Scottish Parliamentary Elections May 2021

[Salt n Vinegar]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

Latest yoon tack among those I know is that any indyref must have a minimum turnout, and a threshold higher than 50% for yes. This is in the premise of "making sure its the will of the people"

Its the Trade Unions Act under a different guise

Absolutely scrambling, but yiu just know that view is going to make it into the mainstream

The Unionists must be taking turns... the last time Westminster introduced a minimum standard for electoral democracy, a Labour MP proposed the 40% rule for the first Devolution referendum under the 1978 Scotland Act. As a result of that the dead were counted as "no" voters. 

Anyone still  trust these Westminster types? Really? If you do, will you be expecting them to introduce anything remotely similar for their own procedures?

As the saying goes "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Edited May 10, 2021 by Salt n Vinegar

[git-intae-thum]

1 hour ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

I know but thing is it's not like the genie was ever getting out unless they let it, even if we had returned a clean sweep of snp mp's at a general election, there would be nothing they could do to force the uk government to grant devolution, unless there was a hung parliament which in 97 & 01 was never on the cards. They could have easily chosen to ignore us and it would have made f**k all difference .

Up until the not too distant past, before the establishment of Holyrood, Westminsters position was that if the majority of Scots Mp's elected had been SNP, this would have been a mandate to start independence negotiations.

That was in the days when there was not a hope in hell of it happening of course.......and when UK gov still kept up a pretence of being democrats.

 

[EvilScotsman]

1 hour ago, Donathan said:

Didn’t the Lib Dems say they’d only talk to the party who had the most seats?

They did this post-GE 2010, if I recall correctly. Twats.

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Up until the not too distant past, before the establishment of Holyrood, Westminsters position was that if the majority of Scots Mp's elected had been SNP, this would have been a mandate to start independence negotiations.
That was in the days when there was not a hope in hell of it happening of course.......and when UK gov still kept up a pretence of being democrats.
 

I pretty much the last bit, they would be quite happy saying that knowing there was little chance of it ever happening.
I think labour went for devolution thinking they could keep power in Scotland and wales in years when they done more poorly in England, they took a calculated risk that separatist parties wouldn’t gain an ascendency over them .
In wales it has worked well for them as they have power despite getting pumped elsewhere.
In Scotland not so much but perhaps not the end of the world as it’s one thing to hold an indyref but it’s quite another to win it

[Boo Khaki]

The EU was growing increasingly vocal and dissatisfied with 'Democtratic deficit' in certain EU regions in the mid-90's. Had the 97 Labour government not brought about the Devo bill then, I think it's inevitable it would have happened in the next parliament anyway, regardless of which party was in power.

Labour went for Devo out of pure self-interest, in the hope that it would consolidate their hegemony in Scots politics forevermore. This is why it's especially pleasing, and amusing, that it has effectively destroyed them as a going concern north of the border.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Boo Khaki

[Boo Khaki]

3 hours ago, git-intae-thum said:

Up until the not too distant past, before the establishment of Holyrood, Westminsters position was that if the majority of Scots Mp's elected had been SNP, this would have been a mandate to start independence negotiations.

That was in the days when there was not a hope in hell of it happening of course.......and when UK gov still kept up a pretence of being democrats.

 

A view expressed publicly by Margaret Thatcher, and again much more recently by  none other than Ruth Davidson, hence why her adherence to 'no to a 2nd ref' is such hypocritical bollocks.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Boo Khaki

[NotThePars]

4 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

...it's been a while so would need to do some googling to refresh my memory on all the gory details. Bottom line is that the mainstream Unionist trio probably wish in retrospect that they had imposed an ongoing cordon sanitaire on the SNP in a mainstream German parties with the AfD sort of way.

Can think of a much closer and recent example than the AfD...

[DC92]

6 hours ago, Donathan said:

One thing I’ve never really understood was the LAB to SNP swing in the polls in the year leading up to the 2011 election. In the spring of 2010 it looked likely that the SNP would just be a one term government and less than a year later, they won an outright majority and flipped a lot of constituencies that had been voting Labour for decades.

What happened was the campaign actually started, and the ex-Labour voters, who "came back" to the party for the 2010 election (as well as the ex-Lib Dem voters who were now inclined towards them because of the coalition) realised that they had absolutely nothing to say, and were led by a laughably mediocre charisma-vacuum in Iain Gray. Labour wrongly assumed those votes would go to them with zero effort on their part, while the SNP ran on Salmond's (high) popularity and their (also popular) record in government, and hoovered them up.

Iain Gray running away and hiding from Sean Clerkin in a Subway in Glasgow was a highlight.