Congratulations

Congratulations to Tavish Scott - newly elected leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

One thing that does catch my eye, though, is that while he secured the position with a stonking 59% of the votes cast, this equates to a rather less than stonking 1,450 votes in total. Which, with a 61% turnout, by my reckoning puts the Scottish Lib Dem membership at (1,450/0.59/0.61) = 4029.






Back in the 2005 leadership election, Nicol Stephen triumphed with 2,108 votes, ahead of Mike Rumbles, who trailed on 642. Given it was a 65% turnout, the membership then would have been 4,231, or 202 members higher than today.

Back then, the Lib Dems were in government too, and Mr Stephen immediately took on the mantle of Deputy First Minister. A Lib Dem leadership election was therefore a matter of great national significance. Today, Mr Scott has simply been elevated to position of parliamentary leader of the fourth party in Scotland.

Progress, anybody?

Olympic Financial Control? Fallen At The First Hurdle

Some folk may remember that shortly after Christmas, my goat was got by the Labour Party. Specifically, their repeated and tedious claims that the SNP was somehow trying to deprive vulnerable groups of public money, through a reduction in the amount of 'ringfencing' in local government finances.

Never mind that this is also what the Labour Government was doing in England. Never mind that Labour Councillors in Scotland have been queueing up to support the initiative. Homelessness; mental health services; children's services; disabled children and families; Hogmanay celebrations; flood prevention... all at risk from the SNP Barbarians at the gate. Truly, in her desperation to seize the agenda, Wendy Alexander's campaign of scaremongering left no shroud unwaved or ambulance unchased.

How ironic, then, than within the last half hour, Scottish Labour MPs have voted through a measure to divert £675m of further Lottery funding towards the financial black hole that is the London Olympics. Note that that this isn't a hypothetical reallocation of money, but an actual diversion of resources which would otherwise have gone to benefit some of our most needy communities.

Scottish Labour's claim to a monopoly of concern in matters of social justice has always been a complete fraud. Hopefully, it's now there for all to see. And how sad that in backing the government on this matter, the Tories and Lib Dems have elected to hide behind the flimsiest of figleaves - a government 'assurance' that this will be the last raid on Lottery cash to pay for the Olympics.

Hmmm. And the band played believe it if you like...

Result For Lib Dems? Split Down The Middle

So, after a bitter battle where personality seemed to play a greater role than policy difference, the Lib Dems have wound up completely split down the middle.

Clegg: 20,988
Huhne: 20,477

The wounds from the knifing they gave Charlie Kennedy show no signs of starting to heal any time soon...

TWTCTW

Well, that was the campaign that was. I'm too tired right now to do a detailed retrospective, however, as a quick snapshot, in my opinion the SNP had its best campaign ever; Labour fought the most negative and uninspiring campaign I can remember; Annabell Goldie should win the award for 'most improved' leader for playing a poor hand extremely well and with no little grace and style; while Nicol Stephen will probably get an undeserved reward for fighting what must have been the dullest Lib Dem campaign in history.

Our American intern, Michelle, managed to sum their campaign up rather tartly yesterday afternoon in the car. Hearing Stephen string together one of his stock soundbites about being 'really positive about young people' and how people apparently 'want to hear about the issues that matter to them, not have another debate on the constitution', she exploded with: 'They're smart enough to do both, dumbass!'. Hard to argue, really.

My hopes for tomorrow? Mainly that the final result, whether that's win, lose or draw for the SNP, sees Scotland embark on a more adventurous and positive path. The last eight years have been positively stultifying. Where there is no vision, the people perish. Another four years of the Best Wee First Minister of the Best Wee Country in the World is a torture that no thinking Scot should wish to inflict upon their compatriots. I just hope that with the last polls of the campaign looking tight, all those who want change actually get off their backsides and vote for it in the best way they can.

Anyway, it's nearly 9pm, and I've still got shoes to clean, shirts to iron and an overnight bag to pack. Tomorrow's going to be a long stint, and while I'll try to blog something if I get the chance, I'll make no promises. Enjoy polling day and make your vote count - whatever the result, here's hoping for a better Scotland in the next four years.

End Of Term

Today sees the end of the second term of the Scottish Parliament. With the Executive going into 'Purdah', Labour will no longer have access to the Scottish civil service, or have a legion of Executive press officers to highlight their triumphs and bury their mistakes. Instead, they'll have to rely on their own people and a campaign machine which seems increasingly creaky and rudderless.

There's a funny atmosphere about Holyrood today. Jack McConnell is turning in a shouty, beleaguered performance at FMQs, assailed from all sides over broken election promises, health, crime, council tax, nuclear power and the performance of devolution. His rants about the SNP seem even more heated and lacking in humour than usual. All told, his demeanor is not one of a man brimming with confidence about being returned to his position in May.

