Total immersion in number crunching and interpretation completed, the texture of this unforgettable election result in Scotland creates a memorable and, in some cases, perhaps a surprising picture.
The SNP is in an unprecedentedly dominant position and has worked strategically and hard to gain that elevation.
The position for Labour is nothing like as bad as it seems and is potentially recoverable – although there is no sign that the party in Scotland has either the ability or the balls to do this within a decade. And that will be way too late.
The Liberal Democrats are in a persistent vegetative state in intensive care and unlikely to survive.
The Scottish Conservatives are the sole bright spot on the pro-union horizon – with an impressively stalwart and growing position gaining steadily in voter trust for their straightforwardness.
The headline outcome is of course that the SNP took 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in the United Kingdom parliament, leaving each of the other three traditionally ‘main’ parties with one seat each – no more than a trace element in history.
The SNP now has a mission to accomplish, a mission that is its reason for being and a mission now clearly within its grasp to complete. One way or another, the current tensioned stasis is damaging to everyone. It needs to be brought to an early conclusion.
The SNP achievement
But the SNP achievement is much more even than winning 56 out of 59 seats.
53 of their 56 seats were won with votes over 20,000, often well over that; and six of these had votes over 30,000. Of these 53 seats, the SNP won 34 of them with an overall majority of the vote – 50% and over. The biggest percentage of vote gained was in Dundee West, with 61.9%.
The two smallest vote share increases for the party were, ironically in seats won by two of its major players, 25.5% in Gordon, won by former First Minister, Alex Salmond; and 9.8% in Moray, held by the SNP’s Westminster Group Leader, Angus Robertson. Coincidentally, this 9.8% rise in vote share in Moray was equalled in this same constituency by the Scottish Conservatives.
Of the SNP’s three lower votes mentioned above, one was in a Glasgow Constituency [North] where, across the board, turnout was at the lower end of the high-based spectrum of the night; and two were in smaller constituencies where a winning vote of over 20,000 was mathematically unlikely and, in the case of Na h’eileanan an Iar, impossible.
In only one of the three winning votes short of 20,000, was the vote less than 50% of the total – 40.92% in North Fife.
This was a magisterial trampling of the familiar political landscape, a stampede in which being a participant will have been unbelievably exhilarating – and where being underfoot challenged survival and has left much dead in the mire.
The Labour position
Yes, Labour lost every one of its 41 Scottish seats, bar one. Yes, the SNP ate Labour alive in constituencies across the country – and with cannibalistic delight.
But drilling down into the figures and into the situation shows that all is far from lost for the party that has been the foundation of social justice in Scotland for so long – and which the SNP, even since the election, is steadily cutting away from under them.
First – the scale of the SNP majorities against Labour in its traditional seats is deceptive. Yes Labour lost a lot of votes – but if you look at their actual votes, the losses are less than they seem. In every case, whether the SNP victory was, as it largely was, against Labour or, in ten cases, against the Liberal Democrats, the rise in turnout in the constituency is the telling statistic.
It is clear that almost all of the increased vote in each constituency was the SNP’s. That is down to superior energy in recruitment, in organisation and, in some degree to the adoption of most of the new cohort of voters who were 17 at the time of indyref 1 but who have since reached the General Election voter threshold of 18.
If you look at the numbers of the increased turnouts in each constituency, against the SNP majorities and against the straight numerical losses of Labour, it is clear that the SNP’s sweep of gains has owed a lot to the recruitment of new voters. In Invercyde, for example, the raised turnout of 16,510 accounted for all of the SNP and Conservative gains, with Labour’s vote down only by 1,596.
The other parties’ campaigning was more concerned to shore up the votes they had; and while each will have had some new voters in the increased turnouts, the majority will unquestionably have been for the SNP.
Being aware of this impact lowers the height of the mountain Labour has to climb in its recovery effort.
This also underlines the vulnerability of the SNP to its new audiences. If it cannot fulfil their expectations of it and keep them voting, the SNP will fall back within the reach of a resurgent Labour – when that happens, which will not be any time soon.
Then look at Glasgow, the traditional urban heartland of Labour.
