Anyway I look at it, this spells trouble for the United Kingdom:
Just 15 percent of Scots voted for the Conservatives, the party that will now govern the entire U.K., Scotland included, on its own terms and without the mitigating force of a coalition.
The Tories’ plans include a doubling down on austerity policies that the SNP ran pledging to reverse but that it will have little power to stop despite winning 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Parliament. That will likely strengthen the SNP’s argument that Scotland is better off on its own.
“It’s absolutely perfect for them. It plays to all their narratives about the differences between England and Scotland and the wickedness of the Tories,” said Torrance, who has written biographies of the SNP’s top leaders. “They can just sit back and reap the benefits.”
Obviously, the cultural, political, and historical factors in play in the U.K. are distinct and have no perfect corollaries in American society. But just try to imagine what would have happened if George W. Bush had been reelected in 2004 despite getting roughly 15% of the vote in New England. Imagine if a third party had swept virtually every seat from Westchester County, New York to the northern tip of Maine after running on a platform diametrically opposed to both Bush’s foreign and domestic policies, and yet discovered that they had no power in Congress and no real ability to change the behavior of the Bush administration.
Finally, imagine that New England had the ability to vote themselves out of the United States without threatening a new civil war.
That’s kind of what is going on in Britain, and unless the Tories show some serious restraint in pushing ahead with the agenda that they now have the power to enact, they’re going to make it so Scots overwhelmingly decide that they’d rather be governed by people who share at least one or two important values with them.
The Scots want left-wing government. They just rejected the center-left parties resoundingly, had a giant unprecedented victory, and will get a more emboldened conservative government as their reward. This cannot sit well with them.
The U.K. is coming apart.
Austerity measures may look good to some from afar, but up close, not so much. If “the U.K. is coming apart”, is this by necessity a bad thing??
The Scots want left-wing government. They just rejected the center-left parties resoundingly, had a giant unprecedented victory, and will get a more emboldened conservative government as their reward. This cannot sit well with them.
David Cameron: He won the battle but lost the war. The other thing you didn’t mention was the disaster that is now Labour. UKIP actually poached votes from them. Do you know how?
No, How?
Just imagine if a party in the U.S. got only 36 percent of the national vote and gained an ABSOLUTE majority in the House, as have the Tories in the lower house of parliament, just imagine. Or if only about half the voters in New England voted for that imaginary party which then got more than 90 percent of the seats, as happened in Scotland. That’s called democracy in the United Kingdom. I’d call it archaic and feudal just as is the winner take-all-system of the district based voting for the U.S. House. And the whole electoral system for president to boot.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/09/electoral-reform-society-result-nail-in-coffin-first
-past-the-post
Should we now begin to talk about a political and social crisis in the English-speaking world? Would Abbott of Australia agree? ‘For sure, it needs to get worse!’, he is rumored to have answered.
At least in the UK’s archaic system, third party candidates are elected to Parliament. In Congress there are precisely zero third party members. There is no independent party that Sanders and King are members of and both caucus with the Democrats.
Right.
Wait, I thought there’s Bernie Sanders (Socialist), and wassisname from Maine?
Neither are members of a political party.
If the Tories have an ounce of sense they’ll look at that map and realise…
A.) they’ll never win another seat in Scotland
B.) with an orange, and not a red, Scotland, Labour is out of the running indefinitely.
C.) North Sea oil is running out.
If they were to cut Scotland loose — after appropriate patriotic harrumphing — they’d enjoy Westminster majorities forever. Their ‘country’ is the city, and the stockbroker belt around London anyways.
Scotland is an expensive luxury, once you factor out the oil — a Rust Belt with glorious scenery and good whisky.
is selling snake oil, just like the PQ did in Quebec. Both get more from the national government than they put in, and neither has close to the reserves necessary for a currency.
The bloc (the PQ voice in Ottawa )ultimately collapsed – though at one point they one EVERY francophone seat in Quebec. The situation in the ’93 Canadian Parliament is similar in many ways to the current Parliament in the UK.
The Nationalists will likely hit the wall for the same reason the PQ did.
Amazing how few see the parallel of the SNP to the PQ. Maybe by Scottish Grandfather who lives on the Vermont Quebec border sees things others don’t.
