdrie town centre.  Yep, he’s to blame, and probably had a hand in Labour’s mandatory knife crime sentencing policy too.  Expect a strident but informed voice on crime issues.  If he wants a long career, he might want to think about how he can make a more thoughtful contribution to reforming our criminal justice system.
  7. Ruth Davidson, Conservative MSP for Glasgow. Ah, you’ve got to like a girl with boundless ambition.  Two minutes in the door as an MSP and already touting herself – or at least her supporters are – as a possible leadership contender in the autumn.  Whatever the rank and file think, the Tories need bright young things with a different background – TA volunteer and lesbian, no less – to start the process of detoxifying the brand.  With the lamented demise of Derek Brownlee, expect Ruth to slip seamlessly into his role as media commentator.  But she needs to prove there is substance to match the sizzle.
  8. Paul Wheelhouse, SNP MSP for South of Scotland. I’ll declare an interest – he’s a pal and few results made me happier than this one.  Hardworking, loyal, quiet, thoughtful and intelligent.  And that’s on a bad day.  By his own efforts, he’s turned a safe Conservative constituency into one that’s on a shoogly peg, recruiting a willing team to support him in the process.  These are real politician’s skills.  And he’s another policy wonk:  an economist with a keen understanding of further and higher education issues and if anyone was your man to lay bare the impact of PPP capital projects on the public purse, Paul is.  I don’t have to hope that he will do well:  I know he will.
  9. Alison Johnstone, Green MSP for Lothians.  Well, at least Patrick got a buddy back and how nice that the Scottish Greens are perfectly gender balanced.  On the surface, she seems a bit of ying to Patrick’s yang and that is another good thing. Alison’s bright, feisty, committed, telegenic, but if she wanted to ease herself into the role, she’s in for a shock.  With only two players, both Greens need to be operating at full tilt from the outset.  She’s definitely got something to offer and there is a niche with her name on it.  She just needs to find it fast and hold to it too.  Ditching the cooncil ward in 2012 will help.
  10. Humza Yousaf, SNP MSP for Glasgow.  Well, he’s already stolen the show with that wonderful bagpipes and bhangra outfit at the sweary-in ceremony.  He’s intelligent, articulate, a poster boy for new Scots, but with a refreshing honesty and confidence, as well as a good heart.  His track record in community activism would shame many politicians twice his age.  Humza represents all that the SNP is trying to promote to Scotland and expect him to be promoted lang and weary as a spokesperson.  There’s a risk he could become ubiquitous and he’d do well to sit back for a moment and choose his course, if he doesn’t want to burn out.  And not to lose his tendency to be ever so slightly off message on occasion.  It’s all about standing out from that very big crowd of 69 when the moment is right.  I’ll go so far as to punt him as the next but one SNP leader.

Tags: , ,

#sp11 under Sainte-Laguë.

May 11

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Holyrood | 64 Comments

A guest post from Richard Laird. Richard is a Politics graduate from the University of Dundee and past parliamentary candidate for the Scottish National Party who tweets as @Richard_Laird.

André Sainte-LaguëThose of you who saw last night’s Newsnight Scotland will have seen Professor John Curtice raise the possibility of altering the system used to elect the Scottish Parliament. Specifically, Professor Curtice suggested changing the way regional MSPs are elected by replacing the D’Hondt formula with the Sainte-Laguë equivalent.

Named after French mathematician André Sainte-Laguë (left), and used in numerous countries as a form of proportional representation, the Sainte-Laguë method uses the same process as D’Hondt with one change: the formula. In Scotland under D’Hondt, regional seats are allocated to parties (or Independents) by dividing their regional votes by one more than the number of seats they have already won. Under Sainte-Laguë, the process is the same except the regional votes are divided by one more than double the number of seats won. In practice, this means that instead of the vote being divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., it is divided by 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. Let’s look at a worked example.

