State of the Union
We asked an SR panel
if the break-up of the UK
is now likely
Kenneth Roy
In Shotts, a key to
the SNP’s stunning
rout of Labour
R D Kernohan
It will look like
a national crisis.
It may produce one
Ian Hamilton
Why I didn’t
vote in
this election
Walter Humes
Despite the euphoria,
there is still an underlying
malaise in Scottish politics
State of the Nation
The Scottish Review’s
analysis of the seats,
region by region
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06.05.11
No. 400
The final score
SNP
Central Scotland (6)
Airdrie and Shotts
Cumbernauld and Kilsyth
East Kilbride
Falkirk East
Falkirk West
Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse
Glasgow (5)
Glasgow Anniesland
Glasgow Cathcart
Glasgow Kelvin
Glasgow Shettleston
Glasgow Southside
Highlands and Islands (6)
Argyll and Bute
Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
Inverness and Nairn
Moray
Na h-Eileanan an Iar
Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
Lothian (8)
Almond Valley
Edinburgh Central
Edinburgh Eastern
Edinburgh Pentlands
Edinburgh Southern
Edinburgh Western
Linlithgow
Midlothian North and Musselburgh
Mid Scotland and Fife (8)
Clackmannanshire and Dunblane
Dunfermline
Kirkcaldy
Mid Fife and Glenrothes
North East Fife
Perthshire North
Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
Stirling
North East Scotland (10)
Aberdeen Central
Aberdeen Donside
Aberdeen South and Kincardine North
Aberdeenshire East
Aberdeenshire West
Angus North and Mearns
Angus South
Banffshire and Buchan Coast
Dundee City East
Dundee City West
South Scotland (4)
Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley
Clydesdale
Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley
Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale
West Scotland (6)
Clydebank and Milngavie
Cunninghame North
Cunninghame South
Paisley
Renfrewshire North and West
Strathkelvin and Bearsden
Total 53
Labour
Central Scotland (3)
Coatbridge and Chryston
Motherwell and Wishaw
Uddingston and Bellshill
Glasgow (4)
Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn
Glasgow Pollok
Glasgow Provan
Rutherglen
Lothian (1)
Edinburgh Northern and Leith
Mid Scotland and Fife (1)
Cowdenbeath
South Scotland (2)
Dumfriesshire
East Lothian
West Scotland (4)
Dumbarton
Eastwood
Greenock and Inverclyde
Renfrewshire South
Total: 15
Conservatives
South Scotland (3)
Ayr
Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire
Galloway and West Dumfries
Total: 3
Liberal Democrats
Highlands and Islands (2)
Orkney
Shetland
Total: 2
It will look like
a national crisis.
It might produce one
R D Kernohan
Journalism demands that we offer instant responses, even instant judgments, where we might be better to delay reactions and reveal only our second thoughts. Editors sometimes want their match-reports and reactions even before injury-time is played out.
First thoughts are that it might have been still worse. I am anxious, but not as anxious as I was all these years ago in the months after Winnie Ewing won the Hamilton by-election. The SNP won on Alex Salmond’s big night not because of their threat to break up the United Kingdom but in spite of it. The mood of much of the Scottish people is that his style and (though less attractive) his party offer the best way to protect and advance Scottish interests within the United Kingdom. Unionists of all parties think they are wrong, and Tories like me think they misjudge what Scottish interests are, but we can’t dissolve the people and elect another.
We are set for times of fretfulness and anxiety which will occasionally look like a national crisis and might just conceivably produce one. Britain’s most serious political tremors, however, are likely to come from the recurrent fragility of the Westminster coalition and the reluctance of its junior partners to concentrate their minds on the economy and necessary economies. But I have to write before we have the result of the AV referendum, though it seems certain to be a No, never mind the considered or inconsiderate responses of coalition partners to its result.
My anxiety for Scotland is not about the continuation of the Salmond administration. If I can’t have Annabel (who did well in the campaign) I can put up with him and I quite enjoy the embarrassing contrast between his personal and political skills as a chieftain and the obvious limitations of his tacksmen and handmaidens. I expect the contrast to endure for as long as he does.
We are now paying for the honourable mistakes of Donald Dewar and the unprincipled opportunism of Tony Blair. They rushed after 1997 to create a Scottish Parliament with so much power and just enough money and prestige to ensure that it was bound to seek still more of everything but not enough of anything to satisfy the SNP or drive a powerful enough wedge between its pragmatists or its ideologues. Nor could they force Alex Salmond to reveal which he is.
