Voting Intentions

Tomorrow's elections for the Scottish Parliament are, of course, a secret ballot. But what kind of opinion columnist would I be if I kept my voting intentions secret? Like many others, my thoughts coming into this election are full of the recent invasion of Iraq, and Blair's increasingly authoritarian, presidential approach. However, tomorrow is not about national politics, but something more local. Perhaps it is unfair to blame the Scottish Labour Party for the faults of a leader they cannot influence.

The greatest disaster that could befall Scotland at this election would be for the SNP to gain control of the Parliament. Any party based upon distinctions of blood and ancestry is a danger to a culture that has any pretensions to tolerance or inclusion. While the SNP's policies can be interpreted in terms of control by those who happen to live within Scotland, rather than those who are specifically Scottish, this is not the interpretation supported by the majority of SNP voters. A victory for the SNP will be a victory for intolerance and bigotry, every bit as objectionable as the pro-white bigotry of the BNP.

Worse, the SNP is not a one issue party. The values of the SNP are decidedly rightwing. They are, by nature, suspicious of the welfare state and health service, and believe in big business, private ownership. Of course, most of their supporters are at heart socialists, so their views tend to remain hidden behind vague platitudes. But read their manifesto, and the rightwing concerns show through. They campaign on crime prevention, anti-drugs, taxes, NHS bureaucracy. There isn't a single concrete proposal that couldn't have come from Thatcher. And let us not forget that the SNP's only real political achievement during my life time was to clear the path for Thatcher to become Prime Minister.

So I would like to use tomorrow to protest against the Labour Party, to send a message to Tony Blair that we do not appreciate his lies and immorality. But if that means handing Scotland to thatcherites and bigots, I cannot. At the last Scottish election in my constituency, Labour won by 4000 votes from the SNP. The Liberals came third with 3000 votes. Labour's recent campaign has, with refreshing honesty, claimed that a protest vote is a vote for the SNP. Not quite true, but in this constituency a vote other than for Labour or the SNP is wasted. Despite my disgust at the man in number 10, I will tomorrow vote to re-elect my current Labour MSP.

The second vote is rather more open. Proportional representation makes it difficult to rule out the "worth" of voting for any given party, although in a sense there is more value in voting for a party that will do poorly in the constituency elections. It takes less second votes to elect a Conservative or SNP candidate than a Labour one. That strange wrinkle of the electoral system aside, there are three parties that I consider worth voting for. Obviously, I am dismissing out of hand the rightwing parties - the SNP, the Conservatives, and the Conservative splinter groups - but I am also dismissing the protest socialist parties. While political protest is always legitimate, for a political party to enter the mainstream it must have more to offer. To date, the protest parties of the left have defined themselves by what they are not (they are not New Labour) and by the personalities of their leaders.

This leaves me with a choice of Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Green for my second vote. In this circumstance, I feel safe in not voting Labour, both in protest against the war, and because I suspect that this time round Labour will gain no seats from the second vote at all. The Greens have a certain attraction. I agree with many of their policies, and believe that they are correct to promote the environment to higher on the political agenda. The problem is that they are very much a one issue party. While I can see the value of their lobbying on environmental grounds, I do not see this as sufficient for a party to earn my vote.

There is a larger problem with the Greens - proportional representation. Not the fact that they support it, but the way in which PR works. It is highly unlikely that this election will result in a clear win for any party. That is one of the costs of PR. Which guarantees that a coalition will take control in Holyrood. The only question is which coalition. And that will not be sorted out until after the election.

This is the great danger of proportional representation - the voter has no idea what he is actually voting for. If the Green party should happen to hold the balance of power after the election, who will they join in government? Labour? The SNP? I don't know. By voting Green I could in practice be helping the SNP win the election. Since I have no way of knowing what a vote for the Green party actually represents, I cannot vote for them.

In truth, there is no guarantee that the Liberals will act as I wish, either. However, I can make a good guess, based on their behaviour after the last election. So I will vote Liberal, in the hope that they will continue to provide the conscience that has made the Scottish Labour Party so much more liberal and socialist than its UK comrade.

All of which is rather unfair on the Liberal Democrats. Their recent stand on the Iraqi invasion, and continuing liberal attitudes on education, crime, asylum seekers, and drugs have more than earned them my vote. However in Britain, even under proportional representation, voting is about keeping out the party you dislike, not voting for the party you admire. That is politics.

Graham Robinson. 30th April 2003.

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