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Not every election is black and white, unless you’re a Lib Dem in Pentland Hills

May 4

Posted by Jeff in Elections | 18 Comments

When you are beaten by a penguin in an election, you know you’ve had a bad night. Equally, when a penguin is the biggest news story of the day, you know that an election hasn’t been terribly exciting.

The story of the Scottish election, much like budget spending commitments, probably revolves around Glasgow. The SNP dreamed of an overall majority and had to endure that dream slipping from hoping for being the biggest party, through accepting Labour being the biggest party to the nightmare of yet another five years of Labour hegemony in Scotland’s largest city.

It is testament of course to the SNP’s ambition, and Labour’s lack of therein, that national election results that see the current governing party winning the most council seats in the nation as a disappointment. The SNP has overall control of Dundee and Angus, and made gains in Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Not too shabby for a Government forced into making cuts. Mind you, if you make an election all about one city before voting begins, don’t complain if journalists make the result all about that city even if the result doesn’t go your way.

The Tories cemented their position as Scotland’s third party and will enjoy being the kingmakers on many a council. Cue bread and butter issues, common sense politics and Ruth Davidson doing her best Annabel Goldie impression. It was far from a disaster for the new kickboxing leader, if a long way short of ‘kickass’.

Disaster is the only word that can be used for how the Lib Dems fared, dropping from 151 councillors to a lowly 71, wiped out in too many areas to mention. It is genuinely sad to see the ashen faces of those innocent souls who have lost their jobs as a direct result of the Faustian pact made by Nick Clegg and co. This is the front line of the mauling of the Liberal Democrats and there seems to be no end in sight of the resentment Scots feel for their propping up of Cameron’s government.

The flip side of this Lib Dem ‘ArmaCleggon’ is that the Greens are finding spaces to get eager bums on Council seats. Edinburgh Greens doubled in number to six, there are more Greens in Glasgow than Lib Dems and Tories combined, there’s a shiny Stirling Green in the shape of Mark Ruskell where Lib Dems were wiped out and Martin Ford returns as an Aberdeenshire councillor. A good night and an overdue foothold for a party that could yet push on from there.

So where does this leave things then?

The SNP has clearly not had the magic springboard from which it can take significant momentum into the independence referendum campaign. Given we are still 2+ years away from this referendum, I’m not entirely sure how important this is and have to wonder if this narrative was merely an angle to make an otherwise lacklustre council election more interesting.

That said, despite finishing first nationally, the strategy clearly went wrong somewhere – expecting three councillors in Govan and ending up with one doesn’t sit right and standing two councillors in Leith and only getting the more junior one in (possibly due to spelling order) is a gaffe. McVey finished ahead of Deputy Lord Provost Rob Munn and it’s very sad to not see Rob back in Edinburgh Council. Shooting for the moon and promising political earthquakes are one thing, but schoolboy errors can’t afford to be made in two years time.

For Labour, this has to be a good night for Johann Lamont. Whether the increase in Labour’s share of the vote was directly her doing or not, she has led a Labour party that has ruffled SNP feathers, if not quite rattled their cage. That, in the conext of the past few years, is clear progress. Furthermore, a Labour machine that looked like it was antiquated and running on fumes has clearly been bashed into shape and refuelled to such an extent that it got the vote out where it counted, delivering overall control at Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire councils. And Glasgow, of course.

It’s probably best to finish by reflecting on a point that the SNP is pushing hard, quite probably to move the news agenda away from the confidence-sapping, bruising defeat in Glasgow.

Mid-term elections tend to involve the public giving the governing party a kicking, that’s certainly what happened in England & Wales. Well, the SNP has governed Scotland for five years, most Scots consider Holyrood to be the primary Parliament and yet, they rewarded the SNP with more councillors than 2007 and the highest vote share.

So, a solid result for the SNP, a good night for Labour, reasons to be optimistic for the Greens, ambivalence for the Tories and penguin pie for everybody else.

Festival of democracy posted missing

May 3

Posted by James in Elections, Local government | 20 Comments

Today’s election is not just the first STV local election not held on the same day as a Holyrood election, it’s also the first time the capital has voted since banning lamppost placards. In June last year the SNP and Tories voted the ban through, meaning Edinburgh, like Glasgow, Dundee and other local authorities, would be placard-free this year.

