To try to say this before yesterday was like standing in front of a runaway juggernaut. It had to be demonstrated by actual experience. We came extremely close to the absolute disaster of a unionist majority in Holyrood. Entirely because of this. I know many of you will not like reading this, but you have to.
Regional List Vote
North East Scotland 137,086 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 137,086 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
Central Scotland 129,082 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 129,082 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
Lothian 118,546 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 118,546 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
Mid Scotland and Fife 120,128 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 120,128 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
West Scotland 135,827 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 135,827 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
Glasgow 111,101 SNP list votes 0 SNP list MSPs elected 111,101 pro-independence list votes totally wasted
That is over 750,000 SNP pro-independence list votes completely wasted, electing nobody at all on the list.
By contrast in these regions the Tories got 376,000 – almost precisely 50% of the list votes the SNP received there – and got 19 MSPs for them!
If the SNP list vote which was completely, utterly and entirely predictably useless in these regions had been given to other pro-independence candidates, the number of Tory MSPs in parliament would have been drastically reduced.
We would not have the BBC crowing over “Tory victory” as the result of the election. Despite the fact that only one in 9 eligible Scottish voters, voted Tory, a fact the BBC will not tell you.
With tactical voting a dozen more committed pro-Indy MPs could have been put into parliament.
The Tories have done disproportionately well because of the “both votes SNP” campaign. This campaign was, undoubtedly, extremely successful in securing both votes SNP. Sadly it was – entirely predictably – totally counter-productive in maximising the number of pro-Independence MSPs.
I published yesterday during the voting: “But in the entire central belt and in NE Scotland, I am prepared to state boldly – and twelve hours will prove the case – that a list vote for the SNP in those regions is almost certainly wasted, and could rather have helped elect a different pro-Independence MSP.”
I was 100% right.
It was blindingly obvious in which regions SNP supporters should give the party their list vote, and in which they should vote tactically.
The question is, why did people I generally admire and, in fact, find quite brilliant like James Kelly and Stuart Campbell, get it so wrong and fail to see the obvious? I fear that the answer is one which raises wider concerns. The SNP has managed to achieve near complete identity with the independence movement, so that any questioning of total obedience to the SNP is taken as disloyalty to the nation. Those like me who want independence rather than the success of a political party find ourselves marginalised and despised. Even when we are demonstrably and undeniably correct. Perhaps especially when we are demonstrably and undeniably correct.
We need the second referendum soon. We are now dependent on the goodwill of the Greens to get it. I stated yesterday I do not trust Patrick Harvie’s commitment to independence. That annoyed some people and I am genuinely interested to see comments as to whether others pick up the same vibe from him. I do hope that the Green influence will lead the SNP to be more radical on Land Reform. That would be a great advantage to dig out of an unexpected situation.
Finally, it is not a bad thing that the Unionists are now firmly identified as the Tories. Many of them were Red Tories anyway, and all that has happened is that their allegiance has become plain. The stark choice between Independence and the Tories is now visible. It was always there, but at the referendum many did not see it. Having the Tories leading the unionist opposition simply brings the day of Independence closer. There is only one winner in that battle.
To be honest I didn’t trust the tactical voting concept. I thought it was a unionist strategy to split the vote. I didn’t, and still don’t, trust any party other than the SNP to deliver independence. The Green supporters have been saying for ages that they support independence, well it’s time to prove it by forming a coalition with the SNP against the Tories. Is there any way of getting rid of D’Hondt? It’s a millstone around demcracy’s neck
Allan
I agree it is an awful system. We should switch to Single Transferable Vote.
Allan said: “Is there any way of getting rid of D’Hondt? It’s a millstone around demcracy’s neck”
Craig said: “I agree it is an awful system. We should switch to Single Transferable Vote.”
When you say that Craig are you saying that we should keep the constituency vote as it is (FPTP) and only change the regional list vote to STV?
No, no, no. They should all be STV, and the list should probably elect an upper house rather than just additional members. Have a look at the Australian system (I get a vote in that too), works pretty well. It’s very hard for a major party to get a majority in the Senate, which provides an effective check on the government of the day. They need to get the support of minor parties and independents to get their legislation through the Senate. On the rare occasion one party has had a Senate majority, they have overreached and lost the next election.