Perhaps we are also paying, though not so sorely, for David Cameron’s reluctance to shelve some of the Calman proposals. It doesn’t seem logical or reasonable to seek or give more tax powers when no use has yet been made of the 3p discretionary variation of standard income tax which Donald might not have got through if Blair had not been in such a hurry.
But we are all paying the price of past mistakes: Tories for not arranging a more limited style of devolution in the Thatcher years; Liberals for treating the coalition as a matter of party tactics and not national necessity; and Labour for its contribution to a British mood, especially marked in the Scottish intelligentsia, which questions and sometimes despises traditional institutions and values. Only now does Labour in Scotland realise that it too is a traditional institution with many conservative values.
But even if we haven’t got what we deserve in Scotland – a longer period for devolution to settle in quietly – we have got what most Scots seem to want: a workable system of limited self-government in which SNP politicians get credit for good intentions and even fond hopes but are kept far short (at least for the time being) of their ideological objectives.
In face of the probable fretfulness of our institutions over the next few years – and I include Westminster as well as Holyrood, for I do not wholly trust the English Tory back-benches – I have a practical suggestion and a more philosophical proposal. The practical one is that the coalition should have a contingency plan ready to pre-empt SNP tactical manoeuvres with an independence referendum plan of its own, with a question of impeccable framing and a time of its choosing. I now see that Michael Forsyth was right when he flew that kite a couple of years back. The more philosophical approach I suggest is for unionists, even those with more red than blue in their colouring, to be more forthright, less reticent, and stronger in resisting the temptation to avoid the heart of the independence and referendum arguments.
It is quite true that the fate of Celtic Irish tigers and stranded Icelandic seals is a warning against the economic day-dreams of the SNP and that an independence referendum would cost some money and much distraction. But there is a poetic element in a sense of nationality, even when it is reduced to mere nationalism, and you cannot answer a poem with a balance sheet or a motion for next business. The State of the Union depends on a conviction not only that the parts of the United Kingdom have common interests but that they have elements of a common identity. That shared experience and common part of our identity means that the break-up of the United Kingdom would rob us of an important part of our nationality, bringing a deprivation and not a liberation. You either feel that or you don’t. The SNP activists don’t. I think most of those who vote for them still do, even if not as strongly as I do.
If we have lost that sense of common identity the Scots will drift sooner or later into such independence us the European Union allows and the English will see us go with no more regrets that the Czechs showed for the forever-whining Slovaks. But it has not come to that and it need not. And it might be worth noting that in Canada, once almost split by a separatist referendum that fell just short of a majority, this week showed a hearty return to a federalism, reflecting (as British devolution might successfully do) national unity and distinctive identity.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster and a former editor of the Church of Scotland’s magazine Life and Work
analysis of the seats,
region by region
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
06.05.11
No. 400
Airdrie and Shotts
Cumbernauld and Kilsyth
East Kilbride
Falkirk East
Falkirk West
Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse
Glasgow Anniesland
Glasgow Cathcart
Glasgow Kelvin
Glasgow Shettleston
Glasgow Southside
Argyll and Bute
Caithness, Sutherland and Ross
Inverness and Nairn
Moray
Na h-Eileanan an Iar
Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
Almond Valley
Edinburgh Central
Edinburgh Eastern
Edinburgh Pentlands
Edinburgh Southern
Edinburgh Western
Linlithgow
Midlothian North and Musselburgh
Clackmannanshire and Dunblane
Dunfermline
Kirkcaldy
Mid Fife and Glenrothes
North East Fife
Perthshire North
Perthshire South and Kinross-shire
Stirling
Aberdeen Central
Aberdeen Donside
Aberdeen South and Kincardine North
Aberdeenshire East
Aberdeenshire West
Angus North and Mearns
Angus South
Banffshire and Buchan Coast
Dundee City East
Dundee City West
Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley
Clydesdale
Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley
Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale
Clydebank and Milngavie
Cunninghame North
Cunninghame South
Paisley
Renfrewshire North and West
Strathkelvin and Bearsden
Labour
Coatbridge and Chryston
Motherwell and Wishaw
Uddingston and Bellshill
Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn
Glasgow Pollok
Glasgow Provan
Rutherglen
Edinburgh Northern and Leith
Cowdenbeath
Dumfriesshire
East Lothian
Dumbarton
Eastwood
Greenock and Inverclyde
Renfrewshire South
Conservatives
Ayr
Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire
Galloway and West Dumfries
Orkney
Shetland
R D Kernohan
First thoughts are that it might have been still worse. I am anxious, but not as anxious as I was all these years ago in the months after Winnie Ewing won the Hamilton by-election. The SNP won on Alex Salmond’s big night not because of their threat to break up the United Kingdom but in spite of it. The mood of much of the Scottish people is that his style and (though less attractive) his party offer the best way to protect and advance Scottish interests within the United Kingdom. Unionists of all parties think they are wrong, and Tories like me think they misjudge what Scottish interests are, but we can’t dissolve the people and elect another.
