Anonymous Requests

Generally I ignore anonymous when they comment (and yes, that's the plural pronoun with the singular antecedent, which I believe in, since English has no gender-neutral pronouns for such a scenario and I don't want to be sexist ("he") or awkward ("he or she")). So where was I? Oh, right! Anonymous says...

Hi Bald & Effective. I have a request. I am hoping for another explanation for simple American's about the recent Scottish Elections. Having followed your blog I somehow think it is important (Even if only to keep the plot line going), but the link in the post didn't boil it down they way you do. Thanks to You and the Scottish MS. if she is the one pulling the strings in advance.

First of all, anonymous (if that is indeed your name), thanks for the comment and thanks for reading.

Second of all, you'll want to be careful about your use of "Scottish MS." Scotland has the highest per capita rate of Multiple Sclerosis in the world. So while I know you're speaking of "the missus," MS can certainly be misconstrued.

Now, to answer your question (and keep in mind that this is really just my understanding of how government works in the UK, so I could very well be way the hell off here)...

This by-election victory is, yes, a victory, but is really a big deal symbolically, more than actually. The election was for the Labour-held Glasgow East seat in the British Parliament (the big one in London, as opposed to Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh). So the SNPs just won a single seat in the British Parliament. But...

Glasgow East has been a Labour stronghold. It was considered the third safest Labour seat in Scotland, based on Labour's majority after the previous election (whenever that was).

The Scots grew to dislike Tony Blair a great deal. They're a largely anti-war people and Labour has slowly been screwing Scotland over the past decade or so. Couple that with Alex "I am not a fish" Salmond's strong anti-war stance, and a lot of disaffected Scottish Labour voters have turned their attention to the Scottish Nationalist Party.

Scottish Labour had hoped that Gordon Brown, the current prime minister who is in fact Scottish, would win over the Scots again. But with the mortgage crisis, gas prices, and all the crappy problems we've got here hitting them over there too, any popularity he may have had at the beginning has evaporated like a fart on Orkney (it's windy there).

With Brown and Labour's complete lack of popularity in Scotland at the moment, Alex Salmond and the SNPs have been running any by-election as a referendum against Gordon Brown, and it's been successful, but nowhere as successful as in Glasgow East.

The SNPs saw a 22% swing in their direction in Glasgow East to win the seat away from Labour. This is an enormous swing. If there were a by-election in Gordon Brown's district and the swing to the SNP was that high, he would lose his seat (and his prime ministership or whatever you call it).

The ruling party in Britain (currently Labour) decides when the next election takes place. A law I don't fully understand determines the window in which they have to call an election. My understanding is that the latest it can happen is 18 months from now. And Brown, his and his party's popularity in the crapper, has no intention of doing it before then.

But conservative (Tory) leader David Cameron is hammering Brown hard to have the elections sooner, that the country can't take another 18 months of this type of rule. Minority parties can sometimes affect when an election takes place by getting popular support for elections. Cameron's theory is that the latest defeat of Labour by the SNP shows how out of touch Labour is with the country, and the Tories are primed to reclaim their majority, even though the Tories are the fourth most popular party in Scotland currently, after the SNP, Labour, and Liberal-Democrats. So Cameron's whole thing is political maneuvering, using the SNP victory to weaken the ruling party. It might be working.

Meanwhile, Brown may have a Labour revolt on his hands. If Gordon Brown is costing the party elections, maybe we should oust Gordon Brown, thinks Labour.

I hope this helps clarify a little, and I hope that I'm getting the gist of it all. British politics is very confusing to me. But also very interesting.