Ok maybe David Cameron wasn’t as blunt as the headline above, but he wasn’t far off it. When SNP MP Angus MacNeil asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed with 68% of Scots that the North Sea oil wealth should be devolved -- i.e. put under the ownership and control of the Scottish Parliament, it’s unlikely David Cameron would have supported the right of Scotland to have exclusive access to such massive wealth. North Sea oil has already been used by the Tories to pay the British States’ million strong giro bill during the Thatcher years, and with massive government cuts approaching it’s a source of wealth the British State can ill afford to lose.
However Cameron’s response was childish and pathetic even by the worst British Unionist standards -- he said “if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer” -- inferring that what Scotland does with it’s own natural resources is “stupid” and that we are also “stupid” for thinking we should have control over it. As Cameron gave his rebuttal the Tory front bench were positively pissing themselves with laughter at the very concept the sweaty jocks from the North could control anything more complex than a deep fat fryer let alone Europe’s largest oil reserves.
It’s this naked arrogance and patronising contempt for Scots that means the Tories are so despised here their frontrunner for leader is talking about disbanding the party itself, and pretending they’re not Tories anymore. Good luck with that one.
It’s not the only piece in the news today about the North Sea’s oil reserves -- the BBC revealed that Old Labour Energy minister Tony Benn tried to buy North Sea oil off British Petroleum for the state owned British energy company. Benn was denied the opportunity, as the Labour Government at that time believed nationalisation of oil went too far -- despite the vast majority of oil producing countries having state owned oil companies, that are to varying levels used to build the infrastructures of their respective states.
No such luck for Scotland though -- we have the dubious honor of being one of only two countries in the world to find oil and get poorer, the other being Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Declassified civil service documents revealed that the British state deliberately covered up the scale of oil wealth in the North Sea to stop the massive swing towards Scottish nationalism in the 70’s.
Today the movement for Independence is even stronger than then -- opinion polls show a majority of Scots backing Independence, and this is before the Government’s massive cuts are enacted. These cuts would be at the very least reduced if Scotland had access to this oil wealth, instead of having it frittered away by Westminster on Trident and the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It’s not “stupid” for Scots to ask why we have the poorest cities in Western Europe sitting right next to the greatest source of wealth in Western Europe -- the only thing that’s stupid is allowing an unaccountable clique -- whether it’s Westminster Tories or private oil multinationals laughing all the way to the bank with our money.
A ‘Coalition of Resistance’ is set to get off the ground in Glasgow over the next few weeks, with a view to bringing together the various strands of the anti-cuts movement in the city. SSY has been involved in initiating the group, as one of the signatories to an open letter, an edited version of which was published in the Sunday Herald this week.
An initial organising meeting is set to be held this Thursday evening, at 7pm in the STUC offices on Woodlands Road. It is hoped that COR will develop into a regular cross-city forum, which can play an important role in organising and mobilising resistance to austerity and cuts over the coming period. If we’re to see anything like the kind of resistance which has swept parts of Europe recently, having such organisations – with a broad base in the workers and students movement – will be vital. With the student movement in the UK, we’ve already seen flashes of this – over November and early December last year, an intense period of struggle saw near weekly mass demonstrations in most cities, and student assemblies springing up across the country.
The time is now ripe for broadening the struggle to unite workers, students, claimants, pensioners and all other suffering the attacks of the ruling class. The government are already running scared: just yesterday, Business Secretary Vince Cable wheeled out threats of making the anti-trade union laws even harsher, in a speech to the GMB union’s conference. Today, the GMB responded by promising “the biggest civil disobedience campaign Cameron and Clegg’s tiny little minds have dreamt of” if any attempt is made to change the strike laws.
Nonetheless, there’s been a lot of frustration recently at the apparent unwillingness of the TUC, and the large public sector unions, to really take on the government. Yes, upwards of 500,000 may have marched on March 26th, but since then, not a great deal has been forthcoming, particularly in the context of the fighting talk at last September’s TUC Congress. Things may begin to change on June 30th, when hundreds of thousands of government workers in the PCS union are set to strike over pensions. In England, teachers from the NUT and ATL unions are expected to join, while the UCU lecturers’ union are currently deliberating on the matter too, meaning up to 700,000 workers could be on strike across the UK on the day. This is an important first step, and there’s talk of further action in the Autumn, when larger unions like Unison, the GMB and Unite may also join in. However, if stopping the austerity programme by toppling the Coalition government is the aim – which it surely must be – then a 24 hour public sector co-ordinated strike sometime in the Autumn will simply not be enough. In Greece, the trade unions confederations have now organised over ten 24 hour general strikes coupled with mass demonstrations, yet the IMF imposed austerity programme continues unabated. In France last year, a series of mass demonstrations and strikes in key sectors of the economy brought the country to a virtual standstill, nearly bringing Sarkozy’s government to its knees. Yet the movement ultimately failed, with the pension reform passing. In Britain, we can’t even get a general strike on the go, so what the hell kind of hope do we have?
