The Slacktiverse

Be Careful What You Wish For...

On April 15th, I wrote a piece here on the Slacktiverse entitled Devolved Theocracy which previewed the Scottish Elections on May 5th. The election is finally over, and the final results are astonishing. I remember thinking at the start of the campaign that maybe the Scottish National Party could get a majority, but when I looked into the number of seats required to achieve that, I dismissed it as fanciful. Yet here we are, with Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond looking forward to a second term as First Minister, this time with just such a majority.

Before we get too far into this piece, here are the final results[1]:

SNP: 69 seats (a gain of 23) - 53 from constituency seats, with a further 16 from the regional lists.
Labour: 37 seats (a loss of 7) - 15 constituency; 22 regional
Conservatives: 15 seats (a loss of 5) - 3 constituency; 12 regional
Liberal Democrats: 5 seats (a loss of 12) - 2 constituency; 3 regional
Greens: 2 regional (a gain of 1)

Independent candidate Margo McDonald won a regional list seat in Lothian, as she did in the previous Parliament. Finally, the Scottish Christian Party crashed, dropping from 31,161 in 2007 to 17,659 today, a fall of nearly 50%. While this will not be the end of the party, I think will be the start of a downward trend for them. Scotland has made a very clear move to the left in this election, and the SCP's Randian economic nonsense and religious hypocrisy have no place here any more.

So, what does this mean for the parties in Scotland?

First and foremost, the Scottish National Party may appear to be in their strongest position in a long time - and to some extent they are. They are the first party to hold an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament (something the voting system was designed to actually prevent) and the number of votes they received gives them a clear mandate to enact their policy platform. However, they could find themselves on a tightrope. Now that they have a majority, the SNP will have no choice but to move forward with their plans for a referendum on independence which they talked about for the length of their first term of government but never actually presented to Parliament.

This will be a problem with the SNP for the simple reason that if they do get to hold a referendum, they will lose it. Many of the votes they gained in this election are not from people seeking independence but rather from people who understood the limitations of the Scottish Parliament and believe that the SNP are the best party to guide Scotland through the next five years, acting as a bulwark against the cuts and other right wing policies of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in Westminster. I believe the SNP's leadership are aware of this, but abandoning such a key policy commitment isn't an option for them either, as their core membership does passionately believe in independence for Scotland. This is what the title of this piece refers to. The Scottish National Party's success was built on a promise that they cannot fulfil without losing the support that brought them this success.

The SNP's best hope is to go ahead with the referendum, lose graciously and hope they can rebuild themselves as a party fighting for Scottish interests within the Union. I think they have realised this, however, as senior party figures (including Deputy Leader Nicola Sturgeon) have been at pains not to name a time for the referendum and even the usually outspoken Alex Salmon has stated that it is up to the Scottish people to decide when we should become independent.

Personally, my answer to the question of "when should Scotland become independent?" is "never". While I would hardly call myself a passionate Unionist, and I do believe that an independent Scotland would survive and perhaps even thrive, I do not see any great benefit to breaking up the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the costs of separating the UK and dividing up its assets would be a long and costly process. Arguments and negotiations would also rage over legal questions regarding the status of people and business currently residing in Scotland, taking up more time and costing more money. It has been reported that Salmond is currently pressing the UK government for more powers to be devolved to Scotland, specifically economic and taxation powers. While I cannot personally support independence, I do believe that a more federal system between the Home Nations would be of great benefit to the whole of Britain. The different parts of the UK have different political traditions - most notably Northern Ireland where none of the major political parties hold any seats, either at Westminster or in their devolved Assembly. Letting issues of local importance be decided locally is a better system, more flexible and more readily adaptable to changing circumstances. Decentralising more power may indeed strengthen the Union when it comes to those issues which do need to be decided on a national level. This is perhaps particularly true in England, which is alone in still having complete control reside in Westminster.

Labour have not only lost a number of seats, but they also lost a number of high profile MSPs, many from their front bench and their leader Iain Gray has announced that he will step down in the autumn. They found themselves profoundly out of step with the mood of the Scottish people, even in their heartland of Glasgow and central Scotland. The main reason for this? Essentially, it comes down to Labour not taking the election seriously enough. To quote BBC Scotland's political editor Brian Taylor

Folk in Scotland understand devolution. They get the concept. But they believed that they were voting in a parliamentary election - a Scottish Parliamentary election. Not a rehearsal, not a dry run.[2]

And that is what Labour seemed to treat it as - mere preparation for the next Westminster election, one that we will possibly not even see until 2015. Their national leader Ed Miliband even said as much at the Scottish Party Conference. Further exacerbating their problems, Labour made two serious strategic errors. First, just as the campaign began, they chose to replace a number of their policies with others which closely mirrored what the SNP had promised - most notably on student fees for higher education and council tax. This was widely interpreted as stealing policies from the Nationalists, which obviously did not go over well. Secondly, Labour's campaign was entirely negative, primarily focussing on the 'twin dangers' of cuts by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government in Westminster and the damage done to Scotland by independence if the SNP won a second term.

