UPDATE: This post was based in the assumption that the Scottish Green Party gets more MSPs that we do. That looks unlikely. I have come to respect a few of the Greens activists and I suspect that they are truly gutted. They had real hopes for this election whereas the Lib Dems already had real fear.
UPDATE II: The Greens did not meet their target of 7 seats or even the 8 or 9 that some polls had given them. They stayed on 2. But the night was still a disaster for us and unless we change now, we will not be able to recover for a very long time.
Well. That was not pleasant.
Not least of which the Greens didn’t get their comeuppance after all. They got more seats that we did. Scotland has punished us for going into the Coalition with the Tories in Westminster. We, in fact, got our comeuppance.
There will be a lot of coverage of the Lib Dems now being the 5th party in Scotland. This is of course rubbish. We are the 5th party in the Scottish Parliament. Which is not good in anyway and is nothing other than a disaster. It is going to be very difficult to get any of our policies listened to. In fact, it is going to be hard to be heard in the Scottish Parliament. At this stage I am not even sure that our party leader (more on that later) will even be allowed to hold the First Minister to account each week in First Minister questions. Certainly Patrick Harvie didn’t get a question every week and only a formal coalition will free up time during FMQs to let us have a question. And given the results I doubt a formal coalition is going to happen. The SNP have a rule against a coalition with the Tories and the Greens have set out tax rises (or no cuts to services) as pre-requisite for any agreement. Which is not going to happen. And a SNP/Lib Dem coalition is difficult for us due to our stupid position on a referendum and our position as a toxic party at the moment.
So. 5th in the parliament and in no position to influence what happens in Holyrood over the next 5 years. Disaster.
Scotland’s 5th Party?
We are, however, not the 5th party in the country.
We have a party that was able to put a candidate in every constituency, not just the list. The Greens do not.
We have 11 MPs. The Greens have none. During the 2010 election the Scottish Greens got 16,827 votes in the whole of Scotland. Danny Alexander MP got 19,172 votes in a single constituency.
We have 165 councillors in 23 local authorities in Scotland. The Greens have just 10 (11?) in 3(4) local authorities.
We also have a Scottish MEP but the Greens do not.
So we are not the 5th party in Scotland. But we are in danger of being so. We are heading in the wrong direction. And it is going to get worse before it get better. In 12 months time we have the Scottish Council elections and the gains that we made in 2007 are in jeopardy. Joint control of Edinburgh Council will be ceded due to the trams distaster. I want the trams, I think the trams will do well once completed. But we will be blamed for the poor project management. The SNP will, somewhat unfairly, escape a lot of the blame.
In Fife, joint control with the SNP may also be lost. Traditionally a Labour stronghold the SNP have grown in that local authority area and the gains we have made in the west of the council area will be lost due to a passionate dislike of the Tories and the hatred of the Westminster coalition. We may still be able to form an administration but instead of only having a couple of councillors fewer than the SNP, we may well have half. In Aberdeen the strange desire to push through an unpopular development in the centre of the city will count against us (and the SNP). In fact, in the 11 councils where we are in a joint administration, we are in danger of being frozen out of 8 of them.
In many respects this is unfair. In many parts of Scotland, incoming Lib Dem partnership administrations have found that the previous Labour Councils had mismanaged their finances so badly that there was no option other than to make unpopular decisions. The Council Tax freeze as limited even further councils ability to manage how they spend their money, the recession has squeezed spending even more and Westminster cuts have also played their part. Furthermore, the equal pay disputes which Labour had delayed resolving also fell into our financial laps. All of which, rather unfairly, will be blamed on the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Within a year we may find it very difficult to get Scottish Liberal Democrat policies at the table and in front of decision makers across most of the nation. And for a party to be seen to be successful, it needs influence.
Influence in Opposition
With just 1 MP, 1 MEP, 139 Councillor’s and 15 MSPs it could be argued that we are a bigger party than the Tories. But we are not as influential. In the last 4 years more conservative policies were introduced by the SNP that Lib Dem ones. They are part of an administration in 9 councils across Scotland and that position wont change much after the local government elections next year.We have got to grasp the idea of constructive opposition and where we vote against something that the next government proposes, we have to be clear why and we have to be ready with an alternative that is sensible, practicable and deliverable. If we cant propose realistic alternatives why should we vote negatively for nothing (unless the status quo can be shown to be perfectly acceptable – via a solid evidence base)? It is those alternatives that we present to parliament, or the passionate, clear and easily understood defence of the status quo that will be the basis of where we go as a party and the start of our recovery (and hopefully stem the losses I think will happen next year).