The movement needs to broaden out and radicalise. It needs to be embedded in every community and workplace for a mass campaign of defiance and resistance to the cuts. The organisations of the traditional left do have a key role to play in this – the weight of the trade union movement in the UK is still considerable, representing 6.5 million members and the old adage rings true: while 1000 striking students can bring a train to a standstill, a 1000 striking railway workers can bring a whole country to a standstill. But it would be foolish to rest everything on the ability of the public sector trade unions to bring down the government. The majority of people, and particularly young people, are no longer organised in a union, and ways must be found around this. One notable aspect about the recent mass anti-austerity demonstrations that have swept Spain has been a conscious rejection of the traditional organs of the left. Spontaneous in nature and largely organised online, the mass protests and assemblies have not relied on left political parties nor trade unions, although undoubtedly both have played some role. The labour movement does appear to be increasingly coming to recognise the need for a fight that extends beyond the workplace – indeed, figures like Unite’s Len McLuskey have spoken openly on the need to extend the fight across society.
In Scotland, we’re obviously also in a unique situation when it comes to fighting the cuts, with a pro-independence majority now in Holyrood. The SNP have no real solutions though, and although blaming Westminster for reducations in their block grant, will nonetheless be forced to implement huge cuts. Post-independence, the SNP strategy of slashing corporation tax and reliance on oil revenue is not a sustainable basis on which to build a country in which “the poor won’t be made to pick up the bill for the rich” and where “the profit from the land shall go to all”, as Alex Salmond promised to the Scottish Parliament recently. These contradictions will become more and more exposed over the next couple of years.
In the meantime, we need to build the kind of organisations that people will look to as the cuts begin to bite. SSY is hopeful that a Coalition of Resistance group in Glasgow can be a useful tool in aiding this struggle, in uniting organised workers with students, the unemployed and the unorganised, and we urge people to get along to the open planning meeting this Thursday, with the aims of immediately building solidarity with those striking on June 30th, and building the resistance from there.
Eck pure greetin wi laffter at SSY's election liveblog
Batten down the hatches, the Tories and the BBC are officially aware of SSY’s website!
That’s right, it’s not just the police who read our blog! In a BBC documentary following Scotland’s dear leader Alex Salmond, Michael Portillo – the former Thatcherite Tory MP who famously lost his seat in the 1997 NewLabourThingsCanOnlyGetShiter landslide and went on to become a tv politics pundit with a boak inducing penchant for flirting with Dianne Abbott - can clearly be seen not only viewing the SSY blog but even VISIBLY CHUCKLING! You can view the documentary here (we’re at 40 mins 39 seconds, but it’ll only be available for a week!)
We’re sure Michael enjoyed his wee tour of the website, presumably stopping to read Leftfield, marvel at our street fighting skillz, and purchase a copy of our pamphlet Afghanistan: Three Centuries of Imperialism. Hi Michael!
In case you were wondering, the article he was reading was about the SNP’s backwards, unscientific & unhelpful view on the formerly-legal high Mephedrone and their call for it to be banned. Fancy doing a documentary on that Michael?
The polls are closed, and we’ll know the results of the Scottish parliament elections, and whether or not Westminister has a different shitey voting system (SO EXCITING!) by Friday morning. SSY teams will be bringing you amazing liveblogging from the Glasgow and North East counts, with extra reporting from SSY’s secret underground complex. But this won’t be your normal boring Guardian liveblog - have a look at last years to get an idea of what to expect. This year, expect us to call for the deaths of EVEN MORE bastards! If we haven’t all gone crazy by the end of the counting, enjoy the liveblog!
