Soapbox Politics

As you may or may not know, yesterday saw the second election day of the modern day Scottish Parliament. In an interesting series of results, minority parties and independent candidates scored the most victories.

Listening to BBC Radio Scotland this morning, the analysts and reporters were all terribly excited by this development, and wondering why it happened and what it all meant.

Well, I can exclusively reveal the answers:

• The majority of people have yet to see a direct impact on their lives as a result of the parliament, other than a set of petty squabbles between the major parties, truly insignificant scandals involving MSPs, and a poorly managed development of the new parliament building. No real surprise since the Holyrood parliament does not (yet) have fiscal independence of its Westminster overlord. End result: an apalling 48% of eligible voters actually made the effort of voting;
• The major parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP and Conservatives) had nothing of note to say during the election campaign. Compare that to the vociferous efforts of Scottish Socialist Party, the Green Party, and the independents, who may only have focussed on particular issues, but therein lies their secret;
• The leaders of the various parties were all interviewed on the BBC a couple of weeks ago. The two ‘winners’ during those interviews were Robin Harper (Green) and Tommy Sheridan (SSP) – they were hugely passionate in their causes (however disillusioned you might think they are ;-)). Jim Wallace (LibDem) and John Swinney (SNP) did not fare well at all, and their parties came off worst last night (in influence, if not in actual numbers);

So what does that mean for the Scottish Parliament? Well, the ruling ‘party’ remains a Labour/LibDem coalition, but with a majority cut-down to just 2 seats. The rest of the seats are highly fragmented between the other parties.

The dynamic of the parliament should change: debates might actually focus on the topic in hand from a variety of angles. The SSP and the Green Party will now have representation on the ‘Business Bureau’, which is the parliament’s cross-party panel for selecting topics for debate, selecting who sits on committees and other parliamentary business. A broader cross-section of interests should be a a good thing.

The downside of this fragmentation is that it could become far harder to pass any legislation, leading to a completely ineffectual government (though some may argue that is already the case).

Only time will tell how different things actually become.

To all the major parties who were wondering aloud this morning just why the minor parties and independents had made up such ground, my message would be this: talk about what you believe in, not what you think might be appropriate; in other words, get on your soapbox. Oh, and make sure you work damn hard to actually do something positive. Self-preservation is not what gubernation is about, so please stop squabbling amongst yourselves, because the electorate doesn’t really care what David thinks about Jack, or Jack thinks about John, or even what John thinks about Margo. And the media has a role to play in this as well – focus on the real issues. In fact, there is only one issue: how to make Scotland a great country to live in. Just over 100 years ago, we constructed the Forth Bridge, and now we can’t even build a parliament.

Speaking of which, please just finish the Holyrood building will you? Once it’s done, it will be a fine home to what could and should be a fine institution, running a fine nation.