BLUE TIDES AND YELLOW TORNADOES

 

I happily express my profound satisfaction at the result of the UK General Election. Like so many, I was surprised at the extent of Cameron’s Tories good showing and the outcome, delivering a stable majority Conservative administration, augurs well for the next 5 years, a time when economic confidence will be particularly crucial.

David and Samantha Cameron reclaim No 10: 8.05.15

As a Tory supporter expecting a tight race, I was astonished by the exit poll predicting the Conservatives would easily be the largest party with 316 seats; in the event it got even better - an overall majority with 326 seats seemed attainable and finally the Tories achieved 331 seats. So there will be no need for the compromises and trimming of the Coalition for the 5 years from 2010. The Tory’s stodgy programme of economic competence and deficit reduction seems to have struck a chord and their narrative probably sounded “safe”. Cameron himself campaigned with some passion, especially in the last week. We are now swathed in comforting Tory blue.

The Labour opposition peddled very old-fashioned Attlee-socialist remedies and its support weakened in provincial England. Being led by oddball Ed Miliband was no help though he smartened up during the campaign. Labour’s seats fell to 232. Ed’s inevitable resignation is no great loss to the body politic. Nick Clegg tamely led his Liberal Democrats to their slaughter falling from 59 to 8 seats; he was an adequate deputy prime minister and some Lib-Dem ministers were quite talented but Clegg himself never approached the momentum he had in 2010. His party’s refusal to implement statutory boundary changes was shameful and they never recovered from their passive approval of a rise in student fees, a supposed “red line”. The Lib-Dems will take years to re-group.

SNP star Nicola Sturgeon

                                        

So far, so boring; the Tories won against feeble opponents which I welcome gratefully. The really significant story however was the election in Scotland where the SNP added 50 to their existing 6 seats and wiped the floor with long-entrenched Labour and the clutch of Lib-Dem seats. The SNP now hold 56 of the 59 Scottish constituencies, an astonishing yellow landslide, well-led by punchy and remorselessly articulate Nicola Sturgeon, the star of the election. Sturgeon and her crew do not resonate with me, a Scot, in the slightest way; the violence and Anglophobic racism of the SNP hard core is profoundly offensive to many Scots. Nigel Farage of UKIP was attacked by an SNP mob in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and had to be evacuated by the police and Jim Murphy, Labour’s leader in Scotland got the same treatment in Glasgow.

An SNP mob shouts down Labour's Jim Murphy

The populist SNP triumph is symptomatic of the revolt against established political elites and the desperate revulsion at austerity throughout Europe. The SNP is one of a kind amidst SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Front National in France. The SNP has been running the Scottish government since 2007 first as a minority administration and then as a majority since 2011, but a national referendum rejected independence in September 2014. Its populist economic policies are from the Far Left, hostile to the demonised banks, business, the wealthy, defence spending, property owners and ultimately to wealth creators. Foolishly, the main UK parties, promised even more fiscal autonomy to Scotland during the referendum campaign. The UK government will have to deliver it but the SNP will not be satisfied. Parties like the SNP are “grievance machines”, rejecting every concession, persuading their dupes they are victims of cruel outside forces. Introspective realism is not in their posturing vocabulary.

Yet the fact remains that half the Scottish electorate voted for the SNP and the victor will need her spoils. There is much talk of constitution-mongering, of some kind of federal system being offered linked to even more substantial financial independence. If the fairness extends to only English members dealing with English laws, there may be some merit in this but solutions conceived in panic are seldom sound. There are many other constitutional challenges facing the UK – the hardy perennial of proportional representation, for example, which would have moderated the size of the SNP victory and seen some recognition of almost 4m UKIP voters, totally ignored by the first-past-the- post system. The SNP will also wish Scotland, Wales and Ulster to be separately weighted in the forthcoming EU referendum, although the many UK euro-sceptics will not accept a Scottish veto on Brexit, if the referendum so decided.

So Cameron faces a formidable menu of problems in addition to the usual ones of managing the economy, health, education and welfare. Happily he has widespread support, a parliamentary mandate to govern firmly and a vision of national unity. I wish him all good fortune.

SMD

9.05.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015