What do you make of the Lib Dems being in government and to what extent do you still support them?

I thought the question would be of wider interest, so I have decided to respond in a full blog post.

My previous three posts about the Liberal Democrats on this blog may give some clues as to how I feel. If you haven’t read them before I recommend you take a look:

• Why a Conservative—Lib Dem coalition may not be a bad thing
• Tentative thumbs-up for the Conservative—Lib Dem coalition
• Letting my Lib Dem membership lapse

Actually, just looking at those headlines tells a worse story than is actually the case.

I have supported the Liberal Democrats for a very long time — long before I could even vote. But I was only a member for a very short period of time — less than a year.

I joined the party mostly because of my involvement with the Dunfermline Liberal Democrats, which I did to keep myself out of trouble before I found myself a job. But I didn’t use my membership very much. I voted in the Mid Scotland and Fife list selection. But beyond that, the annual subscription would just have represented money down the drain in exchange for a flimsy membership card. My decision not to renew was driven by apathy and laziness, not anger.

Why I am at ease

I am not angry with the Liberal Democrats. In fact, I am sure I am much more at ease with the situation than many Lib Dem activists are — for several reasons.

Firstly, I voted for the Lib Dems in May fully expecting them to go into coalition with the Conservatives. Going by the opinion polls, the parties’ positions, what the leaders were saying, it seemed to be clearly the most likely option. I was quite surprised that most others seemed to think it was impossible to comprehend. So I didn’t have the same sense of shock that many others seemed to.

I didn’t believe that the Lib Dems were “Labour plus fluffy kittens, minus Iraq War“, as a lot of people seemed to think. I support the Lib Dems because they are a liberal party. This is the complete opposite of Labour’s core ideology, which is of big government and authoritarian encroachments on civil liberties.

In case you can’t tell, I despise Labour. The idea of them being in power right now chills me. They don’t even know what to say in opposition, never mind what to do in government.

So I am happy that the Lib Dems made the best choice in choosing to go into coalition with the Conservatives (not that Labour were ever interested in joining forces with the Lib Dems anyway). The Conservatives at least have a more liberal wing, which is lacking in Labour.

Of course, coalition government is not easy — but it’s not supposed to be. By its very nature it involves compromise, and not all of them are comfortable compromises to make. But this is the nature of the situation.

Damaged reputation is a blow to liberalism

The most painful aspect is the damage that has been done to the Lib Dems’ reputation, which makes it seem less likely that the party will do well in future. This is a big blow to liberalism.

Promises have been broken. But they always are, even in good economic times, even with a thumping majority. Just look at Labour. The SNP Scottish Government has managed it too, although they have the excuse of being a minority administration. The Lib Dems’ excuse is that they are in coalition.

Sadly, it seems like the political culture here is not yet mature enough to tolerate the idea of making compromises. That is a shame, as it is also a blow to the campaign for proportional representation, which faces a big moment in a couple of months.

In general, I feel quite sorry for Nick Clegg. I think he has done a reasonably good job in a no-win situation, and I haven’t found much to be angry about yet.

But I wouldn’t describe myself as a supporter of the Liberal Democrats. As I have said before, governments are to be opposed, not supported. It is quite right that the Lib Dems are scrutinised in government. Not all of the scrutiny has been fair in my view, but I am not about to push against the scrutiny.

Okay, here are my more in-depth thoughts. Firstly about the results themselves, then about the counting problems.

The bottom line is clearly the fact that the SNP have won the election. For the first time in fifty years, Labour are not the largest party in Scotland. In a sense, this isn’t a surprise. Even though Labour have always been electorally popular in Scotland, they have not always been in power. Now they have been for ten uninterrupted years. It was only natural that the main opposition would get in sometime, and they have.

The anti-Labour backlash wasn’t quite as large as I had hoped for, and the result really could not have been any closer. And exciting result in a way, and also quite an odd one. I think anyone expecting an independence referendum on the basis of this result had better not hold their breath.

Where I live, in Fife, Labour had a terrible night. Often they could expect to have Fife ringfenced, apart from that Lib Dem stronghold in North East Fife. But the SNP upsurge has seen a spectacular victory in Central Fife.

