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An SNP-Labour coalition for Edinburgh?

Apr 29

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Local government, Parties | 13 Comments

A guest this lovely Sunday from Rory Scothorne. Rory is an Edinburgh University student, political blogger and part-time music writer who once had a tweet quoted in the Scotsman and won’t let anyone forget it, although he can’t remember what it actually said. He blogs about Scottish and UK politics at Scotland Thinks, where his writing has been generously described as ‘swivel-eyed’ and ‘a load of codswallop’.

There are few certainties in Scottish politics, but you can always be fairly sure that Labour and the Scottish National Party won’t get on. Since devolution, the enmity between Scotland’s two biggest parties has sizzled with the mix of hatred and grudging respect that characterises the most established of foes.

There are obvious reasons for such a gulf. In the high-school playground of Scottish politics, the SNP are the exciting new kid in town, arriving with a style, self-confidence and controversial past that catches everyone’s eye, allowing them to usurp the established authority that Labour’s long-serving head prefect has begun to take for granted. No wonder they’re upset.

To the SNP, Labour’s dogged loyalty to the union and all its perceived inequities is a betrayal of the Scottish people, abandoning us to distant Tory governments in exchange for a few jobs for life on the green benches in London.

Since Willie Wolfe pulled the SNP over to the left, both parties have been competing for dominance of a similar ideological territory, but their inability to separate on policy leads them both down a spiral of personality politics and cheap sniping.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

It’s precisely that ideological similarity that makes the animosity so frustrating. It turns it into an almost fraternal conflict, a tragic spectacle where we’re all secretly rooting for them to put their differences aside and remember their love for each other. Jimmy Reid, Alex Neil and Jim Sillars all started out in Labour and ended up with the SNP, and the transition for them was not about some tectonic shift in values – merely a realisation that the kind of society they hoped for could best be achieved outside of the United Kingdom.

Of course, nobody really expects Labour and the SNP in Holyrood to put that single, profound difference aside and join forces for social justice. The constitution is far too important an issue in this country to be sidelined.

But what about local government? There’s no doubt that the parties instinctively dislike each other just as much at a local level as they do nationally, but there’s not really much sense to that. After all, SNP councillors can’t legislate for a referendum. Nor can Labour councillors vote against one. That central issue that pushes the two parties apart is completely irrelevant at a council level.

That’s why it makes a great deal of sense for the SNP to consider the Labour Party as coalition partners. The voting system means it’s going to be hard for either to get many majorities without coalition, but if they refuse to try working together that will be a struggle. In many local authorities it’s unlikely that the Liberal Democrats or the Greens will manage to get enough of the vote to top up either Labour or the SNP and take them past the halfway mark, while both will be deeply reluctant to join an unholy union with the Tories while that party leads such an unpopular administration in Westminster.

Edinburgh is a prime example of where this can happen. The capital’s Lib Dems will suffer heavily from the compounding effects of leading an unpopular local administration and joining an even more unpopular UK one, and may well be unable to take Labour or the SNP up to the 29 seats needed to form an administration. The Greens won’t win enough either. There could be an SNP minority with a Conservative confidence and supply deal, but that’s a huge political risk considering the Tories’ unpopularity.

If the SNP become the largest party, Tom Buchanan’s recovery from surgery places Steve Cardownie as the obvious choice for the city’s next leader. He defected from Labour to the SNP in 2005, claiming conversion to independence and stressing his frustration with New Labour. I suspect that’s a frustration shared by many of his former colleagues across Scotland, who might just take a certain subversive glee in pairing up with the Nats.

It was, after all, a makeshift coalition of SNP, Labour and Greens that brought down the Lib Dem/Tory proposals for ‘Alternative Business Models’. They’ve demonstrated a willingness to work together on centre-left goals, and coalition would be an opportunity to demonstrate that they can both put their shared social-democratic vision for Scotland ahead of the cheap party politics that demeans public debate in this country. The symbolism of such unprecedented co-operation taking place in Scotland’s capital would be a breath of fresh air in a city that sorely needs it.