The next parliament seems set to be very different indeed. 12 MSPs are standing down of their own volition, but a wee glance at the polls suggests that there could be more than a few new faces about the place come May. Both The Times (yesterday) and the Daily Mail (today) have carried polls putting the SNP ahead of Labour, both in terms of support and likely seats in parliament. The solitary thread of comfort which Labour spokespeople have clung to for dear life has been the apparent fall in support for Independence, down from 50% plus earlier in the year to just 27%.

Proof that the Labour campaign is working at a certain level, perhaps? Well no, actually. The difference is in not just the question asked, but the number of questions asked. You see, when the question of 'Independence - yes or no?' is put, there's a roughly 50/50 split. However, throw the rather nebulous option of 'more powers' into the mix and unsurprisingly, the numbers change. In fact, we find that in addition to the 27% who want 'independence, nothing less', some 52% would like more powers, perhaps as a further step towards sovereignty.

Game, set and match for the union then, and vindication for the Lib Dem stance that there should be no referendum on independence? Again, no. No-one takes the trouble to set out what these 'more powers' might be - would they include full fiscal autonomy, for example? The right for Scottish Ministers to represent us in Europe? Control over broadcasting regulation? The simple fact of the matter is that no-one knows. You'd get as worthwhile an answer by replacing the question with one asking whether you are in favour of fluffy kittens and nice sunny days.

The Lib Dems justify their anti-referendum stance by citing such polling data and by highlighting their support for federalism. In this way, they argue that there can be a 'middle way' on the constitution, whereby Scotland gets more powers and can stay happily in the union. That would be an honourable position, if it weren’t for the fact that they've supported federalism for over a century, yet still don't have a viable plan on how to bring it about.

All they have in their locker is to call for powers which Westminster would have to cede, over which the Lib Dems would have no leverage. And let's be brutally honest here - the only leverage for getting the powers worth having will be a strong SNP vote in May. Westminster might cede more powers to Holyrood, but only if Independence looks like it will be on the cards and even then, as with devolution V1.0, only as little will be ceded as they think they can get away with in order to dissipate the SNP 'threat'.

This is where it gets interesting. With any referendum likely to come towards the end of a 4-year term, there will be ample opportunity for Westminster to make its play. However, the SNP has already set out a little shopping list of powers it would like for Holyrood, such as control over North Sea Revenues and that right to lead negotiations, such as over fishing, in Europe.

If it can be shown through the rejection of some fairly modest requests that further reform of the British State is either impossible or won't come until many years into the future, won’t that make voters more inclined than ever to demand a referendum on independence? And where would that leave the Lib Dems, other than on the wrong side of the argument?

Support for independence down? It all depends on the question you ask, as well as the number of questions you ask. Alex Salmond could be unwrapping the mint Viscounts at Lancaster House yet.

Age Shall Not Weary Him

'What is the point of Menzies Campbell?', is a question with which I've been wrestling for quite a while now. In many ways, it's a question I never thought I'd ever be asking myself, since I'd long had a kind of sneaking regard for him. Sure, whenever matters SNP reared their head, I'd always found his knee-jerk patrician sniffiness to be absolutely insufferable. Otherwise, though, he earned my respect for both looking and sounding like a thoroughly competent MP who knew exactly what he was talking about.

I see in retrospect that mine was quite a rose-tinted view. That sure-footedness, demonstrated in matters of home and international affairs, has never quite been there when it comes to the equally important arenas of economic, health and education policy. In fact, it seems that the very qualities that made him appear so well cut out to be a Home or Foreign Secretary - his dispassionate aloofness and cultivated appearance of somehow being above the vulgar posturing of lesser mortals - are the very same qualities which are now rendering his stewardship of the Lib Dems such a becalmed and uninspiring affair.

Oddly, he seems to have diminished in stature since assuming the Lib Dem leadership. His perceived lack of support for Charles Kennedy tainted him from the start, as did his many fluffed appearances at Prime Minister's Questions. But never mind the recent fuss about whether he'd dump PR to get into government with Labour. To me, it is his apparent inability to connect with voters or to articulate any kind of coherent policy agenda, which should be causing the most discontent in Lib Dem ranks just now.

They are dropping, slowly but surely, in the polls. Where people liked Charles Kennedy even if they didn't necessarily respect him, Campbell seems to suffer from the reverse. Concerns about his age are raised, to which he now responds with an unbecoming prickliness. Watching him try to address this irrelevant jibe is becoming an increasingly painful sight. Like Gordon Brown trying to convince Middle England that he would make a good Prime Minister, the more Campbell tries to stress his youthfulness, the less it convinces.

