Posted by Jeff in Holyrood |

So, have you decided who you are voting for yet? Iain Gray or Alex Salmond?

You do realise that they are your only options? Kenny Farquharson said so, and the Scotland on Sunday Deputy Editor has “been a Scottish political journalist for 20 years” so no quibbling with the experts y’hear, although Kenny is voting for Margo MacDonald which seems to contradict these points;

“anyone who backs their favourite party with their constituency vote rather than their regional vote is effectively depriving themselves of a say on who becomes First Minister.”

“I’ve seen the leaflet that’s being sent out to every home in Scotland in advance of 5 May, and it does nothing to spell out that it’s the all-important regional vote that will ultimately determine who makes it into Bute House.”

Kenny, and the assembled throng at the Scotsman leader debates, were apparently told by Alex Salmond that the second vote was for choosing who leads the Scottish Government. How this becomes SNP vs Labour rather than just selecting the party you like best of all the parties is beyond me. Those that argue that realistically it will only be the SNP and Labour who form the next Government and votes should be directed their way would, presumably, be voting SNP or Labour anyway.

Taking the unlikely duo of Kenny and Alex’s logic to the extreme, the next Scottish Parliament will consist of solely Nats and Labour MSPs. As strong a contribution as both parties have made to devolved Scotland over the past 12 years, I find that a horrifying prospect and a realisation of the nightmare Americanization of Britain. Yes, get used to those z’s, they be coming down those Appalachians soon boy, you do realize that…?

Anyway, surely the second vote is in fact our primary vote. We have a ballot slip that will include numerous independents and parties and, whatever our view of Scotland, there will be somewhere to place our X on there to make our voice heard whether you’re a lentil-munching Greenie or a borders-closing UKIP. The limited field of four or five candidates in the constituency vote restricts our opportunity to reflect our political beliefs on the ballot slip. This is all happily irrespective of who may or may not be First Minister.

Indeed, an oddity that Kenny seems to overlook in his study of the Holyrood voting system is that, while voters should apparently concern themselves with who will be at Bute House, they should not be concerned with who will provide the votes to allow SNP/Labour policies to pass and what concessions may be extracted. Working on the safe assumption that neither the SNP nor Labour will win a majority, the regional vote is as important for deciding who ends up holding the balance of power over the next four years as it is for deciding who gets to be First Minister.

Were past Holyrood successes borne out of who was in Bute House or the makeup of Holyrood at large? Fees were abolished thanks to SNP, Greens and Lib Dems, police numbers remain higher thanks to the Conservatives and SNP and we have free care for the eldery thanks to Labour and the Lib Dems. Granted, sometimes the First Minister drives on a policy that is a personal objective, Jack McConnell and the smoking ban for example, but let’s not kid ourselves that the Scottish Parliament is a one-man band just because it makes for a decent headline in the Sundays.

Only the voters of East Lothian and Gordon get to vote for Iain Gray and Alex Salmond, the rest of us should stick to the names on our constituency and regional ballot, if we truly believe in a parliamentary democracy as opposed to a presidential autocracy that is.

If the big two of the SNP and Labour are going to be joined by journalists in the myopic mantra of ‘Salmond vs Gray’ at the expense of the other parties that make Holyrood a richer place, then the further narrowing of the already strangled debate in this nation will continue and we may well be done for.

At the start of Kenny’s article the following is stated:

“the election result is just an accidental accumulation of a dozen different misunderstandings on the part of a confused electorate.”

I celebrate that fact rather than lament it. Is a varied interpretation of how to vote and who to vote for, tactically, historically, impulsively or otherwise not a celebration of democracy itself?

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