While these fears are significant for many people in Scotland (particularly regarding cuts in government spending from the UK government, which brings back painful memories of Thatcher for many), the campaign made little effort to explain how voting for Labour would do anything about them, instead relying on Labour's traditional position as the largest party in Scotland to do the work for them. However, the national party's ineffective opposition at Westminster combined with the SNP's promise of a referendum before independence looks to have allayed those fears for many people and may well have even driven many traditional Labour voters to the Nationalists, in the hopes that they would be a more effective bulwark against the Coalition. While the SNP's campaigning has set themselves up to fail in the future, here Labour were undermined in this election by their tactics. Dredging up Thatcher's (metaphorical) ghost certainly scared Scots into voting - but they voted for the SNP, not Labour.

It is hard to see where the Scottish Labour Party goes from here. While leader Iain Gray has announced that he will stand down in the autumn, there are no clear candidates to replace him, as those perceived as being likely replacements prior to the election lost their seats. Much like the Tories at Westminster between their General Election defeat in 1997 and the election of David Cameron in 2005, the Labour Party may have long struggle ahead to regain credibility.

While much has been made of Labour's losses in their traditional Glasgow heartland, it is arguable that the Liberal Democrats who suffered the most damage in the election. They lost almost three-quarters of their seats, and even lost their deposit in a number of constituencies. For those unfamiliar with British politics, it is hard to understate how huge a defeat this is for the Lib Dems. In order to stand for election in the UK, one must put up a deposit of £500, which is returned if the candidate wins over 5% of the vote. For a governing party to fail to do this is simply unheard of. In the Linlithgow constituency, they came ahead of the fascist National Front by only 457 votes. In other constituencies, they polled under 1,000 votes. These kind of numbers are expected of fringe Hard Left groups, not major political parties.

Their leader Tavish Scott has also announced his resignation, but with only four other MSPs to choose from, they too could be struggling to fill this vacancy. Personally, I agree with the assessment of former Liberal Leader Lord David Steel[3] that the massive fall in support is mainly due a the negative reaction to the Westminster Coalition (especially in the left-leaning Scottish Lib Dem base). This will undoubtedly put further strain on the Coalition government, but it is unclear what kind of long term effect this will have on the Liberal Democrats. Much has been made of the SNP capturing constituency seats in the Highlands and Islands, where the Westminster equivalent is held by a senior Liberal Democrat. However, as noted earlier, the Scottish electorate is sophisticated and understands the different roles of the Scottish and National parliaments. The Lib Dems' role in the Coalition may have cost them in this election, but the voters may still prefer to have the Lib Dems acting as some form of brake on the Tories in Westminster, rather than elect the SNP to a Parliament where they will be a small and rather impotent force.

Finally, the Conservative Party also lost some seats and their leader Annabel Goldie has also announced that she will leave the post in the autumn, despite being regarded as having run a good campaign (even with a manifesto that set out plans for cutting spending and re-introducing charges, running counter to every other party in the election and the public mood in Scotland). This has lead to claims that her departure was ordered by Conservative Leader (and Prime Minister) David Cameron, which have been denied by the party[4]. However, the Conservatives find themselves in largely the same position they did in the last Parliament. While they still face a massive uphill battle to return to being a major force in Scottish politics, this election has not really done much to the party either for good or ill.

Overall, this election has been a major shake-up for Scottish politics. Three of the four major parties have seen their leader either quit or announce the time of their resignation. Independence has jumped up the political agenda, and the SNP have already been pushing the UK government to devolve further fiscal powers to Holyrood[5]. However, as noted earlier, there are still many challenges facing the new government, especially with regard to funding their campaign promises and how the SNP administration will react to a likely loss in a referendum on independence. The Nationalists may be popular today, but if they are seen to renege on their major promises (something that they managed to avoid - for the most part - during their first term in office) or descend into in-fighting over the referendum result, their dramatic rise could be followed by an equally dramatic fall. I do not think this is likely though. The SNP government has many talented politicians at its core, and if they can keep their promises as a minority government, surely they can do the same with the majority. I do believe that this will be looked back on in years to come as a major turning point in British as well as Scottish politics, where left wing policies began to seem viable as a strategy for government again and where the decentralisation of power from Westminster again began to pick up steam. However, this may rest on how well the SNP deal with the referendum. Next election, they may well be a lot more careful what they wish for - and indeed, what they campaign on.
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[1]BBC News Scotland: 2011 Election Results