Meanwhile West Dunfermline has been taken by the Liberal Democrats, where they had that amazing Westminster by-election victory before. There were a lot of people who were disgruntled about the Lib Dem’s Westminster victory there, accusing them of hypocrisy over the Forth Road Bridge tolls. I think this cements once and for all how the actual voters feel about the Lib Dems in West Dunfermline.

In the other two Fife seats, Labour hang on, but with substantial swings towards the SNP. In these true monkey-in-a-red-rosette areas, hopefully the Labour candidates have been given a bit of a shock. The upshot is that out of the five Fife constituency seats, Labour now only have two of them where they would normally count on having four.

My over all impressions about the election, though, are that this was more about SNP gains than Labour losses. I’ve not studied the figures carefully, but during the night I got the impression that the Labour vote was actually holding solid — and indeed in some cases increasing — in a lot of areas.

The Lib Dems and the Conservatives were broadly unchanged in most areas. The SNP’s gains seem to mostly come from the collapse in the smaller parties. I noticed that many constituencies had only candidates from the four main parties, while last time round the SSP contested many areas. The absence of the SSP, combined with the general collapse of the left as a whole, seems to have contributed the most to the SNP’s upsurge.

What I cannot quite get my head around is the dire performance of all the minor parties. The problems with the SSP and Solidarity are understandable. They’ve spent the past year or so ripping chunks out of each other. Alister at Perspective has noted that a united left was credible, and greater than the sum of its parts. Last night was a disaster for both parties.

But what I really don’t understand is the collapse in support for small parties as a whole. It has been a distinguishing feature of the Scottish Parliament ever since the beginning — the variety of voices represented. Almost all of them have gone.

The Greens are down to just two seats, which is incredibly disappointing for them. I got the impression that they were hopeful of getting three MSPs in the Lothian region. So a massive shock for them, I think.

John Swinburne is also waving goodbye to Holyrood. I was impressed with his interview on BBC Scotland last night. He was very gracious in defeat, and he even said he thought the country was in good hands!

So, besides the Greens, there is only one person occupying the “other” box — Margo MacDonald. Socialism has been wiped out totally. No sign of any other different voices. Extraordinary.

Given all of this, I wonder if the SSP / Solidarity split has reflected badly on small parties as a whole. Perhaps the small parties have been hurt the most by this spoilt ballots problem. But over all, I’m scratching my head about that.

As I said above, I think a lot of the SNP’s upsurge is down to the poor performance of the small parties more than a collapse in Labour support. It is worth remembering that the SSP and Solidarity both support independence. It is very possible that, with a strong SNP campaign, a lot of these socialist supporters were tempted to vote SNP so that they could kick Labour out.

I think it was a good night for the Conservatives. They are down one seat overall, but they made a FPTP gain, which is good going for them. Remember, with the same constituency boundaries, the Tories were wiped out in 1997. Over the past decade, the Conservatives have been gaining FPTP seats back one-by-one.

And the Conservatives are also ahead of the Lib Dems over all. People always talk about the Conservatives being dead in Scotland. I’ve never bought that, and this result lays that myth to rest.

The Lib Dems are fourth, and it’s difficult to see much good news for them. Yes, a good result in West Dunfermline, where they were pushing hard for victory. But nothing too impressive elsewhere. And a huge swing away from Nicol Stephen in his own seat. A bit of a hairy one.

In a bit of amateur psephology on Twitter last night, I suggested that the SNP upsurge was happening across Scotland — apart from in the west. I was shocked when they didn’t win Cumbernauld and Kilsyth. It’s difficult to imagine how, with this great nationwide result for the SNP, how they lost that particular seat so spectacularly.

But then Nicola Sturgeon won Govan — at last. And then, as the list results came in, they won an astonishing four seats. The SNP performed quite well on the list in most regions. So it was a double-whammy, with the SNP doing well in both votes.

The exceptional region was, I think, Mid-Scotland and Fife, where Labour got three top-up seats. That is partly a reflection of the losses they made in Fife. In essence, the three constituency seats they lost were gained back in the top-up by default. Disappointments here for the Greens and the Lib Dems.

And the final over all result? Astonishingly close! And so close that it looks difficult for anyone to form a coalition. The only real feasible solution is SNP–Lib Dem–Green, but even that would have a majority of just one, which is not enough. Maybe Margo MacDonald could be brought on board, but it is still hairy. It could hinge partly on who becomes Presiding Officer.

