Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

Posts Tagged SNP

Coalition: sense or sensitivity?

Sep 7

Posted by Malc in Elections, Holyrood | 16 Comments

Looking forward to May 2011 and the Scottish Parliamentary election, I think the smart money is probably on a minority Labour administration (assuming current poll figures and mentalities within the ‘Scottish’ Labour party – and also a backlash to the lack of a referendum, though I seem to be in the minority in thinking this). Nevertheless, here’s a concept I’m floating, in the main because it seems so crazy: a Labour-SNP administration.

It’s crazy right? I mean, at the grassroots level they hate each other. Their campaigns are aimed at drawing votes from the other, most often in negative slogans and attacks on policies; their representatives have engaged in such Punch-and-Judy politics (see, Foulkes, G. who could not even bring himself to congratulate Nicola Sturgeon on her marriage) that you can’t even imagine them sitting next to each other in the canteen never mind around a government table; and, well, they won’t even engage with each other (see budget negotiations 2008, 2009, 2010). They also have the added distraction that at the moment their combined parliamentary representation would total 93 of the 129 seats in Holyrood – 28 more than required for a minimum-winning coalition. A coalition of these two parties on this scale would be utter madness.

But… it’s not like we’ve not seen this before. Remember the 2005 German Federal election? No?  I forget you’re not all geeks like me. Well, it resulted in the first Chancellorship of Angela Merkel. The two largest parties – Merkel’s (Christian Democratic) CDU/ CSU (226) and former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s (Social Democratic) SDP (222) – won 448 of the 614 seats in the Bundestag.  Neither an SDP-Green-PDS (left) nor CDU/CSU-FDP (liberal) coalition was workable, so after some negotiation, the two largest parties formed a coalition which lasted until the 2009 election.

Rhodri Morgan and Ieuan Wyn JonesAlso, in Wales – which I guess is a more similar case – Labour and Plaid Cymru decided on coalition in 2007, despite reservations among their respective memberships and similar tension to that between the SNP and Labour at the grassroots level. Combined, they have a total of 41 of the 60 seats in the National Assembly and have worked together to establish the All-Wales Convention as part of the coalition agreement, as well as leading the charge for a referendum on expanding the powers of the Assembly.

So from the two examples above we can see that a) dominant parties in particular systems can work together and b) Labour can work with nationalists. And a Labour-SNP (or SNP-Labour) coalition would have its advantages. For a start, they could combine to offer a much stronger, united, Scottish voice against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster. Whatever else they are, Labour are pro-devolution (of sorts), and would like the Scottish Parliament to have more powers while the SNP… well, a gradual increase in powers is better than nothing for them. Also, for Labour, this may be their only chance to have meaningful power in the UK for the foreseeable future (opposition beckons at Westminster for a long-ish time while the Welsh Assembly hardly has the levers of power Labour are used to). And both parties are “social democrats” (in loose terms James – don’t batter me for that definition!) so their policy formulations are not too dissimilar.

I know. I know. It’s crazy talk.  This is politics we’re talking about.  The negatives of such a deal would always outweigh the positives. And I guess one thing I should have mentioned about the German case is that the SDP got slaughtered at the next election. So there’s always a big loser. But in so many ways this makes sense. It’s just a shame that ‘sense’ does not always dictate how politics works.

NB – This post was written before James’ post (and, indeed, before the Sunday polls came out) but after Hamish Macdonnell’s Cal Merc piece (which I never read until James’ post cited it).  It was also written before yesterday’s debate on the dropping of the referendum bill, which doesn’t quite render the idea irrelevant, but means it is moving in that direction. It probably also directly answers/ comments on Andrew BOD’s comment on James’ post.

Tags: , ,

Is Labour minority now the most likely outcome?

Sep 5

Posted by James in Holyrood | 13 Comments

Graphic based on Mail on Sunday pollThe Holyrood electoral system was explicitly designed to make one-party majority virtually impossible, some say to “dish the Nats”. Sure enough, eight years of stable but unambitious coalition have been followed by three years of stable minority administration.

The polls suggest Parliament has settled into a relatively constant formation, with two large parties competing for first place, two medium sized parties competing for third place, then Greens and sometimes others. The most obvious coalition shapes are a large party plus a medium party, given the unlikelihood of the grand coalition.

To narrow that down still further, the Tory brand has never been properly decontaminated in Scotland, despite the odd sensible young buck on their Holyrood benches, and neither Labour nor the SNP could formally go into coalition with them here. You can’t point and shout at London cuts implemented by your Deputy First Minister’s Ministers at Westminster.

This also means the Tories’ partners down south are also off the table come May next year, at least as far as Ministerial office goes. To my mind, this leaves a limited range of options for the next Scottish Government. They are, starting with the most likely (based on current polling):

  1. Labour minority. They’ve seen how it’s worked for the SNP, and they quite like the idea of not having to share office, even if they’d share power with Parliament.
  2. Labour supported by another party more informally. The Confidence and Supply model might allow them to be propped up by the Lib Dems, or potentially by Green MSPs.
  3. SNP minority supported through Confidence and Supply. It’s hard to see them coming out ahead of Labour in May, semi-irrelevant though that is for making a majority.
  4. Either an SNP or a Labour formal coalition with the Greens. Again, looking at the numbers, it’s even less likely for the SNP and Green votes to make 65, so that alone puts Labour as the most likely partner. On the pro-side for either large party, we’re not contaminated by Westminster. However, the actual policy differences would be stark, starker than the (non-constitutional) differences between the two largest parties themselves.

Today’s poll in the Mail on Sunday is just another straw in the wind, but it is clearly blowing against the SNP and also the Lib Dems. I haven’t seen a non-SNP-commissioned poll which had them close to Labour at the top, and it’s been a while since the Lib Dems were as close to the Tories as they used to be. This one is also current, conducted this week, unlike the last one to get attention, which was from early August.

Voting intention
Constituency/list/seats

Constituency:
Labour: 39%/36%/55 (+9)
SNP: 29%/26%/35 (-12)
Tory: 16%/15%/18 (+1)
Lib Dem: 11%/12%/16 (0)
Green: na/6%/4 (+2)
Other: 5%/5%/0

(note, I used Weber Shandwick’s predictor, and am not sure if it reflects the new boundaries. Either way, the result was one more Green MSP than John Curtice estimated for the Mail on Sunday)

Again, the SNP couldn’t form a two-party majority with anyone except Labour, and SNP plus Green plus either Lib Dem or Tory isn’t a majority either. Conversely, Labour would only ever need any one of the three largest parties to win any given vote, and given how well Bruce Crawford’s dealt with the need to find Labour or two others, that would look pretty tempting.

This would be a radically changed Holyrood after May. A massive swath of the SNP back benches would be out after one term, and the fight for first and second place would be very clear. Salmond would surely be gone as leader, too, despite the desperate counter-polling, which would almost certainly lead to a mouthwatering contest.

Labour’s substantial lead over the SNP in voting intention would put them 20 seats ahead, yet the Lib Dems’ constituency strengths mean they wouldn’t fall much behind the Tories. The gap for third would still be very clear, though, at least in votes. As Malc suggests, if you back the Coalition, why vote Lib Dem instead of Tory? The Green Group would double in size but no longer hold the balance of power. One wee thought – an extra one percent on the Green list vote from the Lib Dems, and we’re up three more to seven. It’s going to be a hard-fought eight months.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,