[2]Blether with Brian: Shout of joy for the SNP

[3]BBC News Scotland: Scottish Election: As it happened

[4]Scots Tory leader Annabel Goldie not 'forced' to quit

[5]SNP press Cameron on Scotland Bill

-- BringTheNoise
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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Devolved Theocracy

On May 5th, there will be an election for the devolved Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh. When it was created in 1999 as the result of a referendum in 1997, it was the first Parliament in Scotland for almost 300 years. Elections are held every four years under the Mixed Member Proportional Representation System, with 73 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) elected in individual constituencies under the First Past The Post System, and a further 56 MSPs elected to serve 8 large regions under the Party List Additional Member system.

The Parliament’s powers and areas of legislative competence are defined by the Scotland Act 1998, passed by the UK national parliament in Westminster. Unlike, for example, a State government in the USA, the Scottish Parliament’s derives its powers from the UK Parliament rather the people directly, and as such is limited in what it can make laws about. The main areas which are reserved to Westminster are the constitution, international relations, the civil service and defence. There are other specific areas that the Parliament cannot legislate on that can be found here. (It should also be noted that Westminster is still empowered to make laws affecting Scotland covering the areas which are devolved). Furthermore, the Scottish Parliament is also limited by the Scotland Act to passing laws which are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and unlike the UK Parliament, the Scottish courts can declare void a law they find to be in breach of the Convention. Thus, the European Convention on Human Rights acts roughly equivalent to a written constitution in other parts of the world.

As a result of the proportional voting system, the Scottish Parliament has five parties represented currently. The Scottish National Party (SNP) is the current (minority) government, with 47 seats. They are a centre left party, who wish to create an independent Scotland as a full member of the European Union. However, as constitutional issues are reserved to Westminster, becoming the governing party in Holyrood has done little (if anything) to move forward with this. However, their achievements in government, including abolishing student fees for Scottish university students and providing universal free prescriptions have been largely popular.

The second biggest party is the Scottish Labour Party, who hold 46 seats and were part of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats from 1999 to 2007. They are also centre left, although somewhat more centrist than the SNP. Their main focus in the upcoming election is on job creation and balancing the Scottish budget through savings rather than taxation.

The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party (to give them their full name), more commonly known as simply the Conservative Party or just the Tories, are in third place, holding 17 seats. They are the largest party in the UK Parliament and are in coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. They are lead by Annabel Goldie in Scotland, and are considered a right of centre or even right wing party in the UK (although they would not be out of place as Democrats in the United States). Their manifesto for the upcoming election is focused on fiscal responsibility and they seek to reintroduce a number of charges and fees abolished by the SNP administration.

The previously mentioned Liberal Democrats (or Lib Dems) have 16 seats and are the junior partner in the current UK governing coalition. In Scotland they tend to campaign from the left (leaving many supporters rather angry with their actions in Westminster), but this year they have moved more in line with the national party and are focusing on localism and small government. The last party represented in the Scottish Parliament are the Scottish Green Party, who have a leftist/environmentalist agenda.

Overall, I think that devolution has been a success and has benefited Scotland, making important strides in tackling intolerance and generally improving life in Scotland (despite a few notable missteps and failures). So, with this in mind, I am saddened and surprised to see that there is increasing support for groups who would undo all the good that the Scottish Parliament has done.

I write today about the Scottish Christian Party (SCP), who received a total of 31,161 votes in 2007 Scottish Election, making it the third most popular party with no MSPs and the eighth most popular overall (just behind the Scottish Senior Citizens Party and Solidarity, a socialist party). While they are not the only group that seek to do damage to the good work of the Scottish Parliament, this level of support makes them the most dangerous. This is so surprising as the Christian Party are an aggressively theocratic organisation, seeking to impose their view of Christianity as the law of the land, combined with unrealistic – and frankly dangerous – Randian libertarianism in areas where the Bible does not provide guidance (the age old “Freedom for me, but not for thee” hypocrisy). While 65% of Scotland's population declared themselves Christian at the 2001 census, the vast majority of those belong to the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian church with modern and liberal policies, and Scotland has always been seen as generally more leftist than Britain generally – seen, for example, in the results of the 1997 UK General Election where the Conservative Party won no seats in Scotland. Even today, while the Tories are in government in Westminster, they have only one Member of Parliament (MP) in Scotland. This makes the Scottish Christian Party's success even more puzzling.

