Today is the day when the critical individual voting decisions are being taken and enacted – and the day when the tally of these decisions will incontrovertibly shape the future of Scotland and the interim future of the Union.
The day itself is the lull of limbo, waiting to know and, this time, not even knowing when we will know the nature and shape of our next government; and be able to put together the picture of the consequences. This limbo is a good time to reflect on the experiences of the campaign.
The standout rocket in the campaign has been the predominance of Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. This has electrified the United Kingdom as a whole, not only Scotland; and has been fuelled by a mix of coincidences, strategies and psychologies.
This rocket can take Scotland to independence if tonight’s results are the predicted landslide for the party, as this will be the mandate to put the indyref 2 question in the SNP manifesto for the voters in the 2016, Scottish Parliamentary election to decide. By this route which, if taken, is likely to be sucessful, tonight may mark the beginning of the end for the Union, with a 2020 UK General Election in which Scotland takes part improbable.
The serious interest tonight – In England and Scotland in particular – is what level of tactical voting has been adopted and what impact it has had.
The start of a new politics
David Cameron’s havering over the televised leaders’ debates, led – unintentionally – to completely new and far more egalitarian formats. These have given the SNP leader, her colleague in Wales, Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood, Nigel Farage of UKIP and Natalie Bennett of the Greens public exposure of which they could never have dreamed.
It has also had a wider boon of reinforcing what had been the invisible breadth and depth of politics here; and it has been wholly refreshing.
This has reflected and driven a plurality in politics which has some distance to travel but may well become a factor in the move to a necessary integration of government, away from the silly and massively wasteful binary opposition of capital and labour that utterly negates any possibility of strategic planning and implementation for future growth and sustainability.
We have to make an end of endless pendular activity and see a steady strategic progress. Our unplanned new openness to the texture and variety of our political landscape is a healthy development and may be a stepping stone to a better politics.
The assertion of leadership
The clearly deliberate drive of the SNP Leader to take and dominate the national stage has been a necessary strategic response to the likelihood of Ms Sturgeon’s predecessor, the ebullient Alex Salmond, getting back to Westminster from the Gondon constituency.
Me Sturgeon has been keen to establish herself nationally and at Westminster, as the undisputed leader of her party before Il Magnifico cuts loose on the green benches, bars and watering holes of the metropolis, with journalists in tow in search of good – and mischief making – copy.
Job done. Mr Salmond is bound to grab attention – and to be fair to him, the hardest challenge of all is dealing with the sudden move from omnipotence to history – but Ms Sturgeon is now recognised across the nation as the force in her own right which she certainly is.
She will be in London by early morning tomorrow, ready to lead – and to be seen to lead, any necessary negotiations, should the predicted, but not certain, hung parliament be the result. She has even prepared a back up alibi to cover any sense of being surplus to requirements should a hung parliament not be the outcome. She will be attending the VE Day celebrations in London, an appointment which has emerged only latterly and some time since the First Minister’s office made it known that she would there to take charge of negotiations in person.
What has marked out Ms Sturgeon in the televised leaders’ debates, is the confidence, the command and the grasp of issues that comes from experience of government. Otherwise, only David Cameron has that experience.
The SNP leader is scripted and is repetitive in making sure that the key ‘messages’ get across – but she is quick thinking and quick witted, capable of thinking on her feet and so is not as predictable of many of her competitors. Only Nigel Farage has the ability not to be scripted and to press into spontaneous service his command of issues and facts.
Money
In Scotland, the impact of the SNP’s flush finances has been obvious in its very well resourced campaign.
The faithful major donors of the party include the multimillionaires, Colin and Chris Weir; and the 105,000+ strong membership of the party with their membership fees have made the SNP free of the pressure of raising money to fund their campaign. They have been able to fund first class accommodation for their Leader in transit on the campaign – and the now famous Sturbocopter, one of the best available for hire in the JK, at a cost of £2,500 an hour.
Contrast that with the strapped-for-cash Scottish Labour, a situation which has seen appeals for funding of their campaign sent out on an almost daily basis, signed by a series of the highest profile members of their hierarchy.
The need continually to raise funds to support ongoing campaign initiatives can only have been a distraction and an added pressure the SNP have not had to confront.
The need to occupy the infantry
The UK General Election campaign started off as a challenge to occupy the energies of the majority of the massed infantry of the SNP who deliver its power at the ballot box and on the streets.
