The World is Shades of Grey

Just back from Socrates Cafe where we discussed, "what is justice?" Inspired by Obama's reaction to the justified killing/assassination/death in combat of Osama Bin Laden, but leading to a wider discussion of 'natural justice' and fairness. We also discussed the question, "are some people just meant to be single?" Both very interesting discussions.
In passing we had a bit of post-election chat - not surprisingly L was hugely up beat and enjoying the way all her hard work campaigning had translated into a landslide victory. Know the feeling, having been there in 1997. But like then I wonder how much was down to the local tactics of leafletting and canvassing and getting out the vote and how much was down to a much broader election strategy and larger forces that have little to do with the nitty gritty of the campaign.
The more I think about it, the closer the parallels are - charismatic leader that is almost presidential in his appeal, strong party discipline, reining in the more extreme elements, playing down the party's core beliefs to appeal to a wider electorate, replacing the established order that has been in place for years, using the votes of Liberal Democrats to oust the sitting party... This time round there is no doubt Alex Salmond's party (and I call them that deliberately, in a similar way that for many people Labour in 1997 were Tony Blair's party) ran a competent campaign that played up their competent performance as a minority government in the last term.
And the party of government is generally better placed to run a 'positive' campaign - 'this is what we have done well'. Their opponents need to successfully draw attention to what has not been done or what has not worked. Is that negative campaigning, or the politics of opposition? Either way, Labour's inept campaign failed to land the punches that were there to land - falling educational standards, wasteful health spending, expensive vanity projects like The Gathering etc. (And the repeated assertion from the SNP that Labour was running, and did run, a negative campaign - is that not a large dose of negative campaigning too?)
Much more telling is Labour's lack of a clearly expressed alternative and a failure to address the Scottishness of the election. London-based Labour allegedly needs Scottish Labour votes to help it win in the UK. Even that isn't clear to me. While the relative strength of Labour in Scotland helped boost the UK party in the darkest days of Thatcher, in the Blair years Labour always had a majority of seats in England. The trouble for Scottish Labour is that the platform they need to fight the SNP in Scotland is considerably more left-wing than UK Labour believe they can use to successfully win in England against the Tories. It does work in Scotland where the main opponent is the Tories, but everywhere else it apparently isn't enough. Scottish Labour needs a different platform, and if that cannot be accommodated within the UK party, then it needs to break away. As long as the UK parliament remains that Scottish Labour Party can potentially support the English and Welsh Labour Parties, but as a separate entity, not as part of the same party.
A third factor in the 'landslide' SNP victory (achieved on 44-45% of a 50% turnout - only 22-23 % of the electorate, similar to the Labour vote in the 2005 UK election) was of course the wholesale collapse of the LibDem vote. Time and time again it was striking how the SNP vote went up by almost exactly the same amount as the LibDem vote declined. Not in every constituency, as old style Labour also suffered, but in many places a LibDem slump seemed to result in the SNP jumping from third to first. The trouble is with just a 40-60% turnout it is impossible to know whether what has happened is that LibDems have just switched to the SNP in large numbers or if the previous LibDem voters have stayed at home and a completely new group of voters have turned out to vote SNP. The assumption always seems to be that a 'swing' of voters means people changing their minds and I suppose people who vote are probably more likely to vote again but no one knows for sure - it's all assertion.
IF the LibDems did switch, it seems that Labour didn't do enough to win their votes, but were they ever going anywhere else other than SNP? Presumably disillusioned LibDems are unhappy with the coalition. So they don't like the Tories, so their vote won't go there. Labour has been attacking the coalition in general and the LibDems in particular, often in a visceral and personal way and therefore seem very like 'the enemy'. The only credible place to go is the SNP, or one of the smaller parties. Interestingly in Lothian, the LibDems 'lost' over half of their constituency votes in the list vote, and both the Greens and Margo MacDonald got elected.
So the combination of circumstances rewarded the SNP's campaign in a way that probably exceeded their most optimistic expectations. It was a reward for ambition though. The ambition to campaign hard for both votes in a way that Labour in Scotland has never done. Whether it was complacency or misguided principle, the Labour Party in Scotland has never really played the system. Like the Labour party rule preventing people from standing for both constituency and list. Perhaps it was to avoid the charge that if the electorate rejected a candidate in the constituency vote it was somehow 'unfair' to 'sneak them in' on the list. And constituency success lulled the party into the mistaken belief that this was the best approach. Furthermore the calculation of the top-up seats on the list were always done in a 'realistic' way, rather than an optimistic one. When Labour was winning eight out of nine Lothian seats in 1997 Labour voters discussed how they could use their second vote so it wouldn't be 'wasted'. Many voted Green, which was how Robin Harper got elected. Although the official line was to vote Labour twice, there wasn't the party discipline to stick to it. About a quarter of the Labour constituency vote didn't vote Labour again on the list. People liked the way this added to the breadth of parties represented in the Parliament, even if it was a product of the system of having a second vote. Why isn't there just one ballot paper, constituency and list so you have to really express a single opinion? Anyway, in contrast, the SNP have always made much better use of the list - using it to get 'shadow' MSPs into the parliament who can work towards winning the constituency. A strategy that gloriously came to fruition this time round as time and time again familiar faces from Holyrood were returned as new constituency MSPs. And in contrast, when Labour lost out in constituencies and therefore got more top-up list seats, with one or two exceptions those new constituency MSPs were relatively unknown and inexperienced. The SNP's strong list vote had another bonus when it delivered top-up seats even in regions where their constituency representation was already massive. Almost certainly down to the peculiarities of this election and the LibDem collapse, but for whatever reason ambition was rewarded and second votes weren't wasted in every one of the regions except the Lothians.
And Labour's ambivalence to the list also cost them seats, even in the face of the massive tide of SNP votes. In Lothian 25% of Labour's constituency vote moved elsewhere for the list vote. If they had lost much nearer to the SNP's 5% 'list attrition rate' then Labour might have won another seat on the Lothian list. I've not looked at all the regions in detail (as I need to get on with life!), but in Mid Scotland and Fife for example the calculation of the final list seat was very close and a few hundred more constituency Labour voters sticking with them on the list would have given them another seat there too, this time at the expense of the SNP. I'm not saying it would have changed the result but it could have minimised the Labour losses and got close to preventing the SNP's overall majority.
So, lots of interesting things to take out of it all, not always as simplistic as the mainstream media coverage would have us believe. If Labour in Scotland is to do better next time it needs to take a lesson from the Bruno Gianelli character in The West Wing and 'run in the same election as everybody else.'