We are set for times of fretfulness and anxiety which will occasionally look like a national crisis and might just conceivably produce one. Britain’s most serious political tremors, however, are likely to come from the recurrent fragility of the Westminster coalition and the reluctance of its junior partners to concentrate their minds on the economy and necessary economies. But I have to write before we have the result of the AV referendum, though it seems certain to be a No, never mind the considered or inconsiderate responses of coalition partners to its result.
My anxiety for Scotland is not about the continuation of the Salmond administration. If I can’t have Annabel (who did well in the campaign) I can put up with him and I quite enjoy the embarrassing contrast between his personal and political skills as a chieftain and the obvious limitations of his tacksmen and handmaidens. I expect the contrast to endure for as long as he does.
We are now paying for the honourable mistakes of Donald Dewar and the unprincipled opportunism of Tony Blair. They rushed after 1997 to create a Scottish Parliament with so much power and just enough money and prestige to ensure that it was bound to seek still more of everything but not enough of anything to satisfy the SNP or drive a powerful enough wedge between its pragmatists or its ideologues. Nor could they force Alex Salmond to reveal which he is.
Perhaps we are also paying, though not so sorely, for David Cameron’s reluctance to shelve some of the Calman proposals. It doesn’t seem logical or reasonable to seek or give more tax powers when no use has yet been made of the 3p discretionary variation of standard income tax which Donald might not have got through if Blair had not been in such a hurry.
But we are all paying the price of past mistakes: Tories for not arranging a more limited style of devolution in the Thatcher years; Liberals for treating the coalition as a matter of party tactics and not national necessity; and Labour for its contribution to a British mood, especially marked in the Scottish intelligentsia, which questions and sometimes despises traditional institutions and values. Only now does Labour in Scotland realise that it too is a traditional institution with many conservative values.
But even if we haven’t got what we deserve in Scotland – a longer period for devolution to settle in quietly – we have got what most Scots seem to want: a workable system of limited self-government in which SNP politicians get credit for good intentions and even fond hopes but are kept far short (at least for the time being) of their ideological objectives.
In face of the probable fretfulness of our institutions over the next few years – and I include Westminster as well as Holyrood, for I do not wholly trust the English Tory back-benches – I have a practical suggestion and a more philosophical proposal. The practical one is that the coalition should have a contingency plan ready to pre-empt SNP tactical manoeuvres with an independence referendum plan of its own, with a question of impeccable framing and a time of its choosing. I now see that Michael Forsyth was right when he flew that kite a couple of years back. The more philosophical approach I suggest is for unionists, even those with more red than blue in their colouring, to be more forthright, less reticent, and stronger in resisting the temptation to avoid the heart of the independence and referendum arguments.
It is quite true that the fate of Celtic Irish tigers and stranded Icelandic seals is a warning against the economic day-dreams of the SNP and that an independence referendum would cost some money and much distraction. But there is a poetic element in a sense of nationality, even when it is reduced to mere nationalism, and you cannot answer a poem with a balance sheet or a motion for next business. The State of the Union depends on a conviction not only that the parts of the United Kingdom have common interests but that they have elements of a common identity. That shared experience and common part of our identity means that the break-up of the United Kingdom would rob us of an important part of our nationality, bringing a deprivation and not a liberation. You either feel that or you don’t. The SNP activists don’t. I think most of those who vote for them still do, even if not as strongly as I do.
If we have lost that sense of common identity the Scots will drift sooner or later into such independence us the European Union allows and the English will see us go with no more regrets that the Czechs showed for the forever-whining Slovaks. But it has not come to that and it need not. And it might be worth noting that in Canada, once almost split by a separatist referendum that fell just short of a majority, this week showed a hearty return to a federalism, reflecting (as British devolution might successfully do) national unity and distinctive identity.
