UK Elections - Scotland's Victory

By Cernig

I've not been writing about the run up to the local elections in the UK held yesterday - effectively Britain's "midterms" - because I figured few would be interested. Even so, I've been following matters closely.

Today the scene is one of confusion, especially in my native Scotland. It had been expected that the Labour Party would get a good kicking, as a farewell to Tony Blair. But vote-counting confusion and a Conservative leader who is insuficiently distinguishable from old Tory Blur himslef seem to have staved of outright humiliation for Labour as Gordon Brown's time draws nigh.

In Scotland, a tiny nation, over 100,000 votes were spoiled - often, more votes in a given constituency than the majority for the winning candidate - because Blair's government insisted on running two seperate elections using three different vote-counting methods all on the same day. Then there was the failure of electronic voting machines...

The results for the devolved Scottish parliament are now in. The SNP won 47 seats, Labour came in second with 46; the Conservatives have 17; the Liberal Democrats secured 16; and others came in with three. Both Labour and the Scottish National Party could now form a coalition majority, most probably with the help of the Liberal Democrats. The Nationalists picked up several new seats but had originally hoped for an outright majority.

Still, they are the clear winners of the Scottish race, pushing Labour into a historic second place. One part of their platform, should they succeed in leading the next Scottish parliament, is a referendum on independence to be set for 2010.