Blame Blair’s voting system for power of the Greens
WELL, what the hell was that about? Just over a week ago, last Monday, we were all going about our lives, getting up for work, and binge-watching Baby Reindeer when suddenly – crash, bang, whoosh – there goes the First Minister.
The past 10 days has been like an episode of The Thick Of It that was never screened because it was considered too far-fetched. For Holyrood bubble, navel gazing, self-serving arrogance, it will take come beating.
For anyone not interested in politics – and that is most of the population – they must have thought: “Sorry, what? Interim climate change target? What interim climate change target? Who in the Green Party? Oh yeah, that wee guy who looks like a fey Himmler. Puberty blockers for children, sounds nuts, but what, Alex Salmond is back? I thought he had exploded under the internal pressure of his own ego – wait, the referee is calling for a vote of what? I wouldn’t be confident about letting him go to the bathroom on his own. Ash Regan? Isn’t that a disease that kills trees? Sorry, what? Useless has resigned? Why, apart from the obvious?”
When something like this happens, TV news crews suddenly rock up on Buchanan Street and Princes Street to ask voters what they think, and there’s always one who says he or she can’t comment because they are “not interested in politics”.
I have done vox pops over the years and, believe me, that is most people. You need to stop at least 10 before finding one who knows what’s going on, or who wants to know.
To most people, democracy means making the effort to go to the local primary school to put a cross on a piece of paper that means nothing and changes nothing – until they have to do it again in four years’ time. About four in 10 people don’t even bother to do that.
Recent events will have served only to reinforce their conviction that nothing they think or do matters. The only people with the power to effect change are politicians like Patrick Harvie and Douglas Ross, who appear to use it for their own ends.
It’s worth taking a step back to consider what has actually transpired.
Earlier this month, Mairi Mcallan, the SNP Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Net Zero and Energy, told the Scottish Parliament she was accepting the view of the UK Climate Change Committee that Scotland would be unable to reach its statutory goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 75% of 1990 levels by 2030.
So far, so what? Confirmation of what has been obvious to anyone with eyes and ears for some time shocked no-one, not even Mr Harvie. However, not all his party colleagues were quite as accepting of his blasé willingness to countenance the ditching of their raison d’etre policy.
Perhaps they feared that as one of two Green ministers he was going native, lured by the trinkets of office., and an extraordinary general meeting of the party’s executive was called to decide whether they could, or should, continue their partnership agreement with the SNP.
Rather than sitting idly by for a few weeks, waiting to face the humiliation of being ditched by his junior partners in the Scottish Government, Humza Yousaf took the decision to push them before they jumped.
This offered a rare opportunity for the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour to be relevant for five minutes and they each submitted motions of no confidence respectively, in Mr Yousaf as First Minister and in the Scottish Government which he led.
Mr Harvie, who only the day before had signalled his willingness to continue in government, suddenly decided he had no faith in it, and revealed that he would back the Tories’ motion.
Only then does Mr Yousaf appear to have realised the parliamentary arithmetic was not in his favour and, after fruitlessly casting around for votes that would save him, he fell on his sword.
A wilier politician would not have allowed this to happen but it’s worth considering the merits of a parliamentary system that gives a party like the Greens such a disproportionate level of power and influence.
With a combined vote of 255,314 at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election out of 4,280,785 registered voters, they command the support of just 0.0006% of the Scottish electorate. With 2,385,578 votes, the SNP had the highest level of support at constituency and regional levels.
On an issue that exercised no-one – climate change targets were arbitrarily plucked from thin air by Nicola Sturgeon when she was at the height of her powers and no-one with any sense took them at face value – other than a handful of Green Party activists, we have lost a First Minister.
Based on their respective records, consistency in office and levels of support, who should have stepped down: Mr
Yousaf or Mr Harvie?
Prior to the First Minister’s resignation, Mr Harvie had threatened to quit as co-leader of the Greens and return to the backbenches if his party’s executive decided they should withdraw from the government. It appears that the bullet he dodged was handed to Mr Yousaf who proceeded to shoot himself with it.
Some of the biggest disasters and most humiliating climbdowns of this Parliament have been pet Green obsessions, like the failed return deposit scheme, a proposed ban on wood burners and – the daddy of them all – the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The latter was ruled illegal by the Court of Session and would have turned Scotland into a laughing stock if it weren’t so serious that no-one was laughing.
It’s often said that the particular form of voting used in Scottish Parliament elections – part first-past-the-post, part proportional representation – was chosen to usher in a new, progressive and less adversarial type of politics from Westminster, to encourage deal-making and coalition building, and ensure minority interests were properly represented.
In fact, Donald Dewar chose it on the orders of Tony Blair, specifically to thwart the power-building ambitions of the SNP.
Designed to mitigate against the likelihood of any single party dominating, the only time it has failed was in 2011, when the SNP won an overall majority of seats and was able to force through Scotland’s first-ever referendum on independence, in 2014.
The corollary is that parties with often vanishingly small levels of support are thrust into positions of power and prominence, giving opportunists like Mr Harvie a platform they neither merit nor use to benefit anyone but their own interests.
Mr Blair may well be sitting at home this week reflecting on a job well done, but for most ordinary Scots it’s probably time to find something new to watch on Netflix.
Parties with often vanishingly small levels of support are thrust into positions of power