Cat

After yesterday's famous Edinburgh dog, our neighbour's cat on the prowl in our garden. Obviously momentous political events here in Scotland, and probably not a surprising to regular readers, I'm not exactly happy with the SNP landslide. Rather like 1997, only in reverse, I stayed up into the small hours watching the results come in, and despite the early evidence, still being surprised at each new result. Back in 1997 at St Brides with lots of other party members, we seemed unwilling to accept the landslide and kept saying, pessimistically, that such and such a Scottish Tory would buck the trend, only to be delighted when they too were ousted, until every Scottish Tory had been defeated. Yes, the Lib Dems collapsed, and it seems they all went over to the SNP, but in some cases traditional Labour got hammered too. And if the LibDems did switch (rather than not vote at all) why didn't they switch to Labour? Generally Labour did keep most of its vote from last time, it's just that this time the impact of FPTP splitting the non-Labour vote didn't mask the constituency outcome like it did in 2007. Without AV being in place, the LibDem voters seemed to express their constituency second preference for the SNP when they deserted their first preference. And interestingly, in the few places where Labour was fighting the Tories and not the SNP they did pretty well. Is that a reflection on what the UK Labour party does best - fighting the Tories (as Labour in Scotland did so well with only a year ago in the UK General Election). In Scotland that no longer works for Labour, which now needs to take a long hard look at itself and reform. Thinking about this image, maybe this is the cat that got the cream - similar to the look on most SNP faces this afternoon as their party passes the 65-seat mark and moves into an absolute majority in the new parliament.