Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

Archive for category Elections

The Midlothian Question

Apr 9

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Local government, Parties | 4 Comments

A guest post today from Ian Baxter, Green Party activist and chair of Bonnyrigg & Lasswade Community Council. Ian has stood as a candidate for the Green Party (and its predecessor, the Ecology Party) many times over the last 30 years, and in 2007 came close to becoming Midlothian’s first Green councillor, something he hopes to achieve on May 3rd. He blogs at Hearts and Mines.

Last week, Midlothian Labour followed their Glasgow counterparts in losing an overall majority on the Council when Councillor Jackie Aitchison resigned and immediately submitted his nomination papers as an Independent candidate in next month’s local elections.

There was a time when Midlothian was described as ‘the one party state’ with 17 out of 18 councillors belonging to the Labour Party (albeit on 46% of the vote). That was under First Past the Post. More recently, ahead of the STV-based local elections in 2007, I was told that the then council’s Chief Executive was overheard saying that if Labour didn’t get two of the three seats up for grabs in the Bonnyrigg ward, then it was in serious trouble. If he’s to be believed, then I think that time has now come.

Midlothian has six three-member wards. In 2007, Labour won 9 of the 18 seats, with the Nats 6 and the Lib Dems three. Soon after the election, however, Lib Dem councillor Katie Moffat jumped into the red camp and normal business resumed.

Change is not something Midlothian flirts with much, but this time it might just smack us on the lips. In common with most areas across Scotland, the Nationalists only fielded one candidate per ward five years ago. They all topped the list on first preference votes, with one, Margaret Wilson in Penicuik, not far short of double the vote of her nearest rival.

Throw into the mix a near collapse of the Lib Dem vote, and some local factors which I’ll come to shortly, and this looks very much like one council which will be changing hands in four weeks’ time.

Penicuik has always been a Lib Dem stronghold, once represented by Michael Moore, now Secretary of State for Scotland – indeed he was the one non-Labour councillor back in the days of the one-party state. In 2007 they came close to winning two of the three councillors there. However, the SNP, fielding two candidates, have a decent chance of removing the Lib Dem, though my bet is there will be no change.

Les Thacker, the Lib Dems’ councillor in Midlothian West will not be so lucky. Loanhead and district has always been fluid electorally, and with 9 candidates standing, it will again provide a bit of interest. My guess is SNP Group leader Owen Thompson will return along with his running mate Andrew Coventry replacing the Lib Dem representation.

In Midlothian East, Katie Moffat only just scraped in last time for the Lib Dems, but even with her red rosette I can’t see Labour taking two seats here. Another SNP gain, I’d say.

Midlothian South will be a hard fought battleground between SNP and Labour. Last time it was 2-1 to Labour, with newly elected SNP MSP Colin Beattie and Labour councillor Wilma Chalmers both standing down, it’s a difficult one to call. It could go either way, but I think SNP will sneak two in.

In Dalkeith, SNP’s Craig Statham and Labour’s Alex Bennett were two votes apart on first preferences last time, with Depute Provost Margot Russell squeaking in for Labour on just 761 first prefs. Local factors will come into play, with controversy surrounding the Woodburn Community Centre possibly affecting the Labour vote. However, with neither of the SNP’s candidates a sitting councillor, I think Labour may prevail.

Which brings us to Bonnyrigg, where once again I will be flying the flag for the Greens. In 2007, Bob Constable was elected for the SNP on the first round of counting with 400 votes to spare. Jackie Aitchison – now standing as an independent – was elected immediately after. Labour’s Derek Milligan had to wait until the seventh and final round before eliminating myself to take the third spot.

With two Nats standing, and the Labour vote potentially split three ways, there will be a fair amount of vote transfers taking place before anyone reaches quota. Bob Constable and Derek Milligan (benefitting this time from alphabetic precedence) will probably be elected – although Derek’s well known association with a number of controversial local issues and tendency to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons could mean there is an outside chance his running mate Louie Milliken may overtake him.

So who gets the third seat in Bonnyrigg is the question. Without Labour backing, Jackie Aitchison is unlikely to succeed, though where his transfers go and what he does and says during the campaign may be critical. The SNP has not been particularly active locally and Labour candidate Louie Milliken is virtually unknown in these parts. Unlike in 2007, I am now chair of the community council and have been very active in exposing the Labour Council’s maladministration over allegedly missing grant funding made to Bonnyrigg Rose for a car park which still hasn’t materialised several years on.

Given the local factors involved, my own activity over many years, the relative anonymity of my main rivals and some very encouraging canvass returns, I am optimistic for my chances here in being the first Green councillor on Midlothian Council.