It’s a baffling decision, given the legal requirement, largely well-observed by all parties, to take them down promptly. When the turnout figures are published, it’ll probably be forgotten amongst the reasons given for low numbers.

In general I have less of a problem with low turnout than media commentators tend to do, and compulsory voting means we get results driven more by those who don’t really care about the results. But government and agencies at all levels should still be making it easier to vote (including a move away from Thursdays, or towards voting on more than one day), and easier to remember to vote.

It’s unlikely that placards ever change elections much, although 1999 may be an exception – a sea of Green placards across Edinburgh gave Robin Harper’s candidacy a boost. What they do do is remind everyone that there’s an election on. They spark conversations about politics, and they used to give the city a “festival of democracy” feel. The city allows placards for the Fringe and for the actual festival, which is fine – but is an election not equally worth promoting? Whoever wins in Edinburgh I hope this bizarre rule gets overturned before the city votes again.

Vote exhaustively, vote locally

May 2

Posted by James in Elections, Local government | 22 Comments

All too often local elections get billed as “a crucial mid-term test of support for the Government”, or even described as “the biggest opinion poll since the general election”. It’s intensely irritating and it should be ignored. Sure, Holyrood and Westminster have more powers, and sure, people’s opinions of the parties nationally will play out tomorrow. But a week’s worth of punditry about the national implications will be quickly forgotten – these elections will again elect local councils for a long five year term.

And they should be regarded as important in their own right. Local government matters, despite the long years over which power has been sucked from them by Westminster and more recently by Holyrood – notably, does anyone think they’re electing a local administration with the power to make tax choices based on the needs of their community? Local councils can cock up important transport projects or they can expand safe cycle networks, they can privatise and close down local services or instead pay a living wage, they can send their own leadership around in limos or make them walk, cycle or take the bus, and they set the tone for planning too.

It matters what the parties in office have achieved, and what are the other credible candidates offering? Do they have principles that matter to you locally? I’m in favour of independence, but it doesn’t tell you much about what SNP councillors or candidates would do, for instance. In Edinburgh their shambolic administration with the Lib Dems means the Nats will be marked down my ballot paper. Conversely Glasgow has been run by Labour for Labour alone, with incompetence and the whiff of something worse, and I’m not surprised to see Green councillor Kieran Wild arguing that that city needs a change too.

Also, your candidates matter, if you can find out enough about them to make an informed judgement. Until I moved house in the run-up to the 2007 local elections I lived in a ward represented by the Labour councillor who rammed the doomed Caltongate project through planning. If I’d stayed where I was he’d have probably got my last preference. If I lived in Aberdeenshire I’d look very closely at who backed the Trump application, or in Aberdeen who voted which way on Union Terrace Gardens.

The electoral system is the most proportional we get to cast, and not using all your preferences only makes sense if you genuinely can’t choose between two candidates – for instance, if there are two indistinguishable Tories standing in your ward and they’d get your last two preferences. SNP MSP John Mason recently posted his completed ballot paper on Facebook, which apparently isn’t quite a breach of the 1983 Representation of the People Act, and he’d only voted SNP with his first two preferences, despite it being a four member ward. John: is it really the case that you don’t care whether the other two councillors elected are Green, Labour, Lib Dem or Tory? Seriously?

Using all your preferences is also a particular kind of anoraky fun. In 2007 I had the pleasure of putting a 1 next to Alison Johnstone’s name – a good friend as well someone who knew would make a great Green councillor – then putting my least favourite Lib Dem last, and filling in the gaps. Personally, I tend to put the Tories second last with Lib Dems last, because at least the Tories tend to be more honest about their plans, but it’s not easy. This time I’ll need to work out where UKIP fit in amongst that tail end.

This is the first time Scottish voters have had a local election using STV without a Holyrood election on the same day. Turnout will be down, of course, but that may not be the disaster the pundits will claim it to be if those who do vote are those who care about their local area and vote both locally and exhaustively. Don’t worry about your country. Your local authority area needs you.