Scotland isn’t Ottawa. Although wrt to the ratio of federal taxes sent and federal spending received, Vermont may be similar to Ottawa. On that basis, Prince Edward Island is to Canada what NM and MS are to the US.
It’s not clear that Scotland is a “taker” because the oil tax revenues are somewhat opaque. Splitting from the UK could leave Scotland a bit worse off, the same, or, and least likely, a bit better off. It’s an unknown. Unlike Ottawa that would be worse off in a split — and not by a little bit.
The claim that Scotland gets more from the UK government than it pays is another of those technically-true-but-highly-misleading statements. The UK is running a substantial deficit, and all the regions of the UK get more from the government than they pay in taxes. I think Scotland’s ratio is marginally worse than England’s (i.e. they pay a little more for what they get), but in any case they’re quite similar. Splitting per se will have a marginal effect on the budget balance in Scotland.
that had Scotland remain independent the oil would never have belonged to a dominant England anyway.
Try an alternative economic accounting that allocated all Scottish located off-shore oil and for that matter all the industrialization that occurred when the English used Scottish coal (in large part) and Scottish shipyards and Scottish industry of all types to build the Industrial Revolution that fueled the British Empire.
Four or so centuries of extraction of labor productivity and natural resources from Wales, Northern England and Scotland that flowed disproportionately to the landowners of the Home Counties and the Bankers of the City resulted in massive income inequality between Southeast and everywhere else. And now the rentiers are bitching because they are supporting all the ‘lazy’ folks north and west via taxes on their compounded rents.
If this sounds familiar it is because it is the same story: Occupy the City of London (in its British sense of the original Square Mile).
The United Kingdom is an anachronism of feudal politics. Scotland never really “joined” with England, they were conquered after a series of bloody wars. Back at that time (before the Industrial Revolution), Scotland’s fields and sheep were assets and the governance therefore were rewards for the English King’s wardheelers. Breakup may not be so bad. Neither would granting independence to the American Confederacy.
Granting independence of the American Confederacy would be a terrible idea. It’d be like having Russia or Saudi Arabia right next to you.
Yeah, sure, the rest of the country would finally get its social democracy… but I’m not sure if it’s at the cost of having a nuclear-armed, racialist theocracy who is guaranteed to have conservative-induced economic and social problems.
Not to mention that the idea of abandoning tens of millions of people to suffer in a neo-confederate police state so that you can enjoy a higher wage and better healthcare makes the entire foundation of leftism a scam. How is that, morally, any better than dumbass Reagan Democrats going ‘fuck those fucking poors; they’re in the way of my tax cut’?
Well, better than ALL of us suffering in a neo-Confederate police state which is rushing upon us. Whether Republican or New Democrat doesn’t matter much.
Or at least that is one way of looking at the process which had James VI of Scotland peaceably becoming James I of England in succession to is cousin Queen Elizabeth I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I
Then again another way of looking at this is that the English (and Scottish) Parliamentarians after cutting off the head of James’s son Charles I ended up fighting a nasty war against largely Scottish partisans of the deposed Stuarts and in turn link this back to centuries of war going back 1000 years or so. I mean history is messy.
But whether you establish the union of Scotland and England either with the accession of James I to both Kingdoms or the capital U Union of 1707 that actually formally established the United Kingdom under his granddaughter Anne it is actually a largely unbroken line of Scottish Kings (and then Queen) who took over from a much more convoluted line of English ones.
Or like a lot of modern Scots we could just reduce every damn thing to the Battle of Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie and Robbie Burns and Sir Walter Scott.
Welcome to any given Sunday in Black America, only Republicans would wet themselves if they actually got 15% of the Black vote…
○ Negotiating the Coalition Agreement, electoral reform at Westminster was LibDem’s deal-breaker
○ Labour needs the Lib Dems to be strong in the south
○ Tory peer criticises Cameron for “irritating” Scots from Westminster | The Guardian |
○ None of the parties are telling the truth about Scotland. It’s driving me crazy
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ The Scots are Going to be Pissed
Ed’s ‘John Kerry’ moment.
It’s not clear that the Tories want to keep Scotland. Oil income from the North Sea, yes, but they can negotiate some of that in exchange for military protection or something, and besides, that oil area is nearing depletion.