Polls opened this morning and votes are currently being cast in the Scottish Parliamentary election. As #2 candidate on the Scottish Socialist Party’s Glasgow Regional List, I should be out at the polling stations, desperately trying to convince voters to put an ‘X’ beside Scotland’s only party of independence, socialism and internationalism. The bogging weather has driven me indoors, where the only way to ease my inactivity-related guilt is to blog about how all parties are bastards except the SSP.
The campaign has been characterised by Labour imploding under the laughable ‘leadership’ of the embarassingly shit Mr Gray; the main parties refusing to lay out resistance to cuts, while squabbling about such red-hot issues as whether or not to rejig emergency services’ management boards; and the public’s interest in Holyrood plummeting to an all-time low.
Gray gunning for power
Analysts are predicting victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, with an increase in their number of seats. This seemed highly unlikely at the start of the campaign, with Labour riding high in the polls, independence unpopular and Alex Salmond’s “arc of prosperity” reduced to rubble. So confident was I that Labour would romp it, I bet SSP Glasgow top-of-the-list candidate Frances Curran a hefty fiver that Iain Gray would be the next First Minister. Though I will weep at the loss of 10% of my weekly giro, I am mighty relieved that Elmer Fudd will not be leading my country for the next 5 years. (Dinnae fret about the cash either, ah’m gonnae pull a fly wan n dingy payin her).
If Scottish Labour’s beleaguered leader has done nothing else in this campaign, he has at least provided us with plenty of laughs -- at his expense. As well as allegedly shiting out of being in the same ASDA as Salmond while they were both visiting the seaside paradise of Ardrossan, the aptly-named Gray made headlines by running away from anti-cuts activists in Glasgow, seeking refuge in a local Subway branch. It’s not known whether he went for a 6-inch or a footlong, but if anything like his speeches, it would have been full of cheese and lacking substance with a nasty aftertaste. Many of the protesters wanted to speak to him about the planned closure of the Accord Centre in the East End, a vital resource for disabled people and their families, which the Labour Council are demolishing in favour of a car park for the Commonwealth Games. Check their facebook page here.
I’ve been out and voted already. And I will now undermine the principle of the secret ballot by telling you what I did. Firstly, I voted SSP (obv lol) on the regional ballot paper. The SSP look set to receive an increase in votes compared to the disastrous 2007 election, but we are likely to fall short of the numbers needed to return a socialist MSP. Oh wellz.
Then, I held my nose and voted for Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP in my constituency, just as I did in 2007. The way I see it, there have been many issues on which socialists would challenge the SNP-led Scottish Government of 2007-2011; not least dropping their policy of regulating the buses after receiving a substantial donation from Stagecoach millionaire Brian Soutar, or overruling Aberdeenshire Council and helping evil tycoon Donald Trump to ruin the world. But they are also head and shoulders above the rest -- including Labour -- from a progressive viewpoint. Their regime began with the Scottish Govt stepping in to save hospitals from closure in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.
SAVE CRICHTON CAMPUS!
In the first few months of government, keen to avoid triggering clashes with popular resistance movements, they intervened to prevent damaging school mergers in Edinburgh (following a campaign led by SSY organiser Sarah, among others) and stopped the closure of Glasgow Uni’s Crichton Campus -- another campaign with a high level of input from our members. They nicked socialist policy and got rid of Prescription Charges, even if they did unnecessarily stagger it over 4 years, costing thousands of people money in “sick tax”, but making them look good just before this election. Shame they didn’t stick to their word when they (again borrowing from the SSP manifesto) said they’d scrap Council Tax. But they did destroy a key component of Thatcher’s legacy by abolishing “right to buy” on council housing. Sometimes politics comes down to a choice between 2 undesirable options, making the SNP & Salmond an easy choice compared to New Labour & Gray. Speaking of undesirable options…
There was the referendum on changing the electoral system to use Alternative Vote. I am in favour of real electoral reform, to break the stranglehold of the big-money mainstream parties and stop the crime of huge chunks of the population effectively being disenfranchised because they live in a local Labour/Tory/whoever dictatorship.
Props to Stefan
But AV will not change anything. The LibDems know it, the Yes campaign knows it, everyone knows it. And no-one even supports AV! However, I didn’t wanna vote to preserve FPTP. Also, I consider this an illegitimate plebiscite as it abuses the people’s wish for proportionality by offering 2 systems which aren’t proportional. Therefore I fulfilled a lifelong ambition, drawing a giant willy on the ballot paper. I also wrote “DO YOU THINK WE’RE STUPID? THIS REFERENDUM IS A FARCE” and “Clegg, Cameron, both are dicks”. Yas.
