Nationalists are set to win big in the Scottish Elections next Thursday. Here, I'll explain what that means, how the Scottish Parliament works, and provide a brief and abridged History of the Nationalist movement within Scotland.
To begin, Scottish Nationalism as Advocated by the Scottish National Party, Scottish Greens, and others, is inherently anti-racist. Not non-racist, but anti-racist. The first non-white, first Asian, first non-christian, and first Muslim member of the Scottish Parliament was one man named Bashir Ahmad who was a member of the Scottish national Party. One statement from him essentially defines the racial ideology of the Scottish National Party: “It isn't important where you come from, what matters is where we are going together as a nation.”
As for other issues, the SNP stacks up fairly well in line with Progressive ideas and values. They want a strong single-payer healthcare system. They've fought hard to prevent privatization, and won. Their leader has even gone on English television and blasted the three English parties for destroying the nation's health service in favor of an American style privatized health system. He's said that with a Majority, he could have Scotland using and exporting 100% renewable, non nuclear energy by 2020. Considering what I've seen over the past few years, he means it. He and his party have been the real force behind wind and wave farms in Scotland. The one place that I don't like the SNP as an individual is that they're okay with CCTV cameras being put up so that the police can watch for crime. I would prefer they spent the money they'd be putting into CCTV on more police officers.
The SNP itself has been around since 1934, and has had continuous representation since 1967. In the 70's, Scotland was discovered to have within its waters one of the largest oil reserves in Europe. It was at this time that the British government had MI5 infiltrate the party, and began keeping secret files on the SNP, some of which are still classified. (Click those links. Those are reports from major newspapers.)
The British government doesn't deny this, and those links are from major Scottish newspapers accused of being anti-independence. So you understand the significance, imagine a Wall Street Journal headline “Bush Economic Policies Based on Falsehoods,” or “Democrats Better for Economy say Economists.”
In one of these secret documents, released only a few years ago when its classified status expired, ‘The Economics Of Nationalism Reexamined,’ was a government document reporting the economic reality to the Prime Minister.
[It has been claimed that] the Government revenue from rent and royalties from the whole of the Continental Shelf …may be of the order of £100m. per annum at that time...
The SNP have countered these figures by claiming that North Sea oil should by
1980 be yielding a Government revenue of approximately £800m. By 1980, 80m tons of oil were indeed being extracted from the North Sea, but they were worth some £3 800m – some 38 times the Minister’s estimates. All that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low.
An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time into the future... Thus, for the first time since the Act of Union was passed, it can now be credibly argued that Scotland’s economic advantage lies in its repeal... Britain is now counting so heavily on North Sea oil to redress its balance of payments that it is easy to imagine England in dire straits without it.
Not knowing these facts exactly, the SNP still argued that independence was in Scotland's economic self interest. SNP literature read “We have been told we are too poor for self governance. Now, with the prospect of our own oil, we are admonished for being greedy! "Keep your poverty, but share your riches" seems to be the message from Westminster.”
In 1979, a referendum was held to establish a Scottish Parliament. With a Turnout of 63.8%, 51.6% of the electorate voted for an independent Scottish Parliament. Because of the way the Scotland Act had been written by Unionist parties, the act counted every person who did not vote as a no vote. They tallied up the 36% who didn't vote and added them to the “No” column.
Enter Thatcher, who took the revenues from Scottish Oil, and used them to rebuild England, while devastating the Scottish economy. Two things happened. First, social services were gutted. Second, Scottish Heavy Industry was destroyed. Thirty years on, the economy of Scotland still hasn't recovered, with a significant portion of adults in Glasgow having never held a legitimate job.
After Thatcher was defeated by her own party because of horrific assaults the lower class, such as the attempt to institute a Poll Tax which would jail people unable to pay, John Major became Prime Minister. When Tony Blair, Scottish himself, began his 1997 campaign, he announced that he would fight for a Scottish Parliament. John Major made the claim that there were “72 Hours to save the Union,” because an independent Scottish parliament would give Scottish Nationalists a path to government. He was right. In 2007, a Decade after John Major's attempt to save the Union, the Natonalists won the scottish Parliament election by a hairs breadth, and formed a minority government. They took one seat more than the labor party.
The Scottish Parliament uses a system called proportional representation. In addition to individual constituencies where the people elect a representative to do their will in parliament, there is a regional vote system, where they select their preference based on party. This is where the greens will get all of their seats. They can't defeat the larger more established parties in individual constituencies, but across a region, they can garner enough votes to represent the ideas of the Scottish people. Simply put, there are two ballots. On one ballot you vote for a person, on the second you vote for a party. The first ballot selects your individual representative, the second selects individuals from a regional list based on party affiliation.
