Their Own People

Back at the last Scottish Elections, some bright spark in the independence movement came up with a wizard wheeze: if everyone voted SNP in the constituency and then voted Green in the list, that would give the SNP a majority on the constituencies alone but also give the Greens a vast number of seats. In effect, this would allow independence supporters to choose both the government and their own opposition.

It was a fine idea, with only three small flaws:

Firstly, it was bollocks. Since neither the SNP nor the Greens could officially campaign along those lines (since the Electoral Commission would have some strong words - see point two), it just wasn't possible to get people to vote in the desired manner in anything like the required numbers. The outcome of this wizard wheeze was probably that the SNP dropped from a majority to a minority government, while the Greens advanced by two or three seats - certainly nothing like the outome that was envisaged.

Secondly, it was profoundly undemocratic. The wheeze was designed to take advantage of one of the weaknesses of the electoral system used for Scottish elections, and while a certain amount of gaming the system is unavoidable, antics of this sort really should be avoided. (As I said, the Electoral Commission would have had strong words had the Greens, or especially the SNP, given official support to this in their campaigns, for exactly this reason. And rightly so.)

Thirdly, though, what this wizard wheeze failed to consider is that the Green Party are not simply an adjunct of the SNP - they're their own party with their own manifesto, policies, and priorities. They happen to agree with the SNP on the topic of independence, for now, but that's all.

That third point is one that has been causing quite some grief ever since the vote - basically, every time the Greens fail to vote in lock-step with the SNP, they come under fire from SNP voters who gave their vote to the Green party. And so, when the Greens hold out for changes to the tax regime before agreeing the budget, when they vote to repeal the OBFA, and yesterday when they vote against testing for P1 children, they're seen as 'betraying' the SNP.

But, again, these are peripheral interests to the independence cause, and they're all matters where the Green party are simply following their openly-stated principles and manifesto policies. In short, they're actually doing exactly what I want to see from a political party.

(And, incidentally, I don't agree with the Green party on either repealing the OFBA (which was deeply flawed, yes, but desperately needed reformed and/or replaced; simply repealing it was a disastrous idea), or on the tests for P1 pupils. But that's my view; they're entitled to disagree, of course.)

Where I do take issue in recent events is with the antics of the Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems.

My view is that political parties should act pretty much as the Greens have done: determine your principles, work out your policies from those, and then vote accordingly. And do so regardless of who that means you end up voting alongside - taking the view that different people vote for things for different reasons, but that everyone is there for the good of the country.

However, that's frankly not how I see Labour, the Lib Dems, and especially the Tories acting. For them, just about everything seems to be seen purely through the lens of how to give the SNP a bloody nose. And so, the Tories call for nationalised testing of P1 pupils... and then once they are introduced they perform an immediate about face and call for them to be scrapped. Labour, meanwhile, have their crazy "Bain Principle", whereby they don't support anything the SNP propose.

But that's disastrous for our politics. Firstly, it's disastrous because most things in Scottish politics are in fact not about independence, or the prevention thereof. But if the unionist parties line up in a row to attack whatever the SNP do, that has the effect of turning our politics into exactly that - supporting independence becomes a matter of supporting everything the SNP do (even where they're wrong), while opposing independence means the opposite.

Secondly, it has particular problems in a minority government, where the governing party must cut deals in order to get things done. This worked really well in 2008 precisely because Annabel Goldie's Tories was reasonably pragmatic about making those deals, as were the Lib Dems. Thus, the SNP could cut this deal here, and that deal there, and it worked pretty well and led to pretty balanced governance.

But in 2018, things don't work like that. The Tories, Labour, and the Lib Dems are all manifestly not interested in making deals, while leaves the SNP with exactly one choice: the Greens. And that gives the Greens disproportionate influence, allowing them to pull the SNP government signficantly leftward. But... if people had wanted the Greens to have that level of influence, they would have voted Green in greater numbers. The effect of this is that the whole party is being skewed in a manner that the electorate do not want. And that's not a good thing.

Unfortunately, I don't see any of this changing any time soon. The reality is that the nationaist vote is fairly well united behind the SNP, but getting a majority in Holyrood without an actual majority in the country is extremely (and intentionally) difficult. But the unionist vote is significantly divided, such that neither Labour nor the Tories will be able to form a government without the other... and it's almost unthinkable that they would go into coalition together. Meanwhile, the independence issue is simply not going to go away (unless and until Scotland actually becomes independent, of course, but I'm not holding my breath). So the whole thing is going to remain a mess for a long time to come.