How does Scottish independence relate to an EU that is controlled by the fascist war mongering bankster lackies in Washington?
People really need to get smart about how they are voting. In certain areas of the country SNP 1&2 was a unionist’s delight. Sit back and hoover up list seats for no big outlay. People are not looking at the list area but on the country-wide picture, and we really have to do better. Ask yourself, are you YES or as you SNP?
If you are SNP only, then fine, carry on. Vote SNP X 2 in the likes of Central Scotland and utterly waste your vote. If you are smart you will pick the most likely YES party on the list and back them.
The words I was thinking of just before I read this, was an enormous great American Fascist Steam Roller coming this way, which will make even the slightest pretense of the concept of voting and Democracy completely irrelevant.
Strange how people like John Ward can clearly see it, even when he has serious cognitive dissonance about other things, to do I suspect with his loyalties to his other football team when he was 12 years old.
Yet Craig Murray seems completely blind to it – or maybe he is actually in favour of it, being a committed globalist, whilst claiming to be very pro Independence.
Probably something to do with Left side of brain VS Right side.
“ERDOGAN & MIGRANT FINES: HAS THE EU GONE COMPLETELY MAD?”
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/erdogan-migrant-fines-has-the-eu-gone-completely-mad/
And no, I didn’t vote for anyone. Far too late for that…though I will vote to get out of the cesspit EU
Tony
Tony, you should always vote I am sure you have an opinion on something,well you do the EU, I get pissed off when I hear people complain about the government then say they did not vote, why? On the EU I will be voting OOT, it sucks in unwanted Migrants who DO take unskilled Scottish jobs, my work is full of them and I know lots of Scottish and English friends who would love a job at my work but sorry they(employers) like the Poles.
Dear Craig,
I think it is perhaps a case of voters genuinely not understanding the arithmetic on how the list works. It can seem overly complicated. People might support either a Green or SNP msp but be uncertain about how the statistics work out – it really might not seem very obvious at all.
Perhaps you’re right but this would require a level of knowledge of the polls and calculated risk taking that is maybe asking too much from most ordinary SNP/Independence supporters.
If people had taken your advice and had given their list votes to the Greens and then there had been slightly less “first past the post” constituency wins, what then?
Also as the Greens where the only obvious other place for Independence supporting list votes – what if you find the Green policies naïve or economic nonsense – just vote for them anyway?
The Orange/Rangers mob have turned to the Tories big time, you now have the spectacle, so familiar in Northern Ireland, of working people voting for establishment masters who actually despise them.
The Tories, Lib Dems and what’s left of Labour should just cut to the quick and unite to form a Scottish DUP!
J Galt,
“working people voting for establishment masters who actually despise them.”
That’s not just in Scotland and its not just “Orange/Rangers mob”
Though the colour is a bit of a hint.
It happens across most of the World, and most of it is directly due to CIA manipulation in all its forms, which has been going on long before Harold Wilson – when we actually did have a little democracy – or at least it seemed so.
Check out what’s happening in South America now. Pepe Escobar is a good start.
Tony
I am afraid this is a complete mystery to me.
Why are list votes wasted if given to the SNP?
Why did Conservatives get 50% of SNP votes and yet get 19 MSPs to the SNP’s none?
Why would it have been better for list votes to be given to other pro-independence parties?
Please help an ignorant resident of England. Thanks. J
Simply put, it is an additional member system by region which strives to achieve a degree of proportionality using the D’Hondt method on the additional member (regional) list.
Each region consists of a number of constituencies. These are UK style first past the post elections. But the voter has a second vote for a party on the regional list. This is to give a measure of proportionality. The more first past the post seats a party in the region wins, the more the effect of its votes on the regional list is diluted by division. In effect, if you win all or nearly all the constituencies, your regional list votes are going to be divided by a factor of eight or nine and become useless. This is what happened.
Thank you.
So if you know that your party is going to be popular within the region, and what you want to do is to minimise the seats that another party (for example, the Conservatives) will win, the best idea is to vote for a minor party congenial to your views. Because this will magnify the minor party’s influence and may also operate to keep the party you do not want, out?
I think I see. I appreciate your taking the time.
The other party you are going to vote for needs to be co-ordinated or this all falls apart. One party really needs to be picked and everyone should pile into them. Splitting the SNP vote three or four ways would not be as effective.
