Denis Campbell in the Herald, 14 th October 1998.
| 'Tony Blair pledged in Opposition that he would clean up politics. Fine words. But the Government's difficulties over Bernie Ecclestone's £1m and this summer's 'cash-for-access' row about lobbyists such as Derek Draper show that over party funding, no party can claim the moral high ground. This 'widespread public perception that money can buy influence' damns everyone.' Denis Campbell in the Herald, 14 th October 1998. | |
Permit us to bang on further. Our last System Three poll showed that 46% of the electorate now know that there is to be a new voting system next year, still a minority but considerable progress since July, when only a quarter of voters were aware.
But if a minority of the voters know the new rules, there is 100% awareness among party strategists, who are working themselves into a lather about its implications. If they get their pitch wrong, they have everything to lose.
Get it right, maximise your party's return, and it's anybody's game. If we get a hung Parliament (as polls in recent months have indicated) anyone might hold the balance of power. We have all assumed that Jim Wallace will be kingmaker, but if it all goes weird enough next May, who knows? David McLetchie? Dennis Canavan? Tommy Sheridan?
Labour is fond of boasting that it is being uniquely selfless in permitting a PR system which will loosen its grip on the Scottish electorate. First-past-the-post has rewarded Labour handsomely, so that 18 months ago less than half the share of the vote (45.6%) gave the party 56 of the 72 Westminster seats, while the Tories' 17.5% share earned them none.
But Labour's worry is the SNP, and while FPTP has kept its boot on the Nationalist neck so far (22% gleaning only 6 seats) the danger was that winner-takes-all could one day swing the other way. Thin-ended wedges, slippery slopes or sleepwalking - pick your metaphor. The theory was that Scotland could find itself independent on a whim.
Hence, Jack McConnell talked as Labour's Scottish general secretary before the last election of a system "designed" to block the SNP.
It was also a vital concession to Labour's partners in the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The Liberal Democrats would undoubtedly have walked out if PR in some form had not been agreed, but right to the end Labour tried to water it down by restricting the proportional element.
The LibDems wanted a Parliament of 145, with 72 additional members, Labour tried for 113, with 40 additional members, and they compromised in the middle. Then there was Labour's sting in the tail: that when the number of constituencies fell, to correct over-representation at Westminster, so too would the number of additional members.
Labour's support for PR has therefore been as ambivalent as it has been commendable, as driven by self-interest as much as by fairness. Still, it is almost upon us, and voters have to learn how to use it. The LibDems, involved in the negotiations all along, were off the mark very quickly.
Their support has traditionally been concentrated in specific heartlands, mainly the Borders and the North-east, and to some extent in Renfrewshire. Donald Gorrie's win in Edinburgh West also showed what could be achieved with anti-Tory tactical voting.
All of this could bode reasonably well for first vote preferences, but their difficulty was how to maximise the second vote, which involves maximising support over a regional cluster of around nine constituencies, some of which will have no tradition of LibDem voting.
So they were quick to establish what they called Targeting Plus, a strategy building on their core areas and using their better-known names to drag up the vote elsewhere.
Labour was slower off the mark. After all, it was going to do so well on the first vote that it would inevitably gain few top-up seats. Then game the summer's grim poll findings, with the SNP threatening its hegemony in the constituencies and doing even better on the second vote.
Apart from unleashing the "Nat-bashing" offensive, Labour detected a dangerous indication that some of its voters would consider giving the SNP their second vote, possibly even thinking wrongly that the second vote had to be different from the first.
Donald Dewar announced that the Scottish Office would launch a public information campaign on the issue, sparking accusations of propaganda at the taxpayers' expense.
The SNP, meanwhile, has least need of a strategy differentiating between the two votes. It must maximise the first vote, as the only real way of overcoming Labour in its heartlands, and try to hold that support in the second vote, as insurance against failing to make that breakthrough.
The Tories, meanwhile, are making a pitch that says, in effect: "We know you don't like us, but give us your second vote anyway as a bulwark for the Union." Most of the Tory wins are likely to come through the second vote, so the pitch is understandable, if somewhat gauche.
By the time the Scottish Socialists, the Highland Alliance, and individuals such as Dennis Canavan come knocking on your door, your second vote is going to feel like an extremely valuable commodity. Think about how you spend it. - Dec 11
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