Paranoid SNP should welcome scrutiny

May 1

Posted by Jeff in Parties | 72 Comments

Alex Salmond’s unfortunate late pull out from BBC Question Time last week was a missed opportunity for the party. A series of soft blows over the past few weeks for the SNP culminated in what was arguably Johann Lamont’s best performance at First Minister’s Questions since she became Labour leader.

Granted, it was an open goal with the First Minister himself credited with an unwitting assist but a public pulpit from which to come out loudly fighting on Murdoch questions would have done the SNP the world of good in terms of building some momentum and dampening down the distant disquiet that could yet spill over within the party. It’s little wonder that Alex Salmond chose to make a rare mea culpa over Murdoch in the week before the important May elections. The FM has gone from having done nothing wrong to learning lessons which, to me, doesn’t entirely make logical sense.

There’s been more than a little hubris at play recently, not just from the perennially self-satisfied Salmond though. On Twitter the other day, this remarkable exchange involving the SNP’s former Chief of Staff Luke Skipper suggests that some in the party believe that the media shouldn’t be asking questions of the Government at all. I’m sure there’s a term for such an approach but I hesitate to repeat it:

@BBCDouglasFraser Why does #scotgov have to back News Corp owning all of BSkyB to protect Sky jobs in Scotland? It failed, so are jobs at risk?

@BBCJamesCOOK It’s an excellent question for #FMQs: How many Scottish jobs have been lost as a result of the BSkyB deal’s failure?

@LJ_Skipper I think it’s the opposition’s job to come up with the questions. Good ol’unbiased #BBC #FMQs #listeningric

@BBCJamesCOOK Asking questions isn’t biased. It’s journalism. Disturbing if reporters stopped from questioning.

It takes quite a leap of mental gymnastics to disagree with the BBC’s James Cook here. We should all embrace an open, free, rigorous media asking uncomfortable questions of the Government, on whatever topic they feel the public will be interested in. Whether those questions are posed directly or rhetorically as a would-be FMQ is neither here nor there.

Even the usually sure-footed Burd had the touch of the paranoia around a recent post when she rallied around Geoff Aberdein after those ‘nasty media types’ ganged up on the Special Adviser.

“Scottish Labour thinks it has a cunning plan to wound Alex Salmond over the Murdoch stuff by gunning for his Special Advisor, Geoff Aberdein. It worked at Westminster, after all. Following revelations at the Leveson inquiry about the extent of contact between Jeremy Hunt’s Special Advisor and the Murdoch Empire’s man over the BSkyB takeover bid, the poor wee SpAD was thrown to the political and media wolves in the hope that some fresh meat would sate their appetites. Not a chance, it simply whets them.

But the circumstances are different in Scotland. The reason Hunt is in the firing line, and the reason his special advisor had to go, is because he was supposed to be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity on this takeover bid.”

Conflating Hunt’s quasi-judicial role with the quite separate issues that Salmond faces is a bit sneaky and is certainly weak. Opting not to tackle an issue head on is a typical second option behind pretending there isn’t an issue in the first place, which is all the more bizarre as Kate freely acknowledged that Salmond is getting too close to Murdoch.

As for the “poor wee Spad”, I really don’t think you can have it both ways. You can’t be a special adviser to the Scottish Government without a certain degree of scrutiny, particularly when the BBC reports, not unreasonably, that a dubious deal appears to have been done with News international.

The potentially damning quote, “I met with Alex Salmond’s adviser today. He will call Hunt whenever we need him to.”, could mean anything of course but it would be a dereliction of duty on the part of investigative journalists and the political opposition alike to not explore a potential abuse of power, lobbying of the UK Government by the Scottish Government at a time of Rupert Murdoch’s choosing. Who voted for that?

Not that this sensitivity isn’t understandable. I guess it must be easier to be on the backfoot when you’re Labour or Tory because you know you’ll be back up riding high in a term or two. It’s taken the SNP 70 years to get to where they are. Who is to say that this Nationalist surge won’t deflate as quickly as it was built up, and stay there?

