A Place to Stand

  Whew. The SNP look like getting an overall majority of seats and not far short of a majority of votes.
 We will have an SNP government for the next 4 or possibly 5 years. We will have a referendum on independence. We will have more billions poured into windmills and are quite likely to have blackouts within 5 years depending on whether the regulations calling for the closure of most of our coal fired power in 2015 is maintained and whether Hunterston can limp along till then. We will certainly have massive blackouts by then if the SNP keep our power dropping proportionally to 20%. They may say that all the drop must be in 2020, safely beyond their term of governance but without new nuclear or possibly shale gas we are bound to have massive blackouts. In any case with a declining electricity supply we cannot achieve growth. The SNP's real achievement is to have become the party of government without losing their ability to sell themseves as a protest vote.

  The Pseudoliberals have been decimated. In Sheffield, Nick Clegg's home, they lost 12 out of 13 council seats, In Manchester they lost them all. In Scotland the only constituency seats they hold are the Orkney and Shetland ones. They lost Robert Brown, their list representative in Glasgow, though Patrick Harvie, the Green list candidate held his seat, currently the only Green. The shift of over 10% of votes cast from the Pseudoliberals to the SNP may or may not have been direct - there has also been a big swing  to the SNP in constituencies without big LD votes.

   In the 2005 general election they LDs got 22.6% of the vote, placing second after Labour. They were part of the Scottish government and generally seen as the most intelligent part (not that difficult because the rest were Labour). Then they expelled me for proposing embracing growth, by cutting corporation tax and keeping the lights on (pretty moderately compared to what I now think). The SNP then promised to cut corporation tax, won the next election and didn't do so. Since then it has been a constant decline to I expect about 5% and a very poor 4th place. I don't say that I precipitated the decline but I do say that if they had had such policies they could now be where the SNP are, or better. After all polls show that new nuclear has the support of twice as many as oppose it. The SNP's policy of independence and Luddism are both minority ones so there is clearly potential for a party that opposes them, has a credible policy of growing the economy and is sen as moderately competent. The SNP victory is not because they are great but because all the rest, except UKIP who are censored by the openly fascist BBC, are so complacently dreadful.

    The AV referendum will not be counted till this afternoon but the turnout across the UK was abysmal and everybody seems agreed it has been lost. The Pseudoliberal's deal with the Tories looks to have gained them nothing and destroyed the party. I expect them to lose senior members to both the Tories and Labour. Their unique selling points used to be that they were a party of protest votes; that their looney policies (more eco-fascist than anybody but the Greens) had never been subjected to government; that they were all things to all men persons; that they had not lied in government (never having been there) and all of these have been destroyed. They can't even pull out of the coalition because that would show them to be dishonourable and must hang on for the full term hoping for something to turn up. I would suggest they fire Clegg and bring back the old leader, Charles Kennedy who is genuinely likable and not much tarred with the coalition. Who knows it might help but I doubt they will. The really need to be liberals but that boat sailed either when I was expelled, or more likely, long before but I just refused to notice.

   Back in 1970 my father stood as Liberal candidate for Eastwood. This was when the entire party was 6 MPs. The result was:
Conservative 29163
Labour 16062
Liberal 7053
Scottish National Party 3733

Yesterday it was:

Conservative  10650 

Liberal Democrats 835
Labour 12662 
SNP 7777

But he was a real liberal.
 crash and burn