Should that happen, I would see the make-up of Midlothian Council on 4th May being SNP 9, Labour 7, Lib Dem 1, Green 1. How that translates into power will be interesting.

Will Tory voters stop going tartan?

Apr 8

Posted by James in Elections, Holyrood | 33 Comments

The idea that Scotland’s a decisively more left-wing country than the rest of the UK is at least in part a myth, perpetuated largely by the marked disparity in the Tory vote share north and south of the border, combined with the associated myth that the SNP are a left-wing party now.

In 2007 and again in 2011, it’s clear that many natural Tories voted SNP. Some did so, especially in 2011, because the SNP’s position on taxation was just as right-wing as the Tories. Many many more did so, especially in 2007, simply because the SNP could end Labour’s hegemony at Holyrood. Others no doubt saw a kindred spirit in Alex Salmond, despite his leftwing views on currently reserved matters like defence and international affairs.

The deal was always this – we’ll vote for the most credible party to the right of Labour (to be clear, I don’t regard Labour as left-wing any more either), but in the unlikely event you ever manage to bring your referendum forward, we’ll vote no. I’m sure some business types have genuinely come round to independence, especially given the SNP desire to race to the bottom on corporation tax, but for most I suspect that remains the deal. Run Scotland, Mr Salmond, unless and until the Scottish Tories get their act together.

But what about the SNP majority now? No-one expected that, not the over-exposed Mr Curtice, not the swathes of new SNP backbenchers, not the Great Puddin’ O’ the Chieftain Race himself. And certainly not the Tories who went tartan, who now face a referendum which they must fear losing, given the relative quality of the leadership and the relative campaigning nous on both sides.

Might tactically-minded Tories out there not now wish to pull the balance back in the other direction, take any opportunity to bring the SNP back to minority levels? The Nats proved they could run a competent minority administration – in fact, their period of minority was probably the most competent in Holyrood’s history.

If Bill Walker resigns as an MSP (and Kate’s right, he should), what happens in Dunfermline? Bill won with a narrow 590 majority, and the by-election dynamics would be entirely different. If it’s a seen as a local vote for against independence, Labour would have to be pretty confident even if John Park doesn’t contest it, as Kate suggests. That 590 majority looks even smaller when you consider the almost 8,000 combined Tory and Lib Dem votes from last year. Sure, the Nats’ election machine remains the most formidable ever assembled in Scotland, but this is not natural Nat territory.

I love by-election drama, and I think Bill has a moral responsibility to let his constituents be represented by someone who’s not a wife-beater, but if I wouldn’t be surprised if the SNP leadership were saying “Go!” in public and desperately hoping in private to keep their effective majority exactly where it is today.

Edit: I’ve taken the other Bill Walker out, the former Tory MP. The coincidence in naming amused me, buy think I meant Nicky Fairbairn anyway and I don’t want to associate the Tory one with domestic violence.

Dear Edinburgh Lib Dems: Do you want to die?

Apr 7

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Local government, Parties | 26 Comments

Another guest today from Dan Phillips. You may have seen his biog a week ago, but here it is again. Dan’s a press photographer by trade but a political obsessive at heart. A small ‘l’ liberal, he blogs at liberalsellout.wordpress.com. The blog has taken to dissecting the local elections in Edinburgh of late and this is his latest post in this vein.

If you as a party were fighting for your life, you’d pull the finger out.

Or you would have thought so. It’s less than a month to go till the polls and not a peep has been heard from the Lib Dems.

They were the last to put out their candidate list. Not a single policy has been trailed in the local media. Not a hint of what they would do in a coalition. And this is a tipping point for the birdy badged party.

A perfect storm in Edinburgh meant they were annihilated at Holyrood. Trams, the UK Coalition combined with the god-awful campaign they ran conspired to remove all their representatives from the capital – not even an insurance list seat.

You would think they’d have learnt. But given the inertia from their camp apparently not.

In 2007 they clinched 17 councillors – but only just. Seven of those were in the last round barely scraping past the finish line. Some didn’t even make the quota but were merely the last candidate standing. In short they won by being everyone’s second favourite – they are the lowest common denominator.

But need I say it, the context is ever so slightly different now. The Nats are standing two candidates in many of those same wards where the Lib Dems won through inertia (like Sighthill, Craigentinny and Portobello to name a few) while the paucity of independent candidates in this election means there is no second chance to get it right. If you don’t get a decent haul of first preferences, expect execution in the first round.

So how to avoid this fate? Well you could put out at least some sort of policy. Maybe trumpet your successes as a council over the last five years. Do something to cut the tram albatross from around your neck. Possibly, and I know this is radical, give your lost voters a reason to return, and the hard core a reason to turn up.