E.g. if all the SNP list votes had gone to the Green party in Central Scotland, Glasgow and West Scotland then they would have 10 more MSP’s today and both the Labour and Conservative party would have 5 MSP’s less each.
And if this was co-ordinated with the Green party they could remove vanity candidates in Edinburgh from the constituency vote and independence backing MSP’s from being beaten by the resident Cheshire cat.
That’s precisely it. You managed to grasp from a simple one paragraph reply something the #BothVotes crowd spectacularly failed either to understand or believe from numerous articles, people reasoning it out on social media, and conversations on street stalls and doorsteps. I wish to hell I knew why.
Yes, people seem to get bogged down by stuff that is pretty much common sense.
In South Scotland, both votes SNP makes logical sense. In many other regions common sense told us that it was a stupid thing to do.
To be honest I still don’t understand why a new party isn’t formed that has a single manifesto commitment to do whatever the SNP does. It only stands on the list where the SNP will get very few list MP’s and then all SNP voters can make their list vote count for exactly what they desire. – SIMPLES!!
Good answer from Craig but it is almost impossible to know how everybody else in your region will vote so you take a chance by trying to vote tactilely, hence the method used. I always say vote for who you believe in let the cards fall.
CM & JSD,
Having quickly acquainted myself the D’Hondt system, which seems rather complex from the Wiki Page explaining it, and I actually have a bloody Masters Degree in Political Science, it seems in Scotland and Wales that we have a hybrid PR system whereby a connection with the constituency/elector is maintained, this being the FPTP part, but that a list containing a bag of names is also offers, whereby you can cast another vote.
Now forgive my ignorance, as of today one has never seen one of these voting slips, because I usually have my Mother cast my vote, which inevitably means anything cast on my behalf can only go to Labour, so, in Torfaen I’d have had my vote cast for Labour, whilst on the list vote my vote also would have been cast for Labour. Essentially, if I’m correct, instead of increasing the overall vote/AM count going to Labour, this system weakens Labour on the List vote., i.e., far better to vote for one of the other two left of centre parties, namely Plaid Cymru or the Green’s if we want to deny the Tories or UKIP any gains from the list. Which is all bloody confusing, particularly in Wales whereby we now have three left-of-centre groupings competing for the Left vote, but only two right of centre groups competing for the Rightist vote?
Further, the Labour leadership Election, and Green Party internal election utilise an Alternative Vote system with preferences going from 1 to whatever – me, I just put Corbyn down as 1st and left the rest blank, and the same applied to Watson, which was the best way to cast your vote if you wanted to deny the Blairites many of were instructed.
The voting system for Scotland is so wrong ordinary people DO NOT understand how it works
The problem is that you can’t know before the vote that you WILL “win all or nearly all the constituencies”.
Exactly!
Which is why all this criticism of SNPx2 is nonsense – you simply cannot expect the level of voter sophistication required.
If I had been given the advice “we’re absolutely certain to win all the constituencies, give your list vote to the Greens”, I would have ignored it.
When the voting system for Scotland was chosen it was chosen to make it difficult for any one party to gain an overall majority. We have no written constitution and no second chamber so this was meant to prevent a party gaining absolute power and imposing their will on the majority. It was decided sharing power between the parties would be better for Scotland.
Of course you will always get some for whom power is not enough, they will always want absolute power and absolute power corrupts absolutely and is very bad for Scotland.
STV would make it even more difficult for a single party to attain a parliamentary majority, as they would almost certainly require a majority of the actual vote.
The reason AV was used instead was that Labour wanted to maintain a FPTP component which they assumed would always work to their advantage.
Correction – AMS, not AV!
Getting rid of a fair proportional system is not the answer. Its to educate voters as to their choices within the system. Looks like the parties were lazy and or self centred when it came to tactical voting.
I would suggest that you have a cup of tea and a chat with Mr. Harvey to kick start this pro Independents drive.
Single Transferable Vote is an alternative form of Proportional Representation which is both easier to understand and gives results more proportional to votes cast, plus letting voters vote for candidates rather than parties rank them on a party list.
