Letter from Scotland

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”  Warning, there’s an election approaching!

But it’s unlikely to set the heather on fire. The Fire Service says that’s more likely to happen as a result of a careless barbecue this holiday weekend.

The result of the Scottish Parliament elections on Thursday is not in doubt, the SNP will win again. But it comes at a particularly fragile time in Scotland’s life, indeed in Britain’s life and in the world in general.

The opinion polls are pretty clear, the SNP will win between 60 and the magic number of 65 seats which would give them a majority.  Labour and Reform are fighting it out for second place and the rest will pick up a few seats around the edges. But the opinion polls are also finding a fragility in support for every party and a general disillusionment with politics which may result in a turnout well below 60 per cent.

The party manifestos are full of promises which have been roundly condemned as unrealistic by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Fraser of Allander Institute and anyone who cares to think about it. The one clear divide is over tax, where Reform and the Conservatives want to cut income tax and cut welfare spending to pay for it.

As to the campaign itself, it’s gone by without any large rallies or marches, save the usual independence march at the start. There were no lamp posters or stunts in the streets. The battle has been fought on television, in the social media and in the press.  Candidates talk about their doorstep campaigns but I’ve not had a knock on my door, though I have had a few flyers.

Those of us who have watched the television action over the past six weeks have got to know the six party leaders, perhaps unfairly, as characters from A A Milne’s Winne the Pooh. Alex Cole Hamilton, the Lib Dem leader is obviously the bouncy Tigger. Eeyore is the rather forlorn leader of the Conservatives Russel Findlay.  Rabbit is played by the excitable Labour leader Anas Sarwar.  Reform’s Lord Offord is Owl who thinks he is wiser than he really is. And John Swinney presides over the whole menagerie as the mother figure Kanga, with her little offspring Roo, the Green’s Ross Greer.    

Of course there are not just six parties contesting this election. There are 30, including several Socialist parties, a family party, a Christian party, a party that wants to abolish the Scottish Parliament altogether. Two maverick figures from the past are standing, Tommy Sheridan for the Alliance Party and George Galloway for the Workers Party. Galloway won’t actually be on campaigning on the streets of Glasow since he’s currently living “in exile” in Russia. Missing from the list are Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, which has folded, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party which couldn’t get its act together in time to register for the election. 

There will be no late night excitement this year. The count is to take place in the clear light of day on Friday. The constituency results which might be most interesting include: Inverclyde where Malcom Offord is standing, Glasgow Southside where the Greens are hoping to take Nicola Sturgeon’s old seat and Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch where the Lib Dems are fighting to win Kate Forbes’s old seat from the SNP.  

It will also be interesting to see how voters in the North East are viewing the parties over the issue of North Sea oil.

The tricky part of this election is that 56 of the 129 seats are “regional” seats. So voters have two ballot papers, one for their local constituency and a much longer one for their regional candidates.  The overall outcome is therefore hard to predict, since winning lots of constituency seats leaves a party with less chance of winning regional seats.  

There is then the fraught issue of what happens if the SNP does not win an outright majority of 65 seats. Much of the media coverage of the election has been about coalitions. Who would support an SNP government? Or would the opposition parties gang up to vote in either Anas Sawar or Malcom Offord as first minister.  Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with a minority government, Alex Salmond ran one successfully from 2007 till 2011. Power was where it should be, in the parliament, not the executive.

Finally, what will the election mean for the United Kingdom?  As John Swinney has pointed out, if the SNP win in Scotland and Plaid Cymru win in Wales and Sinn Fein are in government in Northern Ireland, the future of the Union is in doubt.  And if Labour lose badly in Scotland, and in Wales and in the local elections in England, the future of the Stamer government is in doubt.

So despite this being a quiet election, it may have some noisy results.