Let's be clear, his age is largely irrelevant if we regard it as being an attitude of mind rather than a physical characteristic. In fact, I get the feeling that Campbell was probably middle-aged by his early twenties. And as one of the many politicos spawned by the Glasgow University Union Debating Society in the 1950s, it would have been surprising if he'd turned out any other way.

For all his protestations of having grown up in a Glasgow tenement, Campbell is a politician from the upper-middle classes, imbibed with a paternalistic and slightly patronising sense of noblesse oblige. But what once reassured about Campbell now just grates. And it is this, I think, which is what is hampering him and his party, rather than any questions about age. Like Gordon Brown, a section of voters has decided that they don’t particularly like him. And while voters cite Brown’s ‘Scottishness’ as being his prime draw-back (something which doesn’t seem to affect John Reid), it is Campbell’s age which is being held against him.

Highlighting the most obvious perceived flaw of someone we dislike is an instinct we develop in the playground. It might not be fair and it might be as base as it gets, but as Neil Kinnock, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith all found out, if the voters won’t take to you then electorally-speaking, both you and your party are toast.

The Lib Dems, while often confounding the pundits, have for the past while seemed like a party in search of a role. The charisma of a Paddy Ashdown or a Charles Kennedy has always in the past allowed them to escape the scrutiny they deserved for being all things to all people. With a revitalised Tory Party in England under David Cameron, also no slouch at appearing to be all things to all people, the days of the Lib Dems being able to hoover up the votes of the disenchanted now look to be numbered.

Scorching the Earth

Well, at least we can't say we weren't warned...

McConnell Starts Dirty War

"There is nothing that Labour can say that will change peoples' minds about Labour. There is no point in having a positive campaign because it doesn't wash. There isn't a bit of evidence to suggest that going positive will make any difference. They don't know Jack and they don't like Labour." - Labour Campaign Source.

Sir Menzies hits out at opponents

The Liberal Democrat leader questions Gordon Brown's "courage" to lead and attacks David Cameron.

So there you have it. Since Labour and the Lib Dems (the original Labour saving device?) have little good to say for themselves, they'll try and scare people away from their opponents; play the man rather than the ball at each opportunity; drive down the turnout and then hope for the best. Anyone fancy a sweep on how long it is before Lakshmi Mittal is paying for posters round Scotland of Alex Salmond with 'demon eyes'?

UPDATE - just found this excellent post by Will Patterson, saying much the same as me, but with far more eloquence than I feel like attempting just now. Read and enjoy.

Lib Dums (Part MCXVIII)

I simply had to laugh at the antics today in Holyrood of everyone’s favourite opposition/government (delete according to circumstances) party, the Liberal Democrats. For quite simply, in today's debate on government spending, they proved for all time the wisdom in the old adage that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Deciding on this occasion that they were government rather than opposition, they decided to accuse the SNP of having uncosted spending commitments. This they did in the time-honoured fashion of saying that ‘if you’re going to spend this amount on doing that, where’s the money to do it going to come from?’.

Tee-hee-hee - how clever. Sadly for the Lib Dem speakers, though, the SNP’s Alex Neil was on the case, and managed to intervene to ask what spending the Lib Dems planned to cut in order to fund their proposed cuts in income tax. Three times Alex intervened on three different speakers, and each time answer came there none. The sound of rapidly escaping air was deafening…

Jeremy Purvis also took to his feet, and used his time to claim that SNP figures in a document called ‘Scotland in Surplus’, were wrong because they didn’t take into account the party’s proposed cut in corporation tax. Sadly for Jeremy, the SNP figures to which he refers represent an analysis of the revenues and expenditure which take place in Scotland in the current year, and not a dynamic budget showing what the SNP would do in government.

This is something the document explains very clearly – that lack of attention to detail won’t do your ministerial chances any good, Jeremy!

However, to spare Mr. Purvis’ blushes, the ‘chump of the day' title must be split between Argyll MSP George Lyon and his equally irascible colleague for North East Fife, Iain Smith, both of whom claimed that the SNP had hacked out £750m of defence spending between the party’s July ‘Scotland in Surplus’ paper and its December update.

Whoops-a-daisy! That correction for the government’s overestimated defence spending in Scotland was in the July document as well. For future reference, boys, it’s in the bit about ‘Expenditure’ under the heading ‘Defence’. There’s also a dirty big Appendix on page 12, ‘Appendix 1’ as it happens, which explains the figure more fully.

Still, it’s not my fault if you can’t be bothered to do your homework properly. Now, if only I could find some way to get the theme tune for ‘The Muppets’ out of my head…