The existing system is the Additional Member System – which is basically just First Past the Post for the First Vote in the Scottish parliament (same way UK General Elections work – so lots of votes binned unrepresented in every constituency) plus party list PR on the second vote, with number of votes for a party divided by (1 plus the number of seats the party had already won on the first vote for constituency seats in the same region).
On the second vote its also parties that rank candidates – you can only vote for the party list, not your preferred candidate on that list.
thanks for that explanation Duncan, hope you’re well and ticking over.
I always reckoned you are a bit of a maverick (but I strongly approve of mavericks and whistleblowers so long at they are not like Donald Trump) and on this issue you are dead right. I had this notion at the back of my mind that something was ‘off’ with SNP2 across the board. However, on the plus side the ‘enemy’ is now clearly identified and in future elections tactical voting is likely to be much more successful. Though this might operate for both ‘sides’ so long as independence supporters ‘hold to the course’ the SNP ought to be the winners.
Born Optimist – when you say:-
” I always reckoned you are a bit of a maverick (but I strongly approve of mavericks and whistleblowers so long at they are not like Donald Trump)…”
Interestingly, Trump is correct on this. He is speaking, of course, about the US system. Point – he is making his comment from his angle of wanting to win the general election. System is rigged he says. Strange where your own party goes against you when the grass roots majority of party supporters have chosen you. Odd old world out there
Not strange at all, the Labour Parliamentary Party is now unrepresentative of its actual membership, and to a large extent, its actual electorate in many of Labour’s constituencies. Remember, less than 9% of Labour MP’s can claim any connection with the working class, but they claim they speak for us, which is crass. The same applies to the Democrat’s in the USA, as applies to the Republican’s, essentially these neoliberal hate most of us voters, so the vote to many is but a charade – a point I believe even Craig is making, but he’s doing it via the ‘independence’ route.
And again, I’m not too sure, as Craig professes and others, that either the Scots or the Welsh are as attached to the EU as they believe they are, witnessed by the rise of the UKIP in Wales. As ever, the Greens got nowhere in wales, although one has told a few of its leaders if you want working class votes ensure a working class person is actually standing to represent you as many in the WC don’t like being spoken down too, quite understandably so.
So I did a Google Search on CIA SNP and the best result in less than 10 seconds..
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/uk-intelligence-services-attack-snp/
This episode raises very serious questions. But they are not questions about Nicola Sturgeon. They are questions about the subversion of democracy by the security services, and the willing complicity of the corporate media.
There are journalists working for agents of the state. These agents receive information transmitted from the security services on equipment set up by MI5 technical specialists. I have contact with an engineer who TEMPEST tested the encryption machines used for this purpose in whitehall and government bunkers. This disruption of true democracy is ubiquitous.
With respect, I think the voting system did what it is meant to do. Parties got seats roughly in proportion to their votes. Neither unionists nor SNP scored a majority of votes, and that is how their seats stacked up. It is hard to argue with that from a democratic point of view.
It would perhaps work better, if the entire concept of Parties was abolished, and if you were going to vote, you would have to find out everything you could personally about the local individuals who wanted to represent you.
Or, if representatives were chosen by lot under the Athenian system, then, by the laws of statistics, all segments of the population would be represented in proportion to their share of the population.
lysias, well our Jury system is still based on that, and it used to work reasonably well….though there seems to be little justice any more … now that the Criminal Psychopaths are entrenched in Power.
Which brand of psycho would you like – a Blair or a Cameron??
Or in the USA – a Clinton or a Trump?
Why do people vote for any of these horrible people?
Totally agree with you Craig in every way. I seen this voting system problem coming head on so switch my normal Green list vote for a RISE list vote to make the point I only give my list vote to parties who are committed to independence through a manifesto pledge for serious action.
See! Having breakfast with Nigel Farage ruined not only your day, but the whole week. Don’t do it again
The fact of the matter is that BOTH the SNP and Greens failed to maximise their vote.
The SNP list vote was down 2.2% on 2011, and so not enough for the extra list seats to gain a majority.
But the Green vote, while up 6.6%, was not sufficient to gain extra list seats either.
The result is a net loss for pro-independence MSPs of 2 (-6 SNP, +4 Greens). This is despite the pro-independence party vote remaining virtually unchanged from 2011: the simple rebalance of slightly less SNP and slightly more Greens resulted in this.