Here is the (condensed) result from the West Scotland region in last week’s election:

Con Grn Lab LD SNP
Regional Votes 35,995 8,414 92,530 9,148 117,306
Constituencies 0 0 4 0 6

This result meant Labour won three regional seats, the Nationalists won two, and the Conservatives also won two. If Sainte-Laguë had been used, here is how the count would have played out:

Con Grn Lab LD SNP
First Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/1 8,414/1 92,530/9 9,148/1 117,306/13
New Total 35,995 8,414 10,281.11 9,148 9,023.54
Second Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/3 8,414/1 92,530/9 9,148/1 117,306/13
New Total 11,998.33 8,414 10,281.11 9,148 9,023.54
Third Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/5 8,414/1 92,530/9 9,148/1 117,306/13
New Total 7199 8,414 10,281.11 9,148 9,023.54
Fourth Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/5 8,414/1 92,530/11 9,148/1 117,306/13
New Total 7199 8,414 8,411.82 9,148 9,023.54
Fifth Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/5 8,414/1 92,530/11 9,148/3 117,306/13
New Total 7199 8,414 8,411.82 3,049.33 9,023.54
Sixth Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/5 8,414/1 92,530/11 9,148/3 117,306/15
New Total 7199 8,414 8,411.82 3,049.33 7,820.4
Seventh Regional Seat
Formula 35,995/5 8,414/3 92,530/11 9,148/3 117,306/15
New Total 7199 2,804.67 8,411.82 3,049.33 7,820.4

As you can see, the Conservatives retain two seats while the Greens and LibDems each win one seat with Labour and the SNP losing out accordingly. A similar story transpires across Scotland producing a Parliament which looks like this:

Region Constituency Regional Total Change
SNP 53 11 64 -5
Lab 15 19 34 -3
Con 3 12 15 ±0
LD 2 5 7 +2
Grn 0 7 7 +5
Oth 0 2 2 +1

Because it removes the bias towards larger parties, Sainte-Laguë would have seen the Greens and Lib Dems benefit at the expense of the SNP and Labour. It would also have seen George Galloway elected in Glasgow. The reason for this is that Sainte-Laguë makes it easier for a smaller party to win a first seat, but increasingly difficult to win additional ones. Only Central Scotland would be without a Green MSP with the SNP losing its top-up seats in Mid Scotland & Fife and North-East Scotland. Overall, the regions would now look like this:

Region Con Grn Lab LD SNP Oth
Central 1 0 3 0 3 0
Glasgow 1 1 2 0 2 1
H&I 2 1 2 0 2 0
Lothians 2 1 2 1 0 1
MS&F 2 1 3 1 0 0
North-East 2 1 3 1 0 0
South 0 1 2 1 3 0
West 2 1 2 1 1 0

Obviously, the changes in membership would have ramifications for the functioning of the Parliament. The increase in Green MSPs would see the party given with a seat on the Parliamentary Bureau (which determines what business the Parliament will conduct) and would likely see the Greens and LibDems posing questions to the First Minister on alternating weeks, as the Greens and SSP did between 2003 and 2006. Crucially, the SNP would be one seat short of a majority and would require the support of at least one other MSP to get motions and Bills through. However, the balance of pro- and anti-independence MSPs would remain the same with five Nationalists swapped for five Greens.

In his remarks on Newsnight, Professor Curtice addressed the fact that the SNP won a majority of seats on a minority of the vote and how the Holyrood electoral system was supposed to prevent this. His suggestion of a switch from D’Hondt to Sainte-Laguë would indeed have prevented this (just!), but would not have stopped pro-independence parties winning a comfortable majority. A move to Sainte-Laguë would improve the proportionality of Holyrood, but what really distorts the outcome is the existence of constituencies electing by First-Past-the-Post and the fact that these constituencies elect a majority of MSPs. If you want a purely proportionate parliament, change that instead.

Sauce for two geese and one gander.

