Notes To Self... A non-blip Blip

As the dust begins to settle on the longest (and in my opinion most boring) General Election campaign and everyone gets back to business I thought I'd take the opportunity to record some observations and predictions for the record. A wee something to look back on in a little under five years time when we get ready to go through the whole thing again... These are my opinions and I'm sure not widely shared. It'll be long too so no need to read. Happy to discuss if anyone can be bothered though!

Before I go any further I'll lay my cards out on the table for you.  I voted YES in the Independence referendum and I am a former Labour voter who has voted SNP for quite a few years now.


Scottish National Party

Riding on the crest of the referendum wave the SNP swept into power in Scotland, capturing 56 of the 59 available seats and gaining over 50% of the popular vote (in Scotland) they replaced the Liberal Democrats as the party with the third largest representation at Westminster. It's difficult to explain how tumultuous these events are. Never has a single party in Scotland been able to command the political will of the people in such a way. I have three observations that might help though.

Firstly, as I already mentioned, the Independence referendum fought here last September reinvigorated not only an interest in politics but also the belief that ordinary people like you and me CAN make a difference. The choice was simple. Should Scotland leave the UK? In the end, the people spoke and by a vote of 55% to 45% it was decided not to break up the Union. However, two things happened. The first was the natural division of those who supported the proposal, those who were against it and those who were undecided. The second thing that happened was that when things got too close to call the Unionist parties that were spearheading the No campaign panicked and the week before the vote took place, offered a pledge to give more devolved powers to Scotland. This was enough to sway the vote in favour of staying in the Union.  What became clear in the aftermath was that if given the opportunity to express their view in an important enough way, the people had the power to make a real difference.

Secondly, as a result of referendum the SNP membership increased substantially (some 110,000 new members since September). The Yes campaign, led principally by the party managed to retain a large number of supporters while the No campaign support led by the three Unionist parties dissolved under their own banners again after the threat of break up was defeated.

Thirdly, and I'll talk about this more later, the absolute worst thing you can do to a Scot is try and tell them what to do or marginalise or demean them. There's just something in our genetic makeup that will not accept that especially when it comes from the mouth of an Englishman. We will cut off our noses to spite anyone rather than take that. The overall negative campaign fought by the Unionist parties will have generated support from this ploy. Now it might have worked for one over the other to win the election but all had best beware the monster they have unleashed in doing so.

So what does the future hold for the SNP? In a lot of ways, the only way is down. I doubt the party will be able to maintain the momentum through the next five years. It may not even be able to do it long enough to reach the Holyrood (Scottish Parliamentary) elections next year. Of course, with these elections not using the first past the post system used for the Westminster elections, there is no way that the party will be able to gain the number of seats they did last week but I would imagine that we will continue to see a majority SNP Scottish government rule in Scotland for some time to come. I don't believe that another vote for independence will come in the near future but I do believe that there is an appetite for change and I think that for good or for bad that will come in no short measure over the coming years.


Labour Party

The Labour party are in real trouble. They are now at a political crossroads like they have never been before. Too far to the right to continue to gain support in Scotland and too far to the left to gain support in England. Ever since the 1992 elections that saw Tony Blair enter Downing Street support for the party has been waning north of the border. New Labour as it was known was pitched to attract the English voters and it worked. Becoming more conservative than the Conservative party, the changes didn't sit well with the backbone of the Scottish electorate. The party in Scotland has been rudderless for a number of years, going through leader after leader in an attempt to stabilise the situation. Successive candidates have tried unsuccessfully to balance the wishes of the Central Party with those of the people who keep them in a job, culminating last year in the very public resignation of Johann Lamont who described the Scottish party as being treated like a branch office. 

Ironically, it has been Ed Miliband's attempt to bring the UK party back to its roots at the left of the political spectrum that has seen its support waver south of the border leading to the embarrassing failure to remove an incumbent government which offered nothing to the electorate. It's a shame because I quite liked Wallace as a person but he was never the right man to lead the party to victory. There was a level of naivety in both the Independence referendum (hands up anyone on the Labour leadership who saw Cameron linking additional powers to Scotland with "English votes for English laws" before the smug bastard announced it the morning after the result - What, nobody?) and this general election that played straight into the Conservatives hands. Combined with the party's general moved towards the left, this left them in a no man's land they were never going to recover from. They started believing their own press. Unfortunately the press were in the pockets of the opposition.

I found it incredibly funny that the Labour party blamed the SNP for their failure to get into government. Even if all 59 seats had been won north of the border it wouldn't have been enough to capture the numbers they needed. Voting in Scotland is an irrelevance for a Westminster government. That's why successive Conservative governments have been elected to power with but one or two seats representing the Scots. Middle England, as always decides the fate of government in this country and it's Labour's singular failure to win over that element of the electorate that lost them this election and nothing else.