The reason the Tories won more list seats is simple: more people voted for Tory on the list. Blaming the SNP and/or Greens doesn’t address the fact the Tories are consolidating the Unionist vote while Labour haemorrages and the Lib Dems flatline.
I have heard that if those people who voted SNP in their constituency exactly matched the list vote (i.e. both votes SNP) then they would have had a majority. The fact that some chose to split their vote has resulted in this outcome. Can anyone clarify?
Nathan,
I heard it too. I have done the maths in NE Scotland and in Glasgow and in neither would the SNP vote have got another MSP if their list vote matched their constituency vote.
I think you are correct Craig, if I recall the SNP only had four list votes whilst Labour and the Tories had many more.
I see Ruth Davidson won Edinburgh Central unseating the SNP incumbent.
Now with only 63 MSP’s not enough for a majority, alliances will need to be made. Patrick Harvey’s Green party and their six seats, will be important to the SNP on many issues.
Meanwhile the state broadcaster and anti-nationalist BBC, had the rat faced professor Adam Tomkins of the Tories on, at lunchtime, Tomkins crowed loudly how the Tories mandate is first and foremost to oppose the SNP.
David Cameron was said to be delighted at his Tory branch office in Scotland gains.
So yet sgain the Scots have been duped. Why oh why did the SNP not mske this FACT known to the VOTING PUBLIC. !!!!!
Veronica, if we had an crystal ball we could predict this but lets be honest here SNP going for a third stint in Holyrood I for one was not taking the chance to try to vote for other Indy parties to get them a majority so voted SNP x2, because of the voting system in place it is designed to have no majority we(SNP) just got lucky last time. If the SNP had got fewer Con seats it would have been better for the SNP in the list.
Because a political party cannot campaign for votes to go to another party if they themselves are standing.
Because it’s only a “fact” with hindsight.
Because you cannot instruct people how to vote.
As pointed out above, the purpose of the voting system is to elect a parliament roughly in proportion to votes cast. That was achieved on Thursday. While approximately 40% of the electorate votes for unionist parties, they are entitled to approximately 40% of the seats.
The way to reduce the number of unionists is to convince their supporters to stop supporting them, not to try to fiddle the system (with the strong possibility that it will be counter-productive) or by replacing SNP MSPs with Greens.
ps – to all those suggesting a separate list-only party, the Electoral Commission would not allow this. Labour has already tried it with the Co-operative Party, which had been in existence for decades, to try to fiddle earlier Holyrood elections. They were rumbled, and a newly-founded party would be even more obvious.
I wonder why the Greens, appear to have changed their stance on a second independence vote?
I also wonder if the SNP will put forward a Presiding Officer?
We need the second referendum soon. We are now dependent on the goodwill of the Greens to get it. I stated yesterday I do not trust Patrick Harvie’s commitment to independence. That annoyed some people and I am genuinely interested to see comments as to whether others pick up the same vibe from him.
That is my assessment of the situation in regards Harvie as well. The Greens essentially want to be nice to everyone and that everyone likes each other. It is simply not going to happen in Scottish politics! If you want to achieve real change, i.e. independence, then you are going to have to be far more passionate than Harvie is. Craig, it is not even a vibe from Patrick Harvie, he was quoted just before the independence referendum as saying he would only be disappointed for a couple of days if there was a No vote. There is absolutely no reason to trust Harvie’s commitment to independence, it is virtually non existent. The Scottish Greens want 1 million people in Scotland to sign a petition in order for there to be a second referendum on independence. That is a lot worse than the SNP’s at best conditional position, simply because how many petitions have ever reached 1 million and over? Christ, even the Hillsborough Disaster petition years ago only got a couple of hundred thousand in the UK, and that was on the completely preventable and atrocious/horrific deaths of nearly a hundred innocent people at a football match!
Sigh. This isn’t complicated.
A “pro-indy majority” is a meaningless term, especially given how tepid the Greens’ backing for a second indyref is. (Note: backing for another REFERENDUM, not backing for INDEPENDENCE.) Holyrood is a parliament, not a referendum.
Let’s assume SNP voters had split their votes in large numbers, leading to lots of extra Green seats. So what? They’d still be a minority government held hostage by the Greens, only more so. It’d be easier for the Greens to gang up with other opposition parties and force stuff through against the SNP’s wishes, and no easier for the SNP to get stuff passed.