Thankfully in Scotland we have a slightly better electoral system (AMS), so there’s a chance a few Greens will get in. Some sources say there’s a chance that SNP+Greens+Margo McDonald could equal a pro-independence majority. Here’s hoping. From that point of view (and for several other reasons) it is to be hoped that arch-Unionist and sham-socialist George Galloway is not succesful in his self-serving effort to grab a seat in the Parly.
As time has gone on, the shine has somewhat faded from the once bright and hopeful Scottish Parliament. Certainly it was sad that the ‘Rainbow Parliament’ turned grey in 2007, with the SSP presence wiped out along with many other smaller parties and independents. The relatively low levels of interest in this campaign show that the Parliament is in danger of becoming irrelevant to most working-class people. There is only one way for Holyrood to prevent that: by representing the wishes of the vast majority of the Scottish people, and resisting the program of cuts and austerity which has been led by the ConDem coalition at Westminster.
Some career politicians may lie that the cuts are necessary, others that their Parliament can’t do anything. The social movements will pressurise them all. We must tell them: you may not have the constitutional capacity to defy the cuts, but there is certainly the political capacity, and it must be used. The people of Scotland would fully support a Parliament which offered an alternative, where public services are protected and expanded, and the rich are taxed more to pay for that. A defiant, anti-cuts Parliament would be a major act of Scottish self-determination and a key step towards an independent socialist republic.
The likelihood is, no matter who wins, we’ll get another crop of careerist bastards. But those in authority are vulnerable. I am optimistic about the capacity for struggle and change in Scotland, and I’m cheered by the recent emergence of a nascent grassroots anti-capitalist movement based on direct action and direct democracy. Whether the politicians respond or not, there is a new world to be built.
The big day is closing up on us, with all the inevitability of a death sentence/England World Cup attempt and all the dread and misery that surrounds the two. David Cameron’s already been using the Royal Wedding as a stick to beat “politically correct” health and safety mad councils, declaring that people should be free to have street parties to celebrate the special day.
Needless to say the same principle does not apply to those want to demonstrate in the City Centre of Glasgow (unless you’re the orange order) or defend much more basic rights to protest at all – as we saw with the wave of political policing a few weeks ago, and now the shocking decision to prosecute Alfie Meadows for “violent disorder”.
Cameron’s argument is also pretty spurious given the total lack of enthusiasm for the Royal Wedding, particularly in Scotland where the only street parties in Glasgow were cancelled due to “lack of interest”. Pro-royalists will point towards a Guardian poll saying that the majority of the UK still thinks the monarchy are “relevant”. Unfortunately there is no regional breakdown of this poll – as it’s almost certain the support for the Royal Family in Scotland will be much lower than in England.
Despite this poll, even the most ardent Royalists must accept there’s a distinct lack of interest around this Royal Wedding compared to previous equivalents – Prince Charles and Lady Diana being the most obvious example. More and more people have had the scales removed from their eyes in how they examine society across the UK – millions of people no longer believe in the political or economic system, and are fundamentally pissed off with Britain full stop. This means there’s a constituency of people – even if it is a minority – who are able to see how unfair and bonkers it is to spend millions on the monarchy whilst politicians demand massive cuts to public services.
But the facts are the monarchy plays a useful role to the class of politicians, bankers, millionaires, media tycoons, industrials and spivs who run the UK. The monarchy are useful in three ways – socially, diplomatically, and politically – to the wealthiest in British society.
To take the first item, the monarchy are useful socially because they instill the idea amongst the population that not only is it ok to be filthy rich, but it’s ok to be filthy rich for no other reason than you were born into it. Given the massive amount of inherited wealth in the UK, that’s an idea a lot of powerful people in the UK would quite like to see made normal and not challenged. In fact, not only is it not challenged but the idea that folk can be millionaires out of our expense is put forward as something good and worth celebrating – somehow we “all benefit” from the monarchy, because of tourists, national unity etc. It’s at this point I would like to remind readers that Mickey Mouse is not made head of state in the USA because of folk going to Orlando, Florida for their holidays.