We are a Scottish Party and we need to show it
It is clear that the association with the Westminister Coalition, despite the federal nature of our party, has been poorly managed. The line taken in the few weeks before polling day – that we are pro-Coalition, anti-Tory – is a good one. It works as a concept. But it was far too little, far too late. That message need to be out there for all of the last parliamentary term. I am pro-coalition. We are delivering our manifesto policies. We are doing the best we can for the UK and Scotland. But that isn’t enough. The Tories are still toxic and in Scotland and we have been tarred with the same brush and did nothing to avoid it. We are a federal party. We could have been clearer about how we felt some of the solutions that our MPs are putting forward for England were not the solutions that Scotland needed (this of course exemplifies West Lothian question). The separation of Scotland and England should have been the easiest to do compared to Labour and the Tories. Both of those parties are clearly run from London yet ours is, on paper at least, is not. We should have made that clear from last September and we have suffered because we did not.
Our message now, and for the foreseeable future, should always be framed in the context of being a separate Scottish Party. To be fair, Labour managed it on things like Free Personal & Nursing Care where they had a really different policy position from their English counterparts. We should use that as an example. We also need to rebuild trust with voters. The tuition fees debacle (the option of abstaining, as agreed in the Coalition Agreement, should have been taken up by all Lib Dem MPs), as well as our changes to position on raising VAT and the speed of the cuts has, unfortunately, cause a trust problem with voters. Disappointingly we did not make much of our track record of being trustworthy in government as part of the Scottish Government from 1999 – 2007. Neither did we acknowledge that trust problem beyond avoiding it as much as possible. We need to start this new parliamentary term by being humble, being supportive of the government when we should be and being constructively critical when we need to be. That will help us rebuild levels of trust.
Our Leadership
It is clear that Tavish Scott has found this campaign a difficult one. His strangely poor performance being interview by Gordon Brewer, his lack of media airtime (including being mostly spoken over at the leader debates) and the William Hague-esque slogan of “x days left to save local policing” (remember “save the pound”) has not resonated with any voter that I have met. There was also the strange belief that this election was a de-facto referendum on independence which assumed that people were voting for the SNP because they believed in independence rather than a general sense of satisfaction over Alex Salmond period as First Minister. This is actually insulting to voters who are in fact able to separate out the idea of independence from competent governance. And to continue with the position that we are against a referendum is, frankly, appalling. Our constitution, the constitution of the Liberal Demorats, clearly states “We believe that sovereignty rests with the people” and “acknowledge their right to determine the form of government”. Yet our policy appears to be to say to the people of Scotland that they should not get that chance. For 9 years! We said in all through the 2007 – 2011 session and appear to be saying it in the extended 2011 – 2016 session. It is not surprising that the people of Scotland find that insulting. There may not be a popular move towards independence and the Lib Dems are a unionist (federal) party but to not even let the people of Scotland have a choice is disappointing. I was in the audience at the BBC debate in Perth and it was clear that the only person that this position made sense to was Tavish.
There is a tradition in politics of leaders stepping down following a bad election result but I dont want that. We need to change our message, not our leader. There have been rumours on twitter that he may fancy a go as the Presiding Officer but I cant see that happening. Our group is so small every member counts if we want to have the influence I mentioned above. After this disappointing result we need to regroup, not indulge in recriminations.
Next Steps
We need to consider some of our campaigning strategies for the elections next year. The bar-chart showing “only the Lib Dems can win here” has been destroyed tonight. We should stop using it as it is a source of mockery.
We need to ensure that local parties are fully trained on how best to campaign in multi-member wards. In 2007 there was mixed levels of success in putting two candidates in a number of wards but given tonights result local parties need to make sure that we do that with care in 2012.
We need to take the excellent policies in the manifesto and see how best they can be used to support, embed alongside or instead counter the new Governments legislative agenda. This should be done on a policy by policy, motion by motion, legislation by legislation basis to ensure that we offer construtive opposition that benefits the people of Scotland.
We need to develop a narrative that is clearer for the voters than what we presented during this campaign and ensure that it is understood at every level of the party. I attended several hustings with several candidates at there were some ‘interesting’ variations on some of our policy positions.
Above all, we need to be honest as say this result is a disaster for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, but we have heard the message from the people of Scotland and we will change as a result.