Putting the election on hold? That gets my vote

FUNNY old week. I don’t know about you, but back in the dim and distant past that was Monday afternoon, I really felt quite positive. The sun was out. Birds were singing. The first snowdrops at the bottom of the garden were starting to unfurl.

And Boris Johnson addressed the nation, promising an end in sight and uttering the magic words ‘the 21st of June’.

And then Tuesday dawned and, with it, a very Presbyterian-tinged Scottish reality.

No June day of freedom for us lot north of the Border. Goodness, no.

We were instead fed a couple of vague dates and promises, and told that from April 26, we’d all be back in tiers.

After that? Well, it’s all a bit shrug of the shoulders.

It felt, in the most depressing way possible, like the living embodiment of the phrase ‘hurry up and wait’, and the accompanying rain and howling winds outside did nothing to improve moods, at least not in this household.

Now, I do see that there may, perhaps, be some wisdom in all this let’s wait and see stuff.

After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that the Prime Minister has jovially set out a date (remember when we were all going to be back to normal by Easter 2020?) only to end up with Cadbury Mini Eggs all over his face.

A cautious approach then, might not be the worst idea. Taking it slowly, keeping an eye on the data and making decisions based on how things look rather than arbitrarily promising a date when it will all be over, could just work. It might even be sensible.

I say this, too, as someone who on Monday evening thought that I could, at last, get on with some sort of wedding planning, only to find myself 24 hours later ripping it all up and once again googling ‘bridal face masks’ and ‘what to do instead of a first dance’.

All that said, however, there does seem to be one looming elephant on the horizon.

One date which still seems curiously set in stone when everything else remains wreathed in vagueness. I refer, of course, to the next Holyrood election, scheduled to be held on May 6 this year. Strange, isn’t it?

Exams cancelled, major life events on hold, operations delayed, and yet there, clinging onto the calendar like a barnacle, the only immovable feast still scheduled in the 2021 diary, is the SNP’s next opportunity to flex its muscles at the polls.

So it is in this spirit that I ask, as someone who is really quite curious, shouldn’t we delay the election?

Isn’t this, perhaps, the most sensible course of action while we continue to navigate a public health crisis the likes of which we have never before seen in this country?

Or is that just too sensible for a Government which, even in times of disaster, appears to think only of itself?

The first red flag that the election might get in the way of the response to the pandemic waved itself aloft with the debate over what to do about Nicola Sturgeon’s daily Covid briefings.

Official government guidance stated that the briefings would be suspended for the ‘purdah’ election period between March 25, when Holyrood is dissolved, and polling day on May 6.

Now it seems there may be loopholes which would allow the Scottish Government to keep us informed about the ‘progress of the pandemic’.

But given – as demonstrated this week when Sturgeon went wildly off script to lambast Alex Salmond – that politics sometimes finds its way into the daily briefings, this seems an uncomfortable position, and one that could quickly fall apart. Then there is the fact that the parliament will be dissolved for six weeks.

This will leave us, the much-trumpeted people of Scotland, with no real representation at Holyrood at a time when we have arguably never needed it more.

Instead, we will be forced to watch our politicians focus their energies on trying to persuade us to vote for them again, rather than doing the sort of work that made us want to vote for them in the first place.

And there is also the notion that the whole point of Miss Sturgeon only setting out a road map until April 26 is precisely because she cannot take things much further, given that (although it is highly likely) there is no cast-iron guarantee that she will still be the First Minister come the morning of May 7.

IS this really the right way to run a country in the middle of a pandemic and, for that matter, a vaccine rollout? I’m not convinced it is. While the pandemic has taught us that many things can be done virtually when needed, that doesn’t mean they must be.

How on earth does a count work? What pressures will be put on the postal system if there is, as is expected, a huge surge in postal votes? How will results be announced?

Will people really have faith in the outcome given that, for purely practical reasons, so much of it will have to be held behind closed doors, so different from the open-handed democracy we are used to seeing on our television screens on election nights?

I ask these questions if only because it seems that the Government would rather do anything else but answer them, once again shrugging their shoulders while at the same time telling us that the vote will, indeed, go ahead.

I understand that voting is important. It is the very cornerstone of our democracy.

But these are not normal times and this will, no matter what the Government might say, be no normal vote.

Elections can wait. Our response to the pandemic, the vaccine rollout and how we rebuild our country, cannot.