This was needed to keep them busy enough to stop them publicly pressing for indyref 2, the viability of which the party hierarchy is not yet convinced. They have clearly been given the nod that if they score a landslide for the party it will support the question of that second referendum featuring in the SNP’s 2016 manifesto.
The question, however, of whether the coming landslide will guarantee that question being in the 2016 manifesto is beginning to occupy minds in the infantry. But they have plenty to do and to watch just now, so agitation for an upfront declaration will not surface now – but may start to become a source of internal friction.
Political stars
Beyond what has become a personality cult of Nicola Sturgeon and the dominance of the SNP, there have been other winners in this campaign in Scotland.
The Scottish Conservatives have an undoubted leader in Ruth Davidson – resourceful, clear thinking, straight talking, no silver spoon or Hunter wellies but sheer capability and an experienced understanding of life as the working many live it, she has been a fresh force for renewal in her party.
While it is good to see someonw having fun and to see a woman being comfortable with controlling mechanical things, she needs to take control of her minders, exercise her own better judgment and drop the stunts which have actually brought her undeservedly close to being a pantomime act.
She might have been auditioning in public to take over Top Gear from Jeremy Clarkson. Was there anything she wasn’t seen driving? There was a quad bike; a tank – for God’s sake; a convertible Herbie from which she unnecessarily sprang over the top of the door; and a steam train which blackened her face under a driver’s cap to produce a classic image of Richmal Crompton’s Just William.
Davidson has a very likeable persona, no pretension and a shedload of ability which she ought to feel free to foreground now.
And the Scottish Liberal Democrat Leader of four other MSPs and eleven MPs, Willie Rennie, emerged with considerable credit as a politician less than obsessed with political life, still in possession of a sense of humour and able to strike fast and hard in debate when the need rises.
Journalists and presenters
Jackie Bird has reinforced her dominance as a political interviewer, very well informed, quick thinking, fast on the draw, authoritative but not shrill.
Bernard Ponsonby remains by some distance the best Chair of political debates, especially involving party leaders whom he alone has a better than even chance of keeping under control.
Brian Taylor has become something of a cliche – seeming so far in debt to maintaining his position as preferred insider, that he no longer dares to have anything of substance to say – and may well have lost the ability to identify the substantial. The struggle between personal position and professional neutrality has been becoming increasingly transparent. It’s all too cosy and all too comfortable.He needs to feel the breeze and sharpen up.
Scotland’s BIG Voice in tactical voting
A group of 500 cross-party volunteers have left their mark on Scotland’s political scene – for the better.
They alone drove the necessity for tactical votingi nto the consciousness of Scotland for others to promote.
They put serious time and commitment and serious professional skills into the analyses of constituencies and the creation of a predictive modelling of likely voting across Scottish constituencies, using data drawn from previous elections results, the polls and the bookies. This fed the production of the Tactical Voting Wheel – a visual guidance for uncertain voters interested in making their vote count.
‘The Wheel’ has become an image familiar to most Scots, and an enduring emblem of this unprecedented campaign.
Michael Ashcroft’s makeover
The campaign has marked one quite remarkable personal transformation.
The very wealthy Lord Ashcroft – who has made, not inherited, his money, is a former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party who stepped down from that role in 2010 because of continuing controversy over his non-domiciled taxation status.
Since then he has reinvented himself as one of the country’s most respected and innovative pollsters.
He may be a Conservative and have held high office in his party, but he has published his results with admirably resolute objectivity.
Through the campaign, Ashcroft was doing what no other pollster was doing - in-depth polling of specific constituencies. Before he became a professional pollster, he had made himself the Conservatives Party’s in-house pollster. In that service, will have built up very substantial expertise in the more reliable – and telling – constituency polling; as well as in the nationwide polling which he also provided.
Now he’s flying free in a professional capacity and must be loving every minute of it. It’s real work, requiring real skills at a high level. He has been doing it with a proud professionalism – and has been providing his results free to all comers.
If you have the money and you choose to use it in this way – and are an objective professional in doing it – it says a lot about your personal fundamental work ethic. Many of the monied simply want to buy position and enjoy the influence of their patronage. Ashcroft has been and probably remains a major donor to the Conservative Party but, as an individual, he seems always to have wanted to work, to be an active contributing force.
Whether or not one likes him or his party, or is comfortable with his business history, there is a fascinating story here, which, in many ways is exemplary.