With Scotland gone the Tories will win every election until the oceans boil over. The English white working class has been so brainwashed by the fascist/racist tabloids that they want to destroy their own safety net in order to spite the minorities who have migrated to England over the last half century. It’s been a brilliant strategy by the wealthy class – and it’s the same strategy used brilliantly in the US, Australia, and Canada (not coincidentally the countries where Rupert Murdoch has a significant presence).
And let’s not minimize Tony Blair/Bill Clinton’s role in this transition. Taking their parties to right so that the differences between the parties become blurred. Promoting offensive military as a preferred foreign policy option. Increasing the ability of the wealthy to control national discourse and election campaigns.
It was a good thing that the Scottish referendum failed when it did – the SNP at the time had zero real plan to take over. With the subsequent transitions and this election the SNP is likely to be completely ready for the next referendum, and the Tories will be quietly helping them along.
But then the Queen’s beloved Balmoral will be in a foreign county! She might even need a passport and visa to go there. Can you imagine? No, the English are not going to let Scotland go that easily. Without it, the ‘Great’ in Great Britain will have vanished. I don’t suppose the ruling interests in London would be especially happy to see Scotland go. The EU will bitch like hell if looks as if it’s going to happen. Then Catalonia will get an enormous adrenaline rush.
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I’m too thick-headed to get this referencee. Maybe you could help.
The English white working class has been so brainwashed by the fascist/racist tabloids that they want to destroy their own safety net in order to spite the minorities who have migrated to England over the last half century.
Probably true. But they are a disorganized rabble. UKIP got 12.6% of the votes and one seat in Parliament. And their party leader failed to win the seat he was running for.
Good analysis, but you failed to mention that Cameron actually promoted dis-Union by saying that a vote for labour was a vote for the SNP and thus played on English resentment that Sots MPs have a say in Westminster whilst English MPs have no say in Scotland – whereas in fact all core decisions are taken at UK level where the Tories will now rule with an absolute majority.
The other key factor you failed to mention is that a Cameron victory now means a referendum on leaving the EU with the Scots, Welsh and N. Irish likely to vote to stay in and the English (who have 80% of voters) possibly voting to leave.
A bit like Netanyahu, Cameron played on tribal fears for party advantage at the cost of national unity – and could well reap the whirlwind of what he has sown. He could go down in history as the PM who “lost” the Union.
Fails to account for why Labour improved its national vote share more than the Tories did. And that was while Labour lost a huge chunk in Scotland.
We do a lot of complaining in the U.S. about two-party rule. There really are a lot of problems caused by forcing multiple interests and coalitions to be expressed through only two political Party choices. However, the specific outcomes with Great Britain’s multi-party rule that we’re detailing on this thread display that there are representational problems with parliamentary government systems as well.
You’re missing that Great Britain is not a multi-party system – they have a two-party system but intense regional variations allow local parties to have more effect than they do in the US. Both systems have a winner-takes-all format in each district. A true multi-party system encourages more than two parties by providing representation for parties that reach a certain threshold, say 5% of the vote, despite not hitting 50% in any one district.
Begs the question of why regional variation would be intense enough in the UK to allow third parties to win some seats but nothing similar happens in the US.
What’s curious is that the US “founding fathers” weren’t keen on idea of political parties at all and hoped that they wouldn’t come into being. That elected representatives would authentically represent their constituencies. Yet somehow the vision of multiplicity turned into a personality driven two-party system.
A first past the post system virtually forces a two party system which only severe regional=national differences can partially overcome. Note however that this is the first time a regional party outside N. Ireland has secured a significant number of seats and N. Ireland is, as many say, a different country altogether!
So first, remember that in the US prior to the Civil War there were a lot of regional parties. Just look at the election map for 1860. Perhaps it was the Civil War experience, but after that every region grouped into two parties – even if what the parties stood for varied greatly across regions.
Note also that the US did briefly have flirtations with effective 3rd parties in the middle of the last century, when southern Democrats often ran their own candidates for President and often won several states in the process. But this was just foreshadowing the split of the racist Democrats and the civil rights Democrats. At that time the Republicans were so weak nationally that the joke was the US had a “one and a half party system”, the the Republicans simply absorbed the Racist Democrats and let any of their traditional members leave if they wanted to.