May 11

Posted by James in Elections, Holyrood | 7 Comments

Three geese, one brown two whiteDespite the crushing referendum result last week, there is one place AV will never be displaced – when politicians choose one of their own. It’s not just Labour – even the Tories do it. Sure – it’s often done differently, round by round, to allow some very sophisticated game-playing (although that doesn’t work when the membership get a say). When the Tories chose between IDS, Ken Clarke and Michael Portillo, the IDS crowd lent their first round votes to Clarke because they knew a) that their guy would make the next round and b) Ken Clarke couldn’t win.

And you can see why they use it. Candidates with a narrow support base (like Clarke in 2001) would come through the middle, especially if two similar candidates stand. You get to express all your preferences. You can vote sincerely throughout (although as above, spreading it out over several separate ballots allows a bit more gaming to come in).

Today Holyrood will use the same system to elect a Presiding Officer. We have three candidates who could almost have been designed to demonstrate this principle. Two fierce SNP women, Christine Grahame and Tricia Marwick, plus Hugh Henry, a dry but impressive former Labour minister. Christine declared first, and without iterated run-offs, that would surely have kept Tricia out. Instead she’s surely going to win.

Assuming for the sake of argument a degree of voting by party, which is unfortunately pretty likely even for a notionally non-partisan role, and assuming the rest of the tattered Yoonyonisht Conshpirashy back Hugh, it’s easy to see how he could win. Yet there can be few in the Chamber with a first preference for either of the SNP candidates and a second preference for Hugh.

The fact remains, as the AV campaign should have said, preferential voting remains the only sensible way to indicate opinion and count votes when electing a single candidate (fans of various obscure Condorcet mechanisms please take it up in the comments). And as should be obvious, there’s no good way to elect single candidates and achieve proportionality.

Why Labour Lost: a dissenting view.

May 11

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Holyrood, Parties | 67 Comments

Another wee guest post from Aidan Skinner, this time shorn of Python references.

Loot.There’s been a lot of chat about why the Scottish Labour Party lost the election on Thursday. A lot of what people are saying now in public are what was being said in private (and not so privately by some) during the campaign – too negative, few distinctive Labour policies, little discussion of any policy at all, the one we discussed most being a non-sensical and somewhat ephemeral one on non-mandatory mandatory minimum sentences for knife crime, matching the SNP’s regressive council tax freeze, failure to engage with Lib Dem voters, Iain Gray being a nice, thoughtful man who had presentational problems, lack of engagement with party membership, complacency at early poll leads. The wish list of high minded, hummus munching, social democratic, starting-to-buy-the-Guardian-again-after-last-years-Lib-Dem-endorsement, might-possibly-have-second-voted-Green lot is as long as the arms of their cardigans.

A lot of them are entirely accurate, and we absolutely have to address them. They’re why we lost badly. Why people like Andy Kerr and Pauline McNeill aren’t MSPs any more. They’re not why we lost though. They affected the scale of our defeat. They gave Alex Salmond his majority, which is why everybody’s working 5 days a week now instead of the 3 we were working previously. But we have fewer MSPs than the SNP because we were outspent.

The SNP had an almighty war chest thanks to Souter matching donations, likely to be 3 to 4 times the Scottish Labour Parties entire annual income. And, far more than any other factor, money wins elections. It’s not just the media buy, or the slick presentation or helicoptering the leader about. It pays for full time workers, for policy development, for media training and for set pieces which create the atmosphere and allow parties to create a media narrative. Something which we in the Labour party failed at, we let the SNP create the narrative around things like Subway-gate and Asda-gate. With money comes a professionalism which dedication alone can’t substitute for.

Of course, the process isn’t quite as simple as turning votes into money but there is a very strong correlation and, I would suggest, a causal relationship. The Scottish Labour Party must address our fund raising, and we had a particular problem with money having just fought the UK general election last year. A lot of the other things we need to do, particularly involving the party membership more and having a more coherent, positive approach will help. But you can’t win an election on intellect and spirit alone. Cash is king, unfortunately.