Otherwise, Alex Salmond for First Minister? Almost certainly, as his party has the most seats. But it could effectively be a minority administration. Who knows, we might even have another election on our hands. What a thought!

Given all of the problems there were last night, there is probably not much appetite for another election. But a re-run would probably work okay. It wouldn’t be running at the same time as the local elections, and presumably (hopefully!) people are a bit more well-educated about how the voting system works.

The problems are causing a stink. I sympathise a bit with the idea that if you are too stupid to vote properly — and it’s not that complicated a system — then what right have you got to decide who runs the country?

On the other hand, there were a lot of things that could have been done to limit this. Most importantly, holding the local elections at the same time has undoubtedly been a huge mistake.

And just as bad a mistake was the decision to count those local election votes overnight. That could well have been what threw the e-counting systems into problems. If they had just conentrated on the Scottish Parliament overnight, it could have been okay.

There is no harm in waiting until the afternoon to start counting the local election results. Indeed, the way things turned out, that might have been quicker!

As for the e-counting systems, there were some rumblings about them in the run-up to the election, particularly from Fitaloon at MicroShaft. It looks a bit prescient now, but when I wrote the Scottish Roundup before polling ended, I wrote about it saying, “It would be a travesty if democracy failed this evening.” It did. So in that sense, these issues were entirely predictable, and predicted.

The e-counting systems were deemed necessary for the single transferable vote system and I can see why. As such, I don’t have a problem with the e-counting systems themselves. But what would have been the harm in just counting the Scottish Parliament votes by hand? That would have avoided this whole mess.

Electoral reform doom-mongers should be made aware that there is not a great deal to suggest that STV per se has caused the problems with spoilt papers. The number of spoilt papers in the local council elections has been much smaller than in the Scottish Parliament election.

That suggests that people understand STV well. But for whatever reason, they were thrown by the Scottish Parliament ballot paper. I admit to finding the huge list of parties rather overwhelming, though that should hardly lead to people filling in the form incorrectly.

One theory is that the ambiguous wording of the ballot paper, “You have TWO votes”, confused some people. Instead of putting one vote in each column, seemingly people have been putting two votes in one column. You still have to be thick as mince to manage to do that though. There are arrows pointing to each column, and it clearly says “mark ONE box only” above each column.

The biggest problem for me is that in Scotland we now have four different electoral systems for four different types of election:

• First Past the Post for Westminster
• Additional Member System (FPTP + D’Hondt-style top-up party lists) for Holyrood
• D’Hondt-style party list for European Parliament
• Single Transferable Vote for local councils

With so many different systems, it is no wonder some voters are getting confused, especially when two of them are being used on the same day. There are two answers — one radical, one not so radical.

The not so radical one is to simply hold local elections on a separate day. Tommy Sheridan made a number of good points talking on the television last night about it. There was undoubtedly some confusion, and the local elections were overshadowed and absorbed by the big national debate.

It would be sensible to simply hold different elections on different days. It might decrease turnout, but on the other hand if it means fewer spoilt ballots then more valid votes might be counted!

The more radical solution would be to stick to one voting system, namely single transferable vote. This is, on balance, the best system. The fact that there were actually relatively few spoilt ballots means that people have no bother understanding how to vote in an STV system.

The other systems are unfair for a variety of other reasons, but this post is long enough so I won’t go into them just now. No doubt long-time readers of this blog will be aware of what I think.

It would be a struggle to get all of the elections onto an STV system, particularly Westminster. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

As for who is to blame, obviously it is the Scotland Office because they are the ones who decided that the two elections should be held on the same day, and they are the ones who decided that the e-counting machines should be used. They have responsibility for the operation for the Scottish Parliament elections.

It is not a devolved matter, as the cowardly No. 10 statement claimed. Westminster has tried to pass the buck, but it is a Westminster department — Douglas Alexander’s Scotland Office — that is ultimately responsible.

Some people wonder what the Scotland Office is for these days. Obviously they are looking for stuff to do, so have been busybodying with this e-counting stuff. The e-counting systems might have been desirable for the local councils, but they did not need to be used for the Scottish Parliament elections.