SNP supporters would stand to gain nothing and risk a lot. Why on Earth would they vote for that?
Stuart
“Only more so” is not true. If SNP voters had changed their list vote in the central belt and NE Scotland only (which is what I advocated during polling), it would have made nil difference to the number of SNP MSPs.
Greens should only have been backed selectively where individuals heading lists are genuinely committed to independence. Other choices are available – Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow, for example.
What you’re advocating is like trying to perform open heart surgery with a mallet and chisel. The additional member voting system is simply too delicate to allow this kind of gaming BECAUSE YOU CAN’T KNOW IN ADVANCE what you’re going to need to make up the numbers on the list. What seems to have been inevitable to you was only inevitable in hindsight. AMS is not STV – the list vote is not a second preference.
The question remains the same, though: so what?
(Also, who’s the arbiter of which Greens are “genuinely committed to independence”?)
You know how to be insulting. Having a pro-independence majority meaningless? So you support the SNP, and don’t want people to “gang up with other opposition parties and force things through against the SNP’s wishes”. That’s perfectly reasonable, if you fully support the SNP (i.e. trust them to deliver both the best possible world before independence, and to deliver independence). However some of us pro-independence guys and gals don’t feel entirely comfortable placing this faith in the SNP. And some of us can do simple electoral maths as well if not better than you or James Kelly.
Does no one understand why we only have ever had labour or tory governments!!!! Anytime someone or a party try to upset the apple cart, they are ridiculed by both tory parties, they have always given themselves a good pay rise while the rest of us got scraps which made us tow the line and kept in check, then came national strikes in 70’s and 80’s which over wracked up debts due to policing and military intervention, thatcher decided the working would pay for this big time she found this easy to do and Blair jumped on the bandwagon a deal was done to lock out others and ensure they kept a hand in the honeypot SNP are a different kettle of fish and can only be dealt with by under hand tactics
If he SNP had got 63 seats in 2011 and 69 seats yesterday it would have been the right sequence for independence. Salmond was said to have wanted the SNP to have a second term before pushing for an indyref.
Still, there’s nothing to be gained by regrets. As you said Craig it does bring things into clearer focus. The Scottish Tories have been able to hide behind the SNP v Labour battle and avoid being held to account for what their party is doing at Westminster. Ruth’s gung ho defend the union attitude has put her party centre stage and the SNP can take the initiative in showing them as the really are.
I support independence but have become aghast at the the back-stabbing, anally retentive politics of the SNP top brass. They have reneged on land reform, reregulation of buses, and their hideous and compulsory Named Person scheme is based on the premise that families are too poor, too small and too stupid to raise their own bairns without big sister state making notes and pontificating. They’ve gone back on their pledge to scrap the “unfair council tax” and childcare provision is just a joke, especially in rural areas where many communities are desperately trying to attract key professionals such as GPs and headteachers. As for independence, I suspect that the SNP leadership is quite happy with the current status quo. For me, voting in this election was like pin the tail on the donkey.
Your a bit angry, SNP policies are not that bad ,Council tax it has been proven that a system cannot be found that would be fair to all. Named person, it is used in the Highlands to great effect. Land reform could go further but the land owners are making it difficult. Childcare is very expensive and they the SNP are still trying to role out more free childcare provision. Remember trying to help everybody on a limited budget is difficult, this is the SNP choice to try and be fair. Take the Labour policies before Kezia, no free presciptions, no bus passes, increase the Council Tax, dental and optical charges to be implemented, just a few for you. Now the Labour and Tories in this manifesto 1p on Income tax, tuition fees for students prescription charges back plus whatever they can get away with. Oh and by the way there are cuts coming from Westminster in the coming years as well as tax rises, welcome to the UKOK.
Thank you for this, Craig. As an Indy supporter it gives me no pleasure to rub salt into the wounds of the SNPx2 brigade saying ‘I told you so’ and to point out the disaster they have brought upon themselves. The SNP party machine should really think again. Are they capable of eating humble pie and admitting they were wrong in advising their supporters so foolishly? I doubt it. Party politics will always be more important than Independence to the apparatchiks 🙁
Wings is blaming folk NOT voting SNPx2 for the result, “he told us so!”. Three wheels on my wagon springs to mind. Failing to endorse Scottish independence cost the SNP a majority, they forgot in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The opposition is absolute pants but that does not mean the SNP are in any way as great as they seem to think they are.