One year in, it seems a parliamentary majority doesn’t sit well with the SNP. A victim mentality built up over decades coupled with not being able to point the finger of blame elsewhere is hard to reconcile on the face of it. The majority may have delivered the referendum but it’s proving to be am increasingly difficult challenge to hold everything together against the relentless march of time.

One can only hope that the party can ditch the paranoia, get back to basics on the devolved powers that they do hold, accept that criticism, questions and scrutiny are part of the job and kick on from there.

One step backwards over the past few weeks won’t be so bad if the weeks ahead bring a few steps forwards.

Greek election – drama predicted

Apr 30

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, International | Comments off

A guest post today from our irregular Greek correspondent, Marinos Antypas, looking ahead to this Sunday’s elections. 

So here is my Greek pre-election digest. The political landscape is very fluid. What is certain is that the two once-big parties will see a halving of their combined votes. Traditionally being able to gather between 80 and 90% of the vote between them, they are now desperate for the 35% between them that would allow them to form a coalition government.

If we are to believe the opinion polls (which must stop 2 weeks before elections, so the last one we had was one week ago), Nea Demokratia are in the lead but are struggling to gather 20%. PASOK fluctuates between 8% and 15%, under its new President, Venizelos. Both parties have made it clear they are willing to form a coalition. Still, the percentage they need to form a government is conditional on how much of the vote goes to parties that do not manage to get into parliament.

This is a tricky one: if say 20% of the vote goes to parties that do not manage to pass the national 3% necessary to get them into parliament then the coalition or the first party needs only 35% to form a government of 151/300 majority. If the percentage of such votes is small, say 1%, then the coalition or first party needs something closer to 40%, with a graded variance for the scenarios in between.

Now if ND gets 20% and PASOK get, say, 15% (35% between them) what about the other parties?

The Left: It looks like SYRIZA (the leftist coalition party) will come second or third with 12-15%. KKE (the Communist Party) will get around 11%-12% and the Democratic Left (Eurocommunists) around 10%-13%. The Greens (the Left Greens rather than the insignificant Right Greens) seem likely to get in Parliament with 3-4%. So the Left combined gets between 36-44%. Thus SYRIZA is urging post-election cooperation and the formation of a Left Front government.

The Right: It looks like the leading party to the Right of ND is a new party, the Independent Greeks, led by an ex-ND conspiracy-theorist MP. The party has a religious right profile and in the polls gets 10-15%. Scandalously, SYRIZA has announced that it would accept a vote of confidence from the Independent Greeks so as to form a government (supposedly with the General Secretary of the KKE as PM!). LAOS, the Le-Penist extreme-right, is struggling to get into Parliament with an estimated 3%. Its votes have been absorbed by the Golden Dawn (Neo-Nazis), who seem to be getting 5% of the vote (scary stuff!). So the extreme-right seems to collect between 18-21% of the vote.

Neoliberals: The two neoliberalist parties seem to be struggling to get into Parliament. They are both pro-IMF, and it seems unlikely that they can both get 3%, so a safe assumption is that one will just manage to get into Parliament. Both are led by ex-MPs, one by the defeated presidential candidate for ND, and daughter of Mitsotakis (the old ND PM), Dora Bakogianni.

So the three ‘blocks of power’ are:

Pro-IMF (ND+PASOK+Neolibs) 35-38%
Anti-IMF Left: 36-44%
Anti-IMF Right: 18-21%
Weird Left-Right Coalition (Anti-IMF Left+Independent Greeks): 46-59%

Now why does this balance of power matter? Only the leading party can normally call for a coalition, yet if this fails it is believed that the President of the Republic, if he is willing, can seek to prevent further elections and chaos by giving the coalition formation order to the second party, which might be SYRIZA.

In any case it will be extremely difficult for a pro-IMF coalition to govern if it does not have at least 165 seats in Parliament, the number necessary to elect a new President of the Republic. If their Presidential candidate is not voted in, then elections will have to be called again.

Politically speaking, it will be difficult to rule if the two pro-IMF parties do not gather something around 45-50% of the vote, for then the anti-IMF parties on the Left and Right will always be able to protest that this is a sham democratic process.

So as you can see the situation is precarious. No one knows what the results will be in an election contest which is universally recognised as the most significant of the Republic.

picture credit – teacher dude