Gaming the System

One of the ongoing controversies in the Scottish political scene concerns the formation of a new "list party" - a new party that will not stand in constituencies but will instead only stand on the regional list, and hope to do well enough to get a handful of MSP seats as a result.

The stated goal of such parties is to "maximise the pro-independence majority". The logic here is that the results of the regional votes are corrected to give each party the 'right' number of MSPs, so the better a party does in the constituencies, the fewer seats they get in the region. Thus the SNP, who can expect to win most constituency seats, have a very large number of 'wasted' votes in the regional votes.

Up until the weekend, this was a largely theoretical proposition. Over the weekend, though, a number of disaffected ex-SNP members registered a new party, and thigns got real.

I can't say I'm a fan of the notion, at all.

I should note at this time that my opposition is not from the "it almost certainly won't" work line of attack, nor even the more extreme "it's likely to be counter-productive" line of attack. Both of these are probably correct, but frankly that's beside the point.

On the one hand, if all the party exists for is to maximise the pro-independence majority, then frankly that shouldn't be allowed. It's an attempt to game the system - about 50% of people in Scotland are pro-independence, so there shouldn't be a significant pro-independence majority.

On the other hand, if the party has some other agenda that puts them at odds with the SNP (whether it's that they don't feel that the SNP are pushing independence strongly enough, because they simply don't like the current SNP leadership, or the trans-rights issue that I am absolutely not going to comment on at all, or whetever else), then that's fine - people can set up whatever parties they want and campaign on whatever platform they want... but in that case they should be campaigning explicitly against the SNP. They're rivals for the same vote, so they should act like it.

And that, incidentally, is both why this post hasn't made mention of the Greens, either as potentially "taking votes away" from the SNP (since they have that distinct agenda), and also as being the list-only alternative to the SNP (because if the new party is distinct from the Greens also, then that is also their prerogative).

(It's also why I don't have an issue with the three major Unionist parties all standing and vying for votes, even though the regional list system gives the a leg up. The three are all fairly clearly distinct voices - they just happen to agree on one topic. I just wish they were better.)