The Scottish Christian Party was founded in 2004 as Operation Christian Vote by the Rev. George Hargreaves in Ilford, Kent, but contested its first election in the Scotland constituency in the 2004 European Parliament elections. In 2005, they renamed themselves the Christian Party, known as the Scottish Christian Party north of the border (a common tactic for British political parties). Although they have seen their greatest successes in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, they do not issue a specific Scottish manifesto, and so I must look at their general policies, even though many of these could not be implemented at Holyrood even with an outright majority, due to its limited devolved powers.

In general, the closest comparison for the SCP would be the American Tea Party, which also emphasises right-wing free market economics combined with socially conservative policies, allegedly drawn from Christianity. The clarion calls for “Freedom!” followed by a raft of policies and proposals that restrict the lives of women, minorities, QUILTBAG people, non-Christians and many others will certainly be familiar to those who have paid attention to the Tea Party. However, the Christian Party is not simply a British attempt to ape this populist American movement, and the SCP has many distinctive positions of its own.

The two main areas of difference between the Tea Party and the Scottish Christian Party are on green issues and health care. Unlike many Christian political groups in the USA, the SCP acknowledges the existence of man-made climate change and the need to combat it. Unfortunately, their proposals are simplistic in the extreme and make no real effort to look closely at the problem’s at hand. Their main proposals are to plant more trees and to “promote, but not impose, Sunday as a day of rest”, which will (at least according to them) create a massive reduction in carbon output. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work in practice, and they provide no more detail than what I have already mentioned. Presumably, observing the Sabbath involves doing literally nothing all day, but even that would hardly make the impact that the party seems to envisage. This becomes a theme while reading their policies – complex problems are acknowledged, but the solutions suggested are ineffectual and laughably naïve. This is also seen in their economic policies, which suggest a flat 20% tax on income, corporations and capital gains (something that is outwith the power of the Scottish Parliament). All other taxes, including inheritance tax and all taxes on savings and investments are to be repealed, except VAT (Value Added Tax, a sales tax applied to most purchases in the UK). Here, this supposedly Christian party celebrates the raising of a regressive tax to 20% in January 2011, as an encouragement for “thrift”. This will, they assert, solve the current economic crisis by encouraging enterprise, as if current taxation rates are in any way connected to the recession we find ourselves in. As if to further establish their disconnect from reality, the SCP also assert that the massive cut in government income that these policies will cause will not affect the provision of services, stating that:

Cuts in spending do not necessarily mean cuts in services. Cuts in the amount of money that government has to spend necessitates creative thinking – Necessity being the mother of invention.[1]

Health care is the other main area of difference between the Tea Party and the Scottish Christian Party. While the Tea Party have been vehemently opposed to even the modest reforms passed by the Obama administration, the SCP have expressed a degree of support for the National Health Service. However, a closer inspection of their policies (as opposed to the vague general statements made in the introduction to the health section of their manifesto) indicates a desire to remove universal healthcare except in its most basic form. If I may be permitted a brief tangent, this repudiation of socialised healthcare by many on the Christian Right is one thing that I cannot reconcile with their professed faith. Jesus is quite explicit on this point – Matthew Chapter 25 lays out a requirement to care for the sick. To care for them, not to give them a bill, not to imply that their sickness is somehow a moral failing. I genuinely cannot comprehend how one can fulfil this requirement in the modern world without universal healthcare of some form or another.

The rest of the Christian Party's policies and rhetoric are fairly standard Religious Right boilerplate, which needs little rehashing. However, While we may question whether they truly believe their own statements it is clear that implementing these policies would be dangerous, not only for those directly targeted by their policies, but for society as a whole, weakened by the divisions and tensions that such policies would surely create or put more pressure on. It is therefore imperative to ensure that their policies are not enacted. If you live in Scotland, I urge you to vote on May 9th for one of the many opposing parties (although not the United Kingdom Independence Party, who hold many of the same views as the SCP, or the fascist British National Party) and to help expose their hateful and dangerous views. Even if you do not live in Scotland, helping to expose the SCP’s bigotry and hate by spreading the true nature of their views and policies would be a service to all people.

[1] Think Christian Think Freedom! The Christian Party Election 2010 Manifesto

-- BringTheNoise
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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.