Exiled in a kilt

Ok, back to Scotland.

The Scottish parliament works on a combined first past the post/Proportional Representation (PR) system, and elects a total of 129 MSP's (Member Of The Scottish Parliament). The combined system requires voters to choose both a candidate for their own constituency (first past the post) and also rank the parties as a top 3 system for the PR section, this is where the smaller parties gain their support.

Since devolution came to Scotland in the mid/late '90s it has been governed by successive Labour/Lib Dem coalition governments - in many ways to the detriment of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland who are now seen by many as another vote for Labour. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has been the second party, and really ever since the politics of Thatcher (culminating in using Scotland as the staging ground for the Poll Tax) the conservatives have not been a force. The PR influence also leads to a few seats usually being held by some smaller parties such as the Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)

That is until a couple of weeks ago. After the election, the SNP finished with 47 seats; Labour 46; The Conservatives 17; Liberal Democrats 16; and others with 3 seats (2 of which belong to the Green Party - something of importance as I will address later) No coalition could be formed by the SNP with the Lib Dems to give them a majority government (mainly due to the SNP pre-election pledge to hold a referendum on Scottish independence by 2010)

There is some controversy regarding this election however, a new ballot system was introduced in Scotland for this election - an electronic ballot which had both parliamentary & local municipal council elections on the same ballot which with the already convoluted combined voting system mentioned previously caused a great deal of confusion (especially, but not limited to, the older voters) Also there is the issue of these ballots getting rejected if they are folded because it means they can not be read by the automatic counting machine. Prior to this election the traditional marking your ballot with an X was used and so it is common nature for many to automatically fold their ballots - it is almost a reflex action. Now whilst not all spoilt ballots can be blamed on the new system (it must be considered that some portion of them were spoiled on purpose as a statement) the fact that over 150,000!!! of them were rejected surely gives any person doubts over the usefulness of the system and whether democracy is really being served. especially when you consider Scotland has a total population of approximately 5 million, of whom there are probably 3.5 - 4 million registered voters, of which only 52% made their way to the polling station (including those whose ballots were rejected) - I also realise a turnout of only 52% is shocking in itself, I will address this later in another entry, however if people do get out and vote they deserve to have their vote heard. Situations like this will only lead to increased voter disenfranchisement. I am in favour of a return to traditional voting at the earliest opportunity.

So how did this impact things?

Possibly one way to look at it is to see how smaller parties stand as compared to the previous election: At the prior election the smaller parties totalled 17 MSP's, now they have 3 - the only party to actually gain seats was the SNP who finished the night with 20 more seats than previously

Another may be looking at the number of votes by which candidates won their seats in each constituency - which was in a number of cases less than the number of rejected ballots in the constituency.

However we are still left with the question: What do you do about it?

Do you hold another election? Well, no that is pretty much verging on the impossible. What you do is learn the lessons from the failings and ensure that it is NEVER repeated. It was a disgraceful farce, and if we want to see ourselves as a competent country we can not allow it to ever take place again, basically it was our Florida and hanging chards.

So after all that the situation is this the SNP are the minority government and they will need to work hard to build a consensus with the other parties to get through any legislatiion. They struck a deal with the Green Party to incorporate some of their policies, in exchange for the Greens supporting Alex Salmond (SNP leader) as the nomination for FIrst Minister of Scotland - but there is a long road ahead and they will now have to prove themselves capable of leading, we know they can be an opposition but can they take Scotland forward?