So what now for Labour? As I said at the start, they are at a crossroads. Perhaps their capitulation north of the border will ultimately turn out to be a good thing for them since they have no Scottish constituencies to protect. I see NEW "New Labour" returning to its Blairite ways in order to fight the good fight south of the border and essentially do what the Tories have done for years and treat Scotland as inconsequential. There are already calls for the Scottish party to operate more independently from the UK party. A strange approach for a group committed to retaining the Union and from which a continuing barrage of mixed messages for the electorate both north and south of the border would surely be the end result. There are difficult days ahead for the party as it decides which way the phoenix will rise.


Conservative Party

Didn't they do well! The Tory party swept into Westminster with an overall majority for the first time since 1992. The fact that they did so with a campaign of rhetoric and negativity not seen since those days either doesn't seem to bother Mr Cameron that much though. The fact that he said he'd been pleased with the positive campaign they'd fought is a little more than worrying. Long since, have the Tories given up in Scotland. It's an irrelevance to them, an annoying little blot on the landscape of Northern England. That is until they have the audacity to suggest they might want to go it alone. Then the crocodile tears flow. They know they won't get votes in any number here and they don't care.  

Perhaps that's why they started pummelling the English electorate with the self same scare tactics that they (along with Labour) have tried in Scotland since the early eighties. Scare tactics that have long since fallen on deaf ears north of the border, of the evil little people who want to break up the Union and ruin everything for all. It falls on deaf ears because the SNP have been in power in a devolved Scotland for some time now and unbelievably the earth still rotates on its axis on a daily basis and the sky hasn't fallen in. Surprisingly enough these rebellious Scots are just as competent (or otherwise) as any other politician in the UK.  I just hope that the Tories are ready for the whiplash that the campaign south of the border will generate.  For a party that claims to want to keep the Union together, the alarming and divisive rhetoric that flowed from the senior party members was in my mind nothing short of disgusting and disgraceful. If their aim was to push English voters away from voting Labour with the threat of a Lab/SNP alliance then there's no denying it was wholly successful, but could it be at the expense of the very Union they supposedly want to keep. Many think so and just as many think that this election may have changed irrevocably the political landscape of this country. Independence? Federalism? Both have been touted as the natural and eventual extension of the result of this campaign.

For now though, it's business as usual for Cameron and Co. The Liberal Democrats have been replaced as the thorn in his side by the usual suspects for a Tory government, its own party's back bench. The Tories have a small majority and will need the support of all of their members to work through the next 5 years.  Interestingly, one of the first meetings he had was with the leader of the influential 1922 committee, someone who I'm sure will relish a lot more personal time with the Prime Minister in the months and years ahead.  I'm sure though, the words business as usual will not apply to Scotland. With a unified parliamentary voice unsurpassed in history and a nation riled once more by Tory rhetoric the government had better make good on the promises they made before the election...


Liberal Democrats

The liberal democrats have already started pining for the fjords. They are an ex-party. Never has a party (not even in one of their many former guises) collapsed so spectacularly and this will take political generations to recover from, if it can at all.

The problem for the Lib Dems is that for many years they held the political moral high ground. They were the party of reason and justice, knowing full well that they could say what they wanted and promise the earth because they would never get into power. That was right up until the moment they got into bed with the Tories and everyone discovered that when the chips were down, they'd do the same as the rest of them to keep in power. The trouble is that their supporters pretty much think they should still be above the scrapping of the Tory and Labour parties and so they have deserted the sinking ship in droves. I would imagine a large number of people that voted Lib Dem last time felt betrayed above all things. Everyone expects a Tory party in power to behave like a bunch of shits but I bet they never thought that Nick Clegg and Co. would go along so willingly with them.

They now reside once more in the political wilderness that David Steele and David Owen picked them up from over 30 years ago. It's hard to say when or even if anyone will ever trust them again.


UKIP

I find it hard to discuss this party with any measure of civility and so this will be short. How anyone can vote for a party that bases its policies on such divisive and bigoted ideals is beyond me. I thought we'd seen the last of Enoch Powell at the end of the last century but apparently his views are very much alive and kicking within the leadership of UKIP.

Given that they bombed spectacularly in the influence they thought they'd be able to wield following this election I very much hope that their strong showing in voting numbers was simply a protest vote. I'm not sure whether the fact that political commentators are talking about the number of 2nd and 3rd placings they got in parliamentary seats is something to be worried about or not. To me it sounds very much like they are being set up to become the natural successor to the Liberal Democrat also rans who for so long promised all but delivered nothing for election after election. I dread to think what may pass if ultimately they became the third party in England and gained enough support to be influential.