Scottish superlatives

The Guardian is calling an SNP majority in Holyrood - a result that under the STV+ system is supposed to be basically impossible. Iain Macwherter writes that "seasoned political hacks were lost for superlatives in their efforts to encapsulate the scale of the Liberal Democrat defeat. Their vote didn't just collapse, it was vaporised." Areas with centuries-long histories of Liberalism have gone a lighter shade of yellow. Labour has been obliterated as well - and the Tories in Scotland have been nothing more than a rump for some time. The wonder of the whole thing is summed up best for my wonkish brain with this: "In the north-east, another Liberal hunting ground, the SNP won all 10 constituency seats, and then went on to win yet another seat on the top-up regional list vote, which is also supposed to be impossible with the d'Hondt method of calculating the top-up list." (emphasis mine)

Macwherter notes, correctly, that the crushing SNP victory doesn't indicate widespread support for independence in Scotland, which has stood at around 30% for some time. But this is a very exciting development for lefties like me. Scotland is in many respects Labour's base, and the SNP is challenging them from the left. There are serious problems with the SNP (they're big fans of spending money they don't have, for one), but this should put some of the fear of God into Labour. Ed Miliband has already said that Labour needs to "reasses" its policies and position in Scotland - and, frankly, there's nowhere for them to go but Left.

A more serious social democracy than the SNP is offering is exactly where I would like Labour to go - one less focused on throwing money at problems and huge government handouts, and more focused on creative, dynamic, market-inclusive (but not market-based) solutions for increasing social mobility and addressing poverty, deprivation and unemployment.

But this is a very exciting time for Scottish politics. Brian Taylor, BBC Scotland's political editor, wraps up an excellent blog post with these prescient words:

People were voting for a government. A government whose record they found acceptable.
They were not voting directly for independence. Mr Salmond openly acknowledges that.
But a referendum there will be.
I can just hear Alex Salmond now.
They told us, he will say, there would never be a Scottish Parliament.
Then never an SNP Government.
Then never an SNP majority.
Now they will tell us, he will add, that Scots will never vote for independence.

Perhaps, perhaps. That referendum campaign has yet to be called, let alone decided.

But right now Mr Salmond is entitled - fully entitled - to bask in the delight of a simply stunning victory.

Old New Labour

Excellent column from Seamus Milne in The Guardian today on the future of Labour under Ed Milliband. The threat comes from within Labour itself:

A powerful grouping among Labour MPs and the shadow cabinet remains convinced, like Blair himself, that the party lost last year's election because Gordon Brown moved away from New Labour – rather than because of the relentless squeeze on Labour's core supporters, Brown's unpopularity and the greatest economic crisis for 70 years.
Their failure to recognise that Labour lost 4 million mostly working-class votes between 1997 and 2005 and that the 2008 crash has changed the rules of the game is at the heart of their "continuity Labour" resistance to the changes needed to carve out a new political economy and electoral coalition.

I supported Ed Milliband in the leadership election because I thought that he was the only person with the vision to get beyond the Old Labour-New Labour fight - who really understood that the game had changed and was serious about doing the hard work of finding a new niche for a center-Left party in a post-Socialist world. The fact that the old New Labourites are fighting him so hard only reassures me that he is doing the job well.