The monarchy are also useful as diplomats – they can engage in the grubbiest work with dodgy bastards and despots free from criticism. Take Prince Andrew – he’s been a close associate of Colonel Gaddafi, a corrupt Kazakh billionaire, a paedophile businessman and a Libyan arms dealer. Just being linked to one of those is generally enough to force a politician into an insincere, stage-managed, Thick of It damage-limitation style resignation. But not for the Royals – you can’t make them resign, nor can you attack them, lest you damage an “institution”. This makes them very handy for doing the dirty dealings of the British state all around the world. It’s also why the attendees at the Royal Wedding include the people who have been firing upon unarmed demonstrators for democracy all across the Arab world. If just one of these gange of murderers turned up at Labour or Tory party conference there would be an outcry – but because it’s the apolitical Royal Family, we can’t criticise that or be called “unpatriotic”.
The final reason the monarchy are important is the big one – politics. It may seem strange, given that we are repeatedly told that the Queen’s powers are only token – sure she has the ability to dissolve Parliament, but she’d never actually do it etc. The reality is the Crown Power’s of the Monarch have not only been used, they have been used multiple times within living memory.
The Crown Powers have also been used to deny justice for the people of the Chagos Islands – an Order in Council under Royal Prerogative was used to stop islanders who were evicted from their homes to make room for a US military base returning, despite Court rulings that would have allowed them to return.
The powers of the Monarch have gone even further, they have been used to dissolve a democratically elected Government against that Goverment’s will in Australia. Here the Labor Government had won a majority in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate, allowing their political opponents to block the passage of legislation. The Labor Prime Minister went to the Governor General to seek new elections for the Senate – but was instead dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, an unelected Governor General. It’s use of these undemocratic powers which means that just under half of Australians backed Republicanism in 1999.
The campaign group Republic in the UK lists various other abuses of Crown Powers here – including but not limited to the banning of trade unions at GCHQ, the power to go to war and dissolution of Parliament for partisan reasons.
The bottom line is that while the Queen herself may not decide to go rogue and implement a dictatorship, her powers are used by supposedly democratic politicians throughout the rebranded British Empire to bypass parliament and civil rights. Crown Powers are a useful box of tools for these politicians, it’s for those reasons – and not tourism – that the powers of the monarchy still exist.
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to be the only political party in the mainland UK to organise against the Royal Wedding and for Republicanism. We want an Independent Socialist Republic – different from the SNP’s view of Scotland, which would still have the Queen as head of state, and Crown Powers still able to be used on a supposedly independent Scotland just as they were used on Australia and Canada. We will be supporting two Republican events over the next couple of days,
The first is an SSP Republican Social at 7.30 in Maryhill Central Halls this Thursday. We will be having political speakers, music and song agitating and arguing for a Democratic, Socialist, and Republican Scotland that controls it’s own destiny and where the rights of all it’s citizens are determined by a Constitution – and not a feudal relic.
Secondly – on the big day itself – we are supporting a demonstration on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, to turn it into a Republican Mile. It’ll be on this Friday from 11.30 onwards and we hope it will provide a useful social for those of Her Majesty’s Subjects who were unfortunate enough not to receive an invitation.
Screwing English, Welsh & Northern Irish students, screwing Scottish students (but after they graduate!), turning over education to big business, slashing spending, or relying on charitable donations – that’s the spectacularly shit choices for the future of our universities and colleges outlined in today’s long-awaited Scottish Government review on higher education funding.
It’s the first steps in undoing what’s gradually become accepted in Scotland over the past decade – that education should be free. In 1999, it was, ironically enough, the Lib Dems who oversaw the abolishing of fees, and then in 2007, it was the SNP who got rid of the graduate endowment, a one-off sum paid after completing studies. It’s put Scotland miles ahead of the rest of the UK in providing access to education for all, and is one of the best achievements of the devolved administration. Today’s announcement now sets the ground for its gradual reverse.
There’s little in the way of surprise in the proposals, coming just one week after the House of Commons vote which will see tuition fees at English universities rocket to between £6-9000 a year from 2012, largely to substitute a dramatic fall in state funding. Given the knock-on impact that the changes in England will have on Scottish funding via the Barnett Formula, the argument being put forward by the Scottish Government, and Scottish unis themselves, is that something is going to have to give.
However, what’s put forward in today’s report is only tentative at this stage, with the SNP to line up their concrete policy in the coming months, prior to May’s Holyrood election. As such, the paper is more a list of possibilities rather than any definite policy proposals, but nonetheless it does point in a direction which has worrying implications for future Scottish students.