The UK has for a while basically had 3 parties outside of NI – the two dominant parties and the Lib Dems. The US could have a moderately successful party like the Lib Dems if our districts were as small population-wise as the UK, since there are pockets that would vote for a party that pretends to be centrist between the two.
NI (Northern Ireland) has of course had it’s own set of parties because local NI politics has been so intensely different from the rest of UK politics – the political spectrum in the NI basically runs from “get out of the UK now no matter what it takes” to “never leave the UK no matter what it takes” and everything in between, though that will probably start changing, especially if ever a significant rift develops between Labour and the Tories over the size of the NI annual subsidy.
SNP and UKIP are new on the scene. Even then the reason both gained traction is that on the key issue of the day – austerity – the three major parties were basically in agreement and differing only in details. This forced people to look elsewhere for relief. I was a bit surprised – as were most observers – that UKIP didn’t get any actual seats, but I suspect that the Tories are learning from the GOP regarding “code words” and the like to let the racists know what they really stand for, but also UKIP couldn’t distinguish themselves from the Tories economically. SNP, OTOH, was able to tap into nationalism directly as well as able to take an Iceland-like stance on austerity, so their success is hardly surprising.
Regarding the founding fathers, yes they did imagine no political parties, but then look at their limited experience. Previous citizen-democracies had all been in low population, close proximity places like Iceland or Swiss Cantons. OR, they had been extremely limited democracies in that only the very privileged participated. This was the first democracy on a grand scale in terms of both participation and distance. Even in small democracies factions inevitably form – in large democracies those factions will invariably become parties, since the factions need to organize in order to influence the number of votes they get, thus influence who gets elected.
I see that two Parties do indeed dominate the scene in Great Britain’s Parliament, and that it is not too difficult for major Parties to incorporate code words and/or overt policy promises to cut off upstart Parties before they challenge the Big Two, in Britain, the US and elsewhere.
I listened to a UKIP member talking to a BBC reporter on election day. This UKIPper was asked about a quote she had given recently where she said she “admired” Vladimir Putin’s governing style. She got into an unpleasant semantical argument with the reporter about the statement. Perhaps this is another reason that offshoot political Parties have problems staying aloft- the difficulty in getting their leaders to maintain message discipline, and the harsh light that the media often places on their statements.
We know what happened but not why third parties collapsed and disappeared so quickly. Note that early on when more political parties existed, voter participation was higher in state and local elections than general elections.
Organizationally, UKIP looks a lot like Perot’s Reform party. (Although Perot received a larger portion of the vote share than UKIP did.) Essentially there was/is no organization. The “I’ve had enough and not going to take it anymore” sentiment was dispersed through the population. A protest vote than a vote for something with political breadth and depth.
While smaller as to vote share (13.5%), Wallace’s AIP did have regional strength and garnered 46 electoral votes. Whereas, Perot (18.9%) got zero. However, both were formed and driven by a single character and functioned only at the Presidential level.
One interesting aspect of the UK election was the large number of long-term Lib-Dem MPs that went down. In 1992 they had 20 seats, more than doubled that in 1997, peaked at 62 in 2005, declined to 57 in 2010, and collapsed to 8 in 2015. In England and Wales, the Lib-Dems lost 27 seats to the Tories and 12 seats to Labour. Looks like an endorsement of the Lib-Dem/Tory coalition. OTOH, the Cons gave up 9 seats to Labour and only took 7 seats from Labour.
If you step back and overlook the shifts within the government and opposition, this was a pretty ordinary outcome for an election under these conditions. The savage austerity for the first three years has been tempered for the last two, and the economy is doing OK in a relative sense. Recent economic performance is the overwhelming determinate of a ruling government’s fate. Fairly predictably, the ruling coalition lost a moderate number of seats.
The wild shifts within government and opposition are disguising the fact that the overall outcome is pretty ordinary.
The Tories seem aware of this, because a forecast of their predicted budget shows massive cuts in the first year followed by fairly flat budgets afterwards.
Doubling down on austerity with the resulting GDP loss means a soaring pound. How will England export manufactures? Especially if they leave the EU? That also sounds like good news for German industry, bad news for Spanish tourism.