It's been a rocky few years for the SNP Minority government. It was the SNP government that released Al Megrahi. While this was unpopular worldwide, it was in accordance with the laws of scotland. Once an individual is confirmed to be suffering from a terminal illness, their life sentence is ended, and they are released to live out the rest of their lives with their families. This is irregardless of the crimes committed, and the list of those released includes child murderers. Attempts to attack the SNP for this have failed. The response being “We obeyed the laws of Scotland in releasing a terminally ill Libyan while you were making illicit oil and weapons deals with Gaddaffi.”
An attempt to hold an independence referendum was defeated by the unionist parties. The Liberal Democrats, who have long argued for a federal Britain and who have been outspoken supporters of changing the democratic process to make it more democratic, have been branded the Fib-Dems. At once, they argue for more democracy, while preventing the people of Scotland from exercising their democratic right to self determination.
With each poll that comes out, pro-independence Scottish parties grow in strength. Thanks to Scotland's proportional vote system, support for multiple similar parties mean that the results of an election actually reflect the will of the people. The trending of every poll since the national debates suggests that nationalist parties will take a Majority in the Scottish Parliament. I waited to write this until three polls came out, and since I've been writing, another has come out this morning. They're all from different pollsters, and they all suggest the same thing. The SNP is at least ten points ahead of every other party, and the Scottish Greens have a chance to overtake the Liberal Democrats. This means that even a conservative estimate puts nationalists in the Majority in the Scottish Parliament.
I'll write a diary when its over to explain the situation when the dust clears. I'd post the raw data, but Wikipedia has it listed, tabled, and formatted better than I could here, so if you're interested, just click here.
If you're interested in playing the numbers game, there's a decent sim here.
Despite the fact that (barring national tragedy) nationalists are set to take a majority, after May 5th, you may hear someone in the British MSM claim that the Scottish Nationalists still only have a minority in the Scottish Parliament. That's true if you're talking about the Scottish National Party specifically. But there are three major nationalist parties: The Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, and the Scottish National Party, the last one being the largest party in Scotland, and the other two having had seats before. Currently, the greens have two seats, but they're projected to take seven or eight, and if the SSP gets the high end of votes within the margin of error, they'll end up with seats too. They were swept out during the last election. Their party split into the SSP and the Solidarity party. It's a mess, and they're tiny, but there's a chance for either the SSP or Solidarity to pick up some regional seats.
As for Labour, they're set to lose five or six seats. That's not all that heartbreaking for them until you realize which seats they're set to lose. They include the leader of Scotland's Labour party, Iain Grey, and two of his cabinet members: Jackie Ballie and Andy Kerr. That's like the Republicans losing Boehner, Ryan, and Cantor in the next election. This is going to send their leadership reeling, as they've already had a crisis of leadership recently. In the past five years, they've had three different leaders. Their refusal to stand up to Tory cuts
There are some areas with conservative sentiment in Scotland, and the polling for these areas has held constant for the past decade. The Scottish Conservatives are guaranteed about 7-12% of the vote, and guaranteed the hatred of 88-93% of the Scottish Electorate, who actually remember what the conservative party did thirty years ago. It would be nice if Americans had memories that long.
The party that's really in trouble are the Liberal Democrats. Because they're in a coalition with the Tories in London, the same party that brought Scotland Unemployment and Poverty which has wracked the nation for thirty years, they're set to lose more than half of their seats. On a good day for them, they'll go from tied for third largest party to six seats out of 129. On a bad day, they'll end up with three. This is despite Tavish Scott's attempts to distance the Scottish party from the party in Westminster. They were already in trouble because they voted against allowing a referendum on Independence.
On a bad day for the Nationalists under this polling, Labour and the Lib Dems hold far more seats than expected, and the SNP, and Greens don't have enough to make a majority, while the SSP is kept out of Parliament. That won't matter too terribly much, because in an attempt to stem the votes bleeding away, the Liberal Democrats have promised to support an independence referendum in the next session. The SNP is used to operating as a minority government. The good news for them is that they aren't expected to lose any seats on a bad day. There hasn't been a single poll recently that shows them doing anything but gaining ground.
When the dust does clear, if the Nationalists as a group or the SNP itself end up with a Majority in the Scottish Parliament, you will not immediately see a referendum on Scottish Independence. There are important short term economic needs that the SNP has pledged to take care of, that are of immediate importance, most of them having to do with Crime, Health, and Public Employees pay. Votes on many of these were prevented by the three major parties.
What I will say, tentatively, is that it would not surprise me to see the UK fall apart in the next decade, with Scotland becoming an independent nation within the EU.
What really bothers me is the lack of reporting on this election outside of Scotland. Even at the BBC Online, there's been scant coverage of recent polling, and according to the British blogs I've read, the same is true of radio, print, and TV media outside of Scotland. The only coverage in the American media of the SNP was a tiny piece in the New York Times that described how Civic Nationalism of Scotland was different from the Ethnic Nationalism often seen here in the US elsewhere, and attacks on the SNP in the wake of the release of Al Megrahi.