No one believed the polls. No one believed the first few results. Nationalist bloggers watched in joyous shock, wondering if they were dreaming. Even the elected candidates could scarce believe that what they've been fighting for since the 1890's has come to pass:
The SNP's Humza Yousaf, who was elected on the regional list in Glasgow, said: "At the moment it's completely unbelievable, shell-shocked. Not just by the fact I am being elected, I was always quite confident we would do well on the list here in Glasgow, but by the national picture. I think even by our wildest, optimistic dreams we couldn't have imagined such a historic landslide."
For the first time since the Treaty of Union in 1707, Scotland has a Progressive, Center-Left, Majority Government. That Government is a Nationalist government. That government defeated a system intentionally designed to prevent an overall majority in Holyrood.
Spring is breaking in Scotland.
Yellow Flowers are blooming around Holyrood in Edinburgh, matching the sea of yellow in election maps last night.
Now that the results are in, it's time to take a hard look at the winners and losers. Full results are here.
First the Results themselves, red being Labour, blue for the Tories/Conservatives, orange for the LDP/Liberal Democrats, and Yellow for the SNP. Look at the change on the maps:
2007 Result:
2011 Result:
Constituency: Seats, Seat Gain, Votes, Vote Percentage, Vote gain.
SNP 53 +32 902,915 45.4 +12.5
LAB 15 -20 630,461 31.7 -0.5
CON 3 -3 276,652 13.9 -2.7
LDP 2 -9 157,714 7.9 -8.2
Constituency: Same as above. Note that even though the SNP vote went up, the number of list seats they control went down. I will explain this in a moment.
LAB 22 +13 523,559 26.3 -2.9
SNP 16 -9 876,421 44 +13
CON 12 -2 245,967 12.4 -1.6
OTH 3 +1 241,632 12.1 -2.5
LDP 3 -3 103,472 5.2 -6.1
Total Seats, Seats Gained/Lost: 65 Needed for overall majority.
SNP 69 +23
LAB 37 -7
CON 15 -5
LDP 5 -12
GRN 2 0
MM 1 +1
Grn= Green, MM= Margo MacDonald, nationalist independent and the Scottish Bernie Sanders.
To explain why the SNP got 800,000 votes on the regional list, way more than Labour and yet still lost seats: this is by design.
When the Scottish Parliament was being set up, Westminster did not want to create an entity that could ever have an overall strong majority. They didn't want to create a Scottish authority that could ever stand up to Westminster. As a result, parties who win constituency seats are punished on the regional proportional vote. It's a fairly complicated equation, and it's designed to guarantee that no one party ever takes a full majority. Until today, no one party ever had.
Counting Margo and the Greens, that's a 72 seat nationalist majority, 69 of which are in the hands of the Scottish National Party. They hold all but 20 Constitutencies across Scotland. The Labour Leadership is gone, voted out. The Liberal Democrats, the third largest political party in Scotland, has been reduced to only five seats. The Labour Heartland, the Citadel of Socialism which is Glasgow, now belongs to the SNP by more than 50%. There was a clean sweep of northeast Scotland. Former Labour and Liberal stongholds in Aberdeen and Dundee fell to the SNP tide. The Guardian called it a tidal wave as the SNP swept up all but one seat in the Scottish Capitol of Edinburgh. All but one seat in the Kingdom of Fife now belongs to the SNP. Every elected LDP minister in the mainland lost their seat to an SNP candidate last night.
I can't believe that I just typed those words, but that was the reality I woke up to this morning.
It's not clear that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will recover from this for one simple reason. If you are a UK wide political party, you cannot put your best and brightest in the Scottish Parliament. You need them in London. The SNP puts its best and brightest in Holyrood, which is why they've been cleaning up. The leadership of the opposition is essentially bush league, and the main parties aren't willing to sacrifice success in London for Success in Edinburgh.
The Liberal Democrats may have permanently lost their electorate to a Party which is proving to maintain it's progressive values. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are enabling the Tories in London in their crusade against the British working class. That isn't winning them any support in Scotland. Labour lost most of its leadership. The now disgraced Iain Gray, Labour Party Leader at Holyrood, only held on to his seat by 151 votes.
The only Labour candidates who survived the wave by any margin at all are those who voted against their party. The people who stood up for their own progressive beliefs and values kept their seats last night, and I congratulate those few who remain.
The Winning Strategy: Losing
In his victory speech, Alex Salmond mentioned a number of issues, but the one that perked up my ears was a one-line comment about going after the Crown Estate. The assumption that too many people make about Salmond is that he has no overall strategy. He does, and his strategy worked.
His strategy has always been to pick fights that he cannot possibly win, but fights that the Scottish People want to win. When he loses those fights, he turns to the Scottish people and says "As long as London rules us, we will never accomplish our goals." He's been doing that in the Minority for the past four years. He's been taking on the other parties, and every time they vote down a popular policy, the SNP says to the people of Scotland "See? You wanted minimum alcohol pricing to keep our streets safe from drunken violence, and we're fighting for you. These parties you've been voting for are fighting against you. As long as you vote for London parties, we'll never be able to accomplish our ambitious goals."
So what looks to most British political pundits like a significant over-reach ends up being a successful strategy as was proven last night. The people of Scotland didn't run home to Labour hard times, they swung to the SNP in record numbers. There was a Liberal Democrat wipeout in mainland Scotland. They didn't win a single constituency outside of their Island stronghold in Shetland and Orkney.
The pundits are saying this morning that the SNP being in Majority won't be able to blame the other parties for manifesto failures anymore. That's true. For the past four years they have said "We want to do X, but the other parties wont let us." But now, they won't have that option. They'll have something even more powerful.
"We want to do X, but the United Kingdom wont let us. As long as we're part of the UK, we'll never be able to accomplish our ambitious goals."
It's an argument they've made and won before. It's an argument they can make and win again over the next four years.
In the next five years, there will be a referendum on Scottish independence. It will be a referendum written by the Scottish National Party. It will come at a time chosen by that party. They have five years to convince the Scottish people that independence is their best option.
Considering the pathetic resistance the other parties are putting up in Scotland, I wouldn't be surprised if the reformed as England and Wales by 2016.
Scots around the world have been fighting to undo what was done in 1707 since the ink dried on the treaty of union. For the first time in three hundred years, we have a real chance for an independent Scotland.
Saor Alba!