While much is being made of the fact it rules out “up-front” tuition fees, this is a virtually meaningless phrase – no one, in England or elsewhere, pays up-front tuition fees. Almost everyone gets a student loan to cover their fees, which is then paid back (with interest) in the decades following graduation. This is why it’s a total myth that a “graduate contribution” is somehow a progressive alternative to fees – they’re the same thing. Yet a graduate tax is exactly what the Scottish review lays out.
In all, there’s six different proposals in the review, in order to “stimulate a debate” over the coming months on the best solution for the future of Higher Education. In reality though, most of them are complementary and in all likelihood we’ll see a mixture of them being implemented in 2012, to coincide with the changes in England. To summarise, the main policy ideas in the paper are:
for the state to keep its role as the main source of education funding
for the state to remain as a funder of education, but alongside a graduate contribution
increasing fees for English, Welsh & Northern Irish students, who currently pay just under £2000 a year, to £6,000
increasing income from donations & charity
increase investment from businesses
“efficiency savings” – a.k.a. cuts
We need to be clear that all of these – with the exception of the first (ie. the status quo) – are regressive measures that seek to bring individual contributions into the fray, negate state funding and add to the overall marketisation of education. The idea that business contributions can replace state funding is particularly dangerous; while there’ll be plenty of money from the likes of BAE Systems for cutting-edge bomb making and Glaxo for profit-oriented medical research, what about every other subject that isn’t worthy of corporate investment? Only last week, staff at Glasgow Uni had to come together to vote down management proposals to allow business members onto the university court.
The SNP will argue that they’re only implementing these measures through necessity, and that unlike the Tories in Westminster, they’re not hellbent on privatising education. But this doesn’t change what they’re trying to enact – we need ‘Scotland’s Champions’ to stand up to the Coalition, not cower and implement the cuts, fees or backdoor privatisation on their behalf. As for making students from the other parts of the UK pay more – in a bid to quell overblown fears about thousands of “fees refugees” pouring over the border seeking cheaper education – it’s divisive and unfair.
We’ve already seen thousands of students on the streets and university, college and school campuses across Scotland – while our ‘representatives’ in NUS Scotland might be happy to settle for a graduate tax, let’s make it clear that we won’t. A huge fight to defend the principle of free education is on our hands, but we’re entering it in good stead, with even today’s announcement made in virtual secrecy – its date made public only yesterday due to the fear of student protests at its unveiling. Ahead of the Scottish election, maximum pressure must be placed on every party to not go down the road of a graduate tax or fees – and after their election, to stick to their fucking promises.
Demonstrating for a Scottish republic in 2004 on Calton Hill
Yesterday brought news that surprised nobody in Scotland: despite what they promised when they were elected three years ago, the SNP aren’t going to be able to give us a say on independence this year.
After decades of arguing for independence, the SNP finally got their shot at power for the first time in 2007. They published a white paper that, we were told, would lead to the people of Scotland getting to vote in 2010 on the future of the country. But yesterday they announced that they won’t even try putting the referendum bill before the parliament to vote down.
Instead the SNP plan to try and get more seats next year and have the power to push through a referendum in the next parliament, which is a bit like a someone who’s gambled all their money away planning to win it back to pay their debts. As things stand, opinion polls make it look like Labour might get in again next year, in which case the SNP will have missed their biggest ever chance to try and advance independence.
Well he’s finally done it, like a bullied teenager forced into taking weed by his peers, Gordon Brown has bottled it and given into pressure. He has resigned after spending only 3 years in the job he has lusted after for practically his entire political career. After taking Labour to it’s worst result since 1983, Brown has taken the hint and left No 10.
Fuck it, I don't care anymore. You're all FUCKING BIGOTS.
A year ago, the Tories would have been ecstatic if Brown had stepped down -- now they’re running about like headless chickens, terrified that the one major stumbling block between a Lib-Lab coalition has been removed. Despite the Lib Dems being closer to the Labour party in the political views of their electorate and MP’s, it was clear that there was no way Nick Clegg was going to prop up a Labour PM as popular as the bastard offspring of Myra Hindley and Saddam Hussein. Brown was despised in Middle England due to his being Scottish public relations difficulties.