Or you could do nothing and let the self imposed vacuum be filled with the policies of the opposition.

It’s up to the Lib Dems what they do. But to my mind there are only four safe-ish seats, and that’s a relative term. Edinburgh’s voting patterns contrive to bind the UK Coalition partners together. In three seats where the Lib Dems are strongest, so are the Tories. And we know that the Tories prefer the Lib Dems substantially over any other party, so expect to see the blues haul the injured Lib Dems over the line in Almond, Corstorphine and Meadows/Morningside. In Drumbrae/Gyle the Lib Dems had 45% of the first preference in 2007 – it would be a colossal disaster if they could not return there.

Everywhere else? Well it’s up to them. I suspect that Southside will return Mackenzie for the Lib Dems but it is very narrow, election fans. Beyond that every seat will have to be wrung from the opposition.

The defence to such inaction could be that the SNP have been silent too. That in 2007 the Nats hadn’t put out a manifesto at this stage either. But the Nats aren’t at risk of being torn asunder by the four other parties currently lashed to their limbs.

If you wish to be uncharitable to the Lib Dems you could note they have made one promise in their ‘Edinburgh Voice’ newspaper. The strapline directly underneath the masthead on one reading declares an Edinburgh ‘free from the Scottish Liberal Democrats’. Carry on like this and they might just deliver it.

Surely politics should promote equality?

Apr 4

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Equality | 77 Comments

We have a most welcome guest from Juliet Swann today. Juliet works for the Electoral Reform Society in Scotland. She blogs for them professionally occasionally here, and has her own personal blog here.

Imagine a female Prime Minister. Hold on, AND, a female Chancellor, and the Defence Secretary is a woman, and so is the Speaker, and the Leader of the Opposition, and the Opposition Chancellor, and the Leader of the House of Lords. And in the Scottish Parliament, the Cabinet is led by a female First Minister, with only the Health Secretary and the Culture Secretary standing out as being male.

It feels strange to imagine, and yet, by accepting that the reverse as the norm, and as okay, we are also accepting that 50% of the population don’t deserve 50% of representation in our political institutions.

I’m not going to second guess whether policy decisions would be different with a better gender balance in Parliament, but ignoring half the population is never a good idea, not least because it means we lose their talents and perspectives.

Our political institutions shouldn’t be carbon copies of society, but when they represent an entirely distorted picture of who we are, this can’t help but create a parliament which is out of touch with the people it serves.

Devolution was supposed to herald a new era of gender balance in politics. In 1999 Scottish Labour’s pairing policy saw the party return 28 women out of 56 MSPs. In 2003’s “rainbow Parliament” the SSP returned twice as many women as men, and Labour’s gender balance improved as the six seats they lost were all held by men, but overall women still only numbered 51 of 129. The Liberal Democrats have only ever returned two female MSPs, even when they held 17 seats. With their highest number of sitting MSPs, the SNP have only 18 women out of 69.

Labour still have 17 of 37, which is only just shy of 50%, demonstrating that even with a loss of overall numbers, the pairing policy that worked so well in 1999 has enabled them to maintain a good gender balance, even though they have not continued to promote positive measures. (Imagine where they might be if they had…)

Then we can look to local government – with the second STV local election just around the corner, surely, as the electorate can rate their candidates by preference, rather than placing all their eggs in one basket the parties will have thought about gender balance? Because would it not make you think twice if you realised that although you could express a preference, that preference had to be male?

And yet, to highlight Edinburgh’s list of candidates:  the Liberal Democrats have just two women among their 17 candidates. Labour is fielding eight female candidates out of a total of 23 and the Tories have six women among their 20 hopefuls. Only the Greens achieved a gender balance with eight women and nine men.

Of the smaller parties or independents standing, only 3 are women.

“perhaps no women were interested”, “women don’t have time, with childcare responsibilities”, “parties should select the best people, regardless of gender”, “women aren’t attracted to the cut and thrust world of politics”

These excuses, and they are excuses, will not stand. In 2012, in a first world country with girls exceeding boys in education, it is absurd to suggest women don’t want or are not able to match men in the political sphere.

Firstly, politics needs women, it needs to represent all of us. Secondly, perhaps we need to re-think how politics works, or how childcare works, if in 2012 women are not standing for election because they have kids. After all men have children too. Thirdly, the only way to encourage more women is to ensure they have role models to aspire to, believe in and emulate.

You’ll have noticed the Green party achieved gender balance. That’s because they have a strong gender policy. It’s not rigid, but it is strong. And as time goes on, it becomes easier to meet the 50/50 target because women see other women succeeding and as we all know, success breeds success.

