It's pretty well knwon now that the vote in Scotland on Thursday was a bit of a mess. We saw seats won where the margin of victory was less than the number of spoilt ballots, and there are now noises coming from the Labour Party of legal challenges with phrases like "Florida 2000" and "hanging chads" being used. Apparently there is concern in one vote where the SNP by just under 50 votes that the ballots were tampered with. A genuine challenge or a desperate attempts by Labour to win a majority?
Whichever is the answer I don't personally see how it matters much when you think about the possible coalitions there could be. Is the SNP going to do a deal with Labour? No chance apparently. Will the Lib Dems cut a deal with Salmond? Well if Ming Campbell has anything to do with it the answer is no. Could the Lib Dems do a deal with Labour though like the one they had before? Certainly.
It's true that the SNP did amazing well on Thursday. It's also true that they have, for now, changed the landscape of Scottish electoral results. But to be fair the real test will come at the next election when their staying power is tested. Just a like a new football manager, it is the second season, not the first that is often more crucial to their future.
Of course, the problems with the voting in Scotland remain, and it is interesting that at a time Labour is threatening a legal challenge, it's former leader, Neil Kinnock, is also found to have been a paid director of the company responsible for the failed electronic counting systems. As the arguments over the Scottish elections it seems increasingly likely that Gordon Brown will be unable to escape being bogged down it all.
4 comments:
I love the footballing analogy. I may just refer to Scotland as Wigan in future!
Some more here n the whole business of challenges.
http://haveringhavers.blogspot.com/2007/05/no-mandate-for-breaking-up-union.html
Kinnock was involved ? No WONDER it screwed up. That man is a walking distaster.
Mind you, he has been useful to me over the years. If K was for it, I could safely be agin it without any brain effort at all.
Alan Douglas
Can the Tories vote with the SNP to elect a minority administration in Scotland?
Dizzy, Douglas Alexander has his sticky mitts all over this shambles and just remember how close he is to Brown.
As for soggy ballots in Arran, I await Labour's attempt to complain about the odd "dodgy" 100 ballots when there were 100,000 spoilts ballots in the whole election!!
Post a Comment