In other thoughts, a totally independent Scotland would mean US base payments would go to Scotland and Scotland would probably be brought under the nuclear umbrella, especially if Scotland is admitted 5to NATO which the USA would undoubtedly press for to help protect US military/naval bases.
In a really far out thought, is it possible that Ireland, Scotland and Wales would form a Celtic Union?
Spanish tourism is already benefiting from the strong pound. Over a million British expats live in France and Spain because of the better climate and lower cost of living which a strong pound makes even more attractive.
And no – Ireland, Scotland and Wales will not form a Celtic Union – they are distinct nations/cultures with no great wish for greater unity than the EU already provides. They do, however, share a much more positive attitude to the EU and towards positive state intervention in social affairs.
I was aware of this but stupidly somehow thought of it as an export rather than an import. Duh! A strong pound cannot hurt both exports and imports.
Imagine if US voters could choose among Con-Pub, Lib-Pub, Con-Dem, Lib-Dem and Lib-Lib. Add in that by reputation and tradition, the Lib-Pubs were like the Chaffees and Heinze, the Lib-Dem party was inconsistent in running viable candidates, and in this neck of the woods, a Con-Pub is only viable in one district.
As a Lib-Dem voter and in any one election, do I stick with a hopeless candidate and party, or choose between a Lincoln Chaffee (Lib-Pub) or a Clinton (Con-Dem)?
In 2001 in Scotland, the vote share for Con-Dem was 43.9%, Lib-Dem 20.1%, Lib-Pub 16.4%, Con-Pub 15.6%, Lib-Lib 3.3%. MPs elected were Con-Dem 56, Lib-Dem 5, Lib-Pub 10, and Con-Pub 1.
2005 vote share: Con-Dem 39.5%, Lib-Dem 17.7%, Lib-Pub 22.6%, Con-Pub 15.8%, Lib-Lib 3.3%. MPs: Con-Dem 41, Lib-Dem 6, Lib-Pub 11, Con-Pub 1. (Territorial number of seats reduced between 2001 and 2005.)
2010 vote share: Con-Dem 42%, Lib-Dem 19.9%, Lib-Pub 18.9%, Con-Pub 16.7%, Lib-Lib 0.8%. MPs: Con-Dem 41, Lib-Dem 6, Lib-Pub 11, Con-Pub 1.
2015 vote share: Con-Dem 24.3%, Lib-Dem 50.0%, Lib-Pub 7.5%, Con-Pub 14.9%, Lib-Lib 1.3%, Con-Con 1.6%. MPs: Con-Dem 1, Lib-Dem 56, Lib-Pub 1, Con-Pub 1.
(The one surviving Lib-Pub.)
Tony Blair is now out there blaring that Labour lost because they aren’t conservative enough. As if his successor Gordon Brown didn’t promote Blair approved austerity and didn’t lose in 2010. As if the sliver of daylight that Millibrand opened up didn’t improve Labour’s vote share in England and Wales over the 2010 outcome.
Would the vote share in Scotland have been different in 2005 and 2010 if Gordon Brown hadn’t been the Labour party leader?
Maybe SNP’s seemingly stunning success in 2015 was there all along and just waiting for the Lib-Dems and Labour to don their true colors. In 2001, Blair wasn’t perceived as Thatcher-lite, and it was only after 2010 that the Lib-Dems came out of their closet.
So, what hornet’s nest did Labour and the Lib-Dems think they were kicking after the Scottish Independence referendum? Independence or anti-austerity or both?
Europe is coming apart.
The policy of austerity throughout the West is creating huge regional fractures between the haves and the have-nots. And moreso because of the policy of punishing the have-nots.
Texas is our Scotland, and Greg Abbott sees himself as our Nicola Sturgeon. Forget that they are sort of ideologically opposite. Or that Abbott’s party controls both houses of Congress. “Secession” is not as much about a 150-year old Civil War although the movement wraps itself in those symbols just as the SNP waves the Saltire.
New England was in fact the first secessionist movement in the US. If we get a Republican wave election and President Republican Clown, New England likely would be the first to secede. What exactly do they have for military bases?
A couple of reality check points:
Interesting times.