The Fascists are not on the march

Apr 27

Posted by Malc in Elections, International | 24 Comments

We have a guest of a most special sort today. Our dear friend Malcolm Harvey, a founding editor of Better Nation and more recently an occasional Thinker of Unpopular Thoughts, considers the real meaning of the Front National’s first round poll results in France.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in French politics, but I guess I know a little more than some. I’m what you’d call an interested observer of elections (which you would never have guessed from my previous involvement with this blog). I have to say though, I was a little surprised by – what I’d characterise as the – rather hysterical reaction to Marine Le Pen’s polling 18% in the first round of the Presidential election.

The first thing which should be pointed out is that this was only the first round. The French use a run-off system to decide their President. The first round is open – and there are often as many as 10 candidates to choose from. The two candidates with the highest share of the first round vote go forward to a second (and final) round two weeks later. So voters have what you might call more freedom – they can make their first vote a vote for their clear preference, or make it a protest vote, with the knowledge that the President will not be decided until the second round.

We’re often hearing (from the likes of John Curtice) that the Scottish electorate have become much more “sophisticated” in their distinguishing between UK, Scottish, European and local authority elections and altering their votes accordingly – and it would appear the French are equally knowledgeable about how to best operate their electoral system.

The second thing I’d point out is that Marine Le Pen’s party – the Front National – are not the party of her father. Though they do maintain what would colloquially be described as a “right-wing” ideology, since she took over the presidency of the party has had much more of an economic – and dare I say it, populist – focus. A Eurosceptic, Marine Le Pen advocates French withdrawal from the Eurozone – and also opposes free trade, supporting a form of protectionism instead. In a time of economic recession, when the EU has proved unpopular and the Eurozone itself is falling apart, you can understand why this would be a popular position, and one which voters might well support.

But it isn’t only an economic position. It is a position which is consistent with what, for want of a better phrase, would pass for French nationalism. Until very recently, France was the epitome of a centralised state, to the point that regionalism was totally disallowed and the use of distinct regional languages (Breton, Basque, Occitan) was actively stamped out. There was “one France”. The point I’m emphasising here is that the French nation was above all else. And while this policy has been discontinued, the attitude – the primacy of Frenchness over others, the protection of the “one France” – remains in some places, and can go some way to explaining a vote for the Front National.

Of course, there will inevitably be those who subscribe to their anti-immigration views. But to characterise this as a “rise of fascism” is, I think, overstating the case. For the above reasons – the economic position of the Front National, and the fact that this was only the first round of the election – mean that categorising those who voted for Marine Le Pen as “extremist” or “right-wing” is somewhat simplistic. Indeed, some might even have been attracted to them for their anti-nuclear position (evidence for James that even those who would otherwise be beyond the pale can have some redeeming qualities!).

The majority of that 18% was, in my opinion, a clear protest vote. With the second round on 6 May, we’ll see what that 18% do. Perhaps some of them – those who feel that neither Sarkozy nor Hollande offer them a clear option – will stay at home. But many will choose their “least worst” option in the second round, an indication, perhaps, that while they wanted to display some kind of protest in the first round, they will return to a more moderate position in the second.

Why won’t the Presiding Officer eat up her Greens?

Apr 26

Posted by James in Holyrood | 30 Comments

Today, for the first time this session, Patrick Harvie had a scheduled question at First Minister’s Questions. That’s almost a year without having a question taken in advance even once, zero out of more than thirty sessions, and it’s pretty inexplicable.

Sure, Patrick and Alison aren’t a massive Parliamentary group, but then neither are Willie Rennie and his four associates.

In May last year, the Presiding Officer wrote to all party leaders explaining how regular access to FMQs would be divided. The letter is at the end of this post. Two weeks out of three, Willie Rennie gets a question.

That’s maybe 20 scheduled questions for him over the first year of this arrangement, given recess. And yet Tricia Marwick also promised we would see “the Green Party being selected from time to time on a roughly proportional basis“.