Arguments for quotas and strong gender policies are often refuted as ‘meddling’. I would never argue that quotas are perfect, they are an interim measure to address an inbalance. But something needs to change.

We need to stop saying that positive measures lead to mediocrity. This is an argument with no evidence and no logic. We see mediocrity and brilliance across politics and it never has anything to do with gender. Secondly we need to act now. The idea that the situation will eventually right itself is a cowardly excuse for doing nothing. The number of women MPs has increased by only 4% since 1997. If we don’t do something our daughters will be drawing their pensions before they have an equal say in how our country is run. Is that really the message we want to send to our kids?

The new campaign Counting Women IN was born out of this anger. Five democracy and gender organisations – The Centre for Women & Democracy, The Fawcett Society, The Hansard Society, Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society – came together to campaign for equality: for equal numbers of men and women in our Parliaments and institutions by 2020. It’s a positive campaign designed to work with parties in recognition of their separate cultures, histories and practices to achieve real change. Equality, that’s all we’re asking for.

Join the call for 50/50 equality for men and women in politics at www.countingwomenin.org

The vaulting ambition of Edinburgh SNP

Mar 27

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Local government | 32 Comments

A guest today from Dan Phillips. Dan’s a press photographer by trade but a political obsessive at heart. A small ‘l’ liberal, he blogs at liberalsellout.wordpress.com. The blog has taken to dissecting the local elections in Edinburgh of late and this is his latest post in this vein.

If you had ‘broken’ an electoral system thanks to your unprecedented popularity, you’d have a spring in your step too. Just as in the rest of the country, the SNP have high expectations in Edinburgh.

The overflowing confidence brought by May 2011 has led the SNP to field more candidates than any other party in Edinburgh – 26 in all. That may also be why their leader Steve Cardownie felt he could declare that “the Greens are submitting this motion now because they won’t be here after May” as he and the Lib Dems slapped down their motion for a public petitions system.

You cannot blame the Nats for this confidence. And having been cautious in 2007 by only standing one candidate in each ward, net gains are the only probable outcome. In fact the Lib Dems owe many of their seats in Edinburgh to nationalist hesitancy in 2007: in Portobello the SNP’s Bridgman was elected in the first round with 1000 votes spare, whilst the Lib Dems scraped in on the fourteenth round, not even making the quota.

But there’s an interesting characteristic to the SNP vote. Those 1,000 votes in Portobello largely didn’t transfer, and that pattern is repeated across Edinburgh. If you take the four wards where the SNP and the SNP alone won in the first round it’s possible to determine the political peccadillos of the nationalist voter. There’s over 10,000 in the sample, not a bad survey:

With over half not transferring this confirms what is known from the “both votes SNP” Parliament campaign. Those that vote with the cause are really quite attached. And with the Nats standing two candidates in nine wards this will further choke the transfers other parties may hope for.

And by translating those May 2011 parliament gains whilst also using 2007 as a measure for their safest seats, the SNP have, in Cardownie’s words, ‘used an almost scientific’ approach. They won’t get both elected in all of these wards, but they don’t in my view also risk electing none in Leith, Leith Walk, Craigentinny, Portobello, Liberton, Sighthill or Forth. Where this strategy does make some risks is in both Inverleith and Drum Brae/Gyle. They may have won Edinburgh Western last year, but only just.

But as we all know, people vote differently in different elections. And with a low turnout expected, it could even be different people voting entirely. There’s also very different factors at play. It’s not ‘Salmond for First Minister’, it’s ‘Cardownie for Council’. That soft Lib Dem vote that fell into the warm cuddly Alex embrace doesn’t have the same incentive to vote for them this time as the council has been ‘run’ by a Lib Dem-SNP Coalition. Will they even vote at all?

Of course 26 does not a majority make. If they elected all of them they’d still be 4 short. And given that many of those gains will be made at the expense of the Lib Dems, will the unhappy relationship at the heart of the current coalition really stand the strain?

Therein lies the problem for our nationalist pals. If the Lib Dems shrivel to a shell of councillors they won’t be able to bridge the majority gap even if they wanted to. The mocking of the Greens appear to make them a no-go for the Edinburgh SNP, leaving them with either the Tories or Labour. Having only just backed the living wage getting into bed with the only party definitely opposed to it would be perverse when Labour are there. Perhaps that is why Cardownie said to the Edinburgh Evening News that “the other [option] is to operate as a minority administration and proceed policy by policy with the support of different parties at different times”. Should a victorious SNP be able to repeat Salmond’s 07-11 government and navigate minority adminstration via concession this could be more stable than a hopelessly divided coalition. If, however, they don’t prove to be as shrewd as their Holyrood counterparts, they may find themselves in office but not in power.