You want the SNP to admit it advised its supporters foolishly.
Do you really seriously think that a political party which is standing in all constituencies and has lists in all regions could suggest voting for other parties?
I believe it’s in their constitution (and Labour’s, and probably other parties as well), that any member actively campaigning against their own party candidate (which is what advising a split vote would be) will be expelled.
What a load of rubbish. For it to work every SNP supporter would have had to pick exactly the same pro indy party for it to gain any sort of ground on the London based parties. People obviously did split their vote as the Greens made ground but they were the only other viable option to secure the right number of votes to pick up seats. But to say the SNP let in the tories is crazy and totally disengenuous. The tories got their seats from labour no voters.
As normal, spot on Craig. I gave up myself trying to explain to SNP support. Pointless, futile!
So now they have let all these unionist parties in the back door I wonder who they will blame? People not lending a vote for a party not willing to follow on with indyref2? (not that I support another indy ref so soon) Many would remove their vote because of no indy ref offer.
Crazy and your piece is perfectly justified and spot on the money, it is what all those who are not SNP but are independence orientated have been saying now for over a year!
The actual voting system is a disgrace to top it. However, SNP both votes not only sunk the SNP but sunk every single other progressive and indy supporting party (not that SNP are either of these, not for indy ref and certainly not ‘progressive’).
The Unionist parties haven’t come in “by the back door”. Their representation in parliament is actually slightly short of their share of the vote.
This may stop another refarendum having two Torry mps sitting with the snp
Maybe a wee Trump-type could break up the log-jam. Big risks in getting what you ask for, but the poker deck needs shuffling.
I will reiterate – why is there 44 per cent of eligible voters not even bothering to polling booths? Voting should be compulsory. Also, are we sure there was none of the fraudulent “Missing voting papers” disappearing again? More thought, and discipline really needed, I now feel completely drained with this latest round of elections……..over to you!
As this Blog is about politics and human rights, i’d like to say that the Welsh have human rights too, and that we are often ignored or overlooked given our small size in relation to both England and Scotland, as such, and if you all don’t mind, here’s a link to the National Assembly vote in Wales:http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/assembly-election-2016-winners-losers-11292630
The good news is that Wales from this vote remains a left-of-centre stronghold, with the Tory share of the voting falling to 21% from 25%, Labour cannot smile, for although more people voted – the Assembly not being much loved – the fact remains its vote took a larger percentage drop than the Tories did, some 6% decline to 35%, much of which I attribute to the fact that the Welsh working class are not as pro-European as pundits like to believe, and despite knowing full well we have many a bigot and racist among us – the EDL getting 2-3% of the vote in the Valleys in 2010, all of which has moved to UKIP, that in itself does not explain the rise of UKIP at both last years GE and on Thursday, although luckily its projected eights seats has become 6 based on that bloody ‘List’ vote again, they won no actually Constituency vote.
On the whole, denied a majority, Labour must now form a coalition, although Carwyn seems determined to go it alone, given they are two short of a majority. Moral of the tale, in Wales at least we have no single Party in total control and that a fully PR system, or STV may indeed be preferable to what presently exists. whilst I’m annoyed we now have UKIP in the Assembly, that is the peoples choice.
As for Carwyn Jones, to blame Labour’s fortunes on nonsense in London seems a tad too much, he is after all opposed to Corbyn, and i for one am glad Labour does not have an overall majority and must be forced to work with Plaid Cymru or the lone LibDem, who’s vote really did collapse. No surprise in Ms. Wood winning in a once firmly Labour stronghold, given she’s a professed Socialist and we Welsh ain’t so dumb, with the exception of those opting for UKIP. Satisfied I am, for maybe if this Assembly works well people may support it more and get used to ‘self governance’, which is a necessary step to independence, or at least a Federal UK, which funnily enough a full one-third of Tories think is a good idea, on the other hand, the Labour Unionists still prefer the Westminster tit. I’m easy and on this occasion I’m happy to support the will of my peers, its a great shame though that only just over 40% voted, hopefully next time it will be over 50%.