The maths aren’t terribly hard. Willie Rennie is leader of a group of five, Patrick Harvie is co-convenor of a group of two. If Willie gets 20 shots, the equivalent for Patrick would be to be heard 8 times. Not a mere 1. That, Presiding Officer, is nowhere near “roughly proportional“. This isn’t about more chances for point-scoring or partisanship – the public who voted Green have the same right to have their concerns heard as those who voted Lib Dem, and “on a roughly proportional basis“. Holyrood was established to reflect the diversity of views in Scotland, as partially reflected in our electoral system, and that principle needs to apply to MSPs’ only opportunity to hold the First Minister to account.

While the Green Party is substantially under-represented, it turns out the Christine Grahame party is substantially over-represented. I like Christine – she’s probably the best SNP committee convenor we have right now, for one thing, and she asks pertinent questions too, both with her constituency hat and her convenorship hat on, but the Presiding Officer has essentially turned FMQs into the Christine and Alex show. Here’s her showing since the last election:

  1. March 2012: Lockerbie
  2. February 2012: Business in Tweedbank (constituency)
  3. January 2012: Benefits and child poverty
  4. December 2011: Access to courts (supplementary)
  5. December 2011: Double jeopardy
  6. November 2011: Carloway report (supplementary)
  7. September 2011: Waverley line (constituency)
  8. September 2011: STV access (supplementary)
  9. September 2011: Lockerbie
    (Parliament is in recess for July and August)
  10. June 2011: Cadder ruling
  11. June 2011: Waverley line (constituency)

Since the last election there has been only one month when Tricia Marwick hasn’t called Christine Grahame, not counting the summer recess: October last year (and there were two weeks of recess in October, so only two rounds of FMQs). Seven of those have been scheduled questions. Patrick Harvie has had supplementary questions taken over that period, like this, but the dire new Parliament website has a broken search function and is returning precisely zero results for Patrick at FMQs.

I like the Presiding Officer, even if she’ll probably never speak to me again, and the explanation for this gross disproportionality isn’t clear.  But it’s hard not to conclude it’s personal.

 

 

Presiding Officer’s letter of 25 May 2011

I am writing to advise you of the decisions I have taken in relation to the future management of First Minister’s Question Time.

There are two important principles that have underpinned my deliberations. Firstly, the prime purpose of First Minister’s Question Time is to hold the Scottish Government to account and I therefore intend to ensure that all of the parties represented on the Parliamentary Bureau are given the opportunity to do so. Secondly, I intend to ensure that backbench Members have a greater opportunity to ask questions of the First Minister, and more prominence when doing so during the half-hour weekly slot.

On that basis, the approach I will adopt is as follows:

* Questions 1 and 2 will follow the same format as in Session 3 (ie, allocated to the Labour Party and to the Conservative Party with four and two supplementary questions respectively).

* Question 3 will be allocated to the Liberal Democrat Party for two weeks out of three. For one week in three, I will select what I consider to be the best quality question from a backbench Member submitted that week, regardless of party.

* Question 4 will be allocated to the SNP and question 5 will be allocated to the Labour Party.

* Question 6 will be allocated equally between the Conservative Party and the SNP with the Green Party being selected from time to time on a roughly proportional basis.

Following the principle of giving backbenchers more scope and prominence, it is also my intention to take questions of a local nature after Question 2 rather than after Question 3 as has previously been the case.

I will, of course, reserve the right to alter the above on any week, depending on the topicality and suitability of the questions submitted.

First Minister’s Questions is, for many, the high point of the parliamentary week and I intend to do all I can to ensure that this session plays its part in holding the Government to account on the issues of the day.

Yours sincerely,
TRICIA MARWICK MSP
Presiding Officer

pic credit

Back Scotland, not the predatory rich

Apr 25

Posted by James in Holyrood, Westminster | 50 Comments

As Jeff blogged today, the First Minister has begun to find the Murdoch swamp rising around his thighs. The SNP activist defence to that is simple – do you really think the word of the First Minister would carry weight with a Tory or Lib Dem Secretary of State?