Now with Brown out the way, a deal between the Lib Dems and Labour -- while not ideal -- is a lot more credible. There’s the obvious attack that’s going to come from the Tories and their allies about one unelected PM being replaced with another, but ultimately it’s the politicians who make the decisions, like it or lump it. And a youthful Blairite PM like David Miliband might not be too unpopular in the Home Counties marginals Labour need to retake in the future.
The biggest stumbling block left after Brown’s departure now though is the arithmetic. Despite taking 52% of the popular vote across the UK, Labour and the Lib Dems together do not have over half the seats. In order to form a stable Government, they would need to put together support from an eclectic mix of Democratic Unionists, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Nationalists.
While the Tories Unionist allies are non-existent, the Democratic Unionists do have 8 MP’s in Northern Ireland who could be potential kingmakers in a coalition. Whilst they have officially said they are not opposed in principle to a Lib Lab pact, they are clearly on the right of the political spectrum and would fit more comfortably with the Conservatives.The arithmetic still does not add up though. A Lab-Lib-SDLP pact would not have a majority and neither would a Tory-DUP pact. The SNP, Plaid Cymru, Alliance and Green MP’s would hold real power over decisions.
There’s another issue which makes an elaborate coalition unstable -- English Nationalist resentment. While the Tories may have taken only 36% across the UK, in England they have a clear lead of 40% to Labour’s 28%. If a Government dependent on Scottish Labour, Scottish Liberal and other Nationalist MP’s from within the UK enact cuts on English public services you can bet the Tories, UKIP and BNP will attack them for enforcing a dictatorship on the English electorate.
Lets hope the SNP negotiate to ensure these scenes are never repeated again.
There’s already been discontent brewing south of the border on the issue of Labour’s legitimacy to govern England -- in 2005 Labour got less votes than the Tories in England for example, but more seats. This is alongside the West Lothian question where Scottish MP’s can vote on decisions that only affect England, and the Barnett formula where Scots receive more funding per head in public services than their English counterparts.
A lot of these concerns are pish -- 52% of English voters did support the Liberals and Labour, and the Barnett formula does not take into account Scotland’s massive subsidies to Westminster in Oil money. But the principle would remain -- Labour and the Lib Dem’s would rely on Scottish , Irish and Welsh MP’s to govern. Any negotiations to spare cuts from their respective parts of the UK would be attacked in the Tory press as robbing from England.
This would be a difficult situation for a Government in normal circumstances, but this is a Government that needs to enact brutal public service cuts the likes of which have not been seen in generations. When the schools, hospitals, and jobs start to go you can bet MP’s in marginal seats will feel the pressure to defy the whip to save their own skins. A lost by-election or two could scupper the entire Government’s spending plans. This is not a stable environment to make the UK a profitable place for capitalism again.
That’s why the Tories (and probably the markets too) are desperate to keep the Lib Dems in a pact with them. They are the most stable offer on the table, with both parties having a clear majority when put together -- and enough breathing space in case any MP’s rebel. But right now it appears the Lib Dems know they won’t get this chance again to hold so much power, and are demanding a voting system that takes their support into account. That could mean the end forever for single party Tory rule, and it’s whether or not that’s an acceptable price to pay for one stable Government that the Tories are mulling over just now.
Armando Iannucci already described in detail what a hung parliament might be like in 1997,
The polls have closed. The votes are in. Now it’s time to bring us the results of Britain’s most important election that isn’t decided by phoning a premium rate number.
All the papers are projecting an SSP landslide in every seat we’re standing in, but we’re trying to keep our feet on the ground.
What does excite us more than Nick Clegg feels about having sex with his 31st woman is the fact that this will be the first ever UK general election to be LIVEBLOGGED in Leftfield. We’ve got two different teams bringing you live updates, one in the count in Glasgow with Socialist candidate and SSY member James Nesbitt, and one with the SSY blog newsroom bringing you updates from around the UK (as they come on the telly.)
Will David Cameron get to piss on the ashes of Broken Britain? Will Gordon Brown continue to do that weird thing with his jaw in the middle of sentences from 10 Downing Street? Or will Nick Clegg get to bring us his brand of “new” politics by returning the Whig party of Pitt the Elder to power?
Which particular colour will the bucket of shit we’re going to get served be? There’s only one way to find out, or one decent way at least, which is to keep refreshing this site obsessively all night. It begins . . .
In Scotland, we’re obviously also in a unique situation when it comes to fighting the cuts, with a pro-independence majority now in Holyrood. The SNP have 
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