Perhaps not, but the Murdochs clearly thought this potential phonecall would be helpful. And it’s not hard to see one way that call would have to go for to be useful to News Corp: “Hi Vince/Jeremy, Alex here, just to let you know if you approve the BSkyB deal my administration won’t kick up a fuss”.

Another of Mr Salmond’s former friends made his presence felt at Holyrood today – Donald Trump. Like Jack McConnell before him, the First Minister did everything he could to get Mr Trump to build his resort and golf course at Menie, but Mr Trump is unable to quit when he’s ahead.

His friend Alex, the man who overturned local planning rules for him, is now “Mad Alex“, who will literally, Trump’s argument goes, destroy Scotland with wind turbines. His bizarre rantings in Committee today will have won no-one round, nor will his argument that a mere democratic mandate is no reason to set energy policy.

In both cases, the First Minister has made a serious effort to get these men on board, and in both cases their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the Scottish people. On Murdoch, I think Scots would clearly welcome a more diverse media, not one so extensively owned by one family. On Trump, his threats to evict local families from Menie were opposed by 74% with just 13% support.

Murdoch and Trump may have turned on the First Minister now, but these are hardly isolated examples. Take just two more of the First Minister’s friends. Brian Souter’s interests are in a deregulated bus market, and the public interest is in a regulated one. Jim McColl’s interests are in a low-tax Scotland, although he’s registered in Monaco for tax reasons, whereas the public have an interest in business paying its fair share. It’s time for this SNP administration to start putting the interests of the vast majority of Scots first, not the predatory elite they seem to prefer.

Has Murdoch been worth it First Minister?

Apr 25

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 54 Comments

“I met with Alex Salmond’s adviser today. He will call Hunt when we need him to.” (BBC)

If that’s not a potentially career-ending line then I don’t know what is.

There is little doubt that Rupert Murdoch has it in for David Cameron at the moment with sly pro-Indy digs on Twitter and considerably less sly front page digs at the Prime Minister’s Government in his tabloids. Rupert carries no such resentment towards the First Minister given Salmond has loyally, if foolhardily, stuck by his News International buddy. Of the little that I have seen ,the recent positive SNP coverage has been conspicuous. (I try not to look directly at The Sun, for health reasons).

The First Minister has denied the largely Lib Dem levelled allegations that there was a ‘quid pro quo’ deal done with Murdoch whereby the SNP gets an easy ride and News International gets something in return. It’s not the type of allegation that a politician would admit to without a fight and the Scottish media isn’t slow to pick up the scent when the SNP may have been wounded. No smoke without fire? Time will inevitably tell.

Even so, one has to wonder why this has all been worth the risk for the SNP. Rupert Murdoch is toxic right now with politicians, barge poles at the ready, doing all they can to stay away from him. Politicians except for Alex Salmond that is who had him round to Bute House for lunch as recently as February. The often childish mudslinging that has ensued isn’t completely lacking a point, who is the First Minister serving with this unseemly closeness? The Scottish public or the SNP? It’s difficult not to assume the latter with the referendum just over two years away.

Of course, the questioning from the opposition over Rupert Murdoch’s apparent favour for Salmond and the SNP may well backfire. The media mogul is after all preferring Salmond over the rest of them and, irrespective of what one may think of the hacking scandal, an endorsement of the First Minister from an intelligent and powerful man such as Rupert Murdoch carries plenty of weight. Sean Connery, no more.

Both sides insist that there was no deal and for as long as deniability remains in place, however conveniently constructed that may be, both sides may well get away with it but the scrutiny from opposition parties and investigative journalists is going to be intense and unless the quote above was incorrect or throwaway, I can’t see how it won’t prove to be career ending, though whose career remains to be seen.

Jeremy Hunt’s adviser resigned today, presumably in a bid to direct the flak away from the Minister, I suspect another such resignation will be close behind. A ‘shadow of sleaze’ surrounds this issue according to Ed Miliband, just how far north does it travel?