Yes, Labour lost all of the Glasgow seats – but the situation shows that Glasgow has not abandoned Labour, just relegated it by one place.
Labour came second in every Glasgow seat and again the SNP majorities were fuelled by the new vote in the raised turnouts. [This situation was replicated in Edinburgh where Labour came second in every seat except Edinburgh West.]
The turnouts were also lower in Glasgow than across most of the rest of country.
Across Scotland, 38 constituencies recorded turnouts of over 70%, with 13 of these over 75% and 2 over 80%. [These two were East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire - where there were galvanised fights to the death with determined tactical voting by all other pro-union parties, and where, in spite of that, Liberal Democrat Government Minister, Jo Swinson and Scottish Labour Leader, Jim Murphy, respectively lost their seats.]
The turnouts at the seven Glasgow seats ranged from 55.4% in Glasgow Central to 65.9% in Glasgow South, the only one at or over 65%. [In Edinburgh, every seat had turnouts of over 70%, except Edinburgh East at 65%.]
So there are new votes to be had in Glasgow, new galvanics to get going. If Labour can do this, it can reclaim Glasgow.
The party will have a harder time in the rest of the Central Belt seats where all six SNP majorities with votes of over 30,000 were recorded: East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow; Falkirk; Linlithgow and Falkirk; Livingtone; Rutherglen and Hamilton West; and West Dunbartonshire.
Like the Liberal Democrats, Labour will take at least a decade to be back at competitive capability; and there will be a nasty internal war fought in the old archaeological trenches before the survivors strike out for different ground altogether.
In 27 seats across Scotland, the first two places simply changed from Labour to SNP – so the SNP was already in the position of chief challenger – although in many of these seats the distances it still had to cover to win were daunting. In 37 seats overall, Labour took second place.
The trouble for Labour and for the pro-union half of Scotland, is whether the SNP strikes for indyref 2 [as is probable] before the crushed Labour and Liberal Democrat parties regenerate, if they can.
The Conservative position
The other success in the General Election was that of the Scottish Conservatives. It has remained unconfigured because, as the smallest party, its success was at the other end of the scale from the sweeping victory of the mighty SNP.
But it was a marked success of a very positive kind for the party, signalling a role it is ready to claim and in which it will play a very necessary reasoned balancing role in Scottish politics from now on.
In 35 seats, the Scottish Conservatives improved their vote. In 14 of these they also improved their share of the vote. One of these, Moray, seat of SNP Westminster Group Leader, Angus Robertson saw the party record its highest rise in vote share of the election, +9.8%.
In 12 other seats their vote was down through clear tactical voting where some Conservatives were using their intelligence and putting their votes behind the protection of the Union.
In the remaining seats their lost vote share was typically around -1.5%.
In 33 seats they came third, replacing the Liberal Democrats in many of these;. and in 9 seats they came second.
The Conservatives kept their one MP with an increased vote and vote share – and with tactical voting from the Liberal Democrats and some from Labour, offering clear assistance.
The party’s vote held up strongly across the country and grew to a position it can clearly build upon to grow again, as it will need to do to offer the opposition Scotland must have; and which no other party will be able to provide in the near to medium term.
Under its new Scottish Leader, Ruth Davidson, who has steadily presented a party with an informed responsible position, engaged with key issues, open-faced and straight speaking, the Conservatives are capable of gaining much wider respect and trust – all very necessary attributes in politics anywhere.
This has been a modest victory at the other end of the main political spectrum – but it may prove to be an enduring and significant signal of regeneration.
The Liberal Democrat position
The Liberal Democrats are almost unarguably finished in Scotland for at least a decade; and may well re-emerge at some point under the renewal of their original identity as Liberals.
They were already diminished in the capacity to campaign through their all-but-obliteration in the Scottish Parliamentary Election of 2011. This saw them left with five seats, scattered like erratics up the full length of Scotland from the Borders to the Northern Isles. Only two of these [Orkney and Shetland - on the northern extremity] were constituency seats; with the other three gained from the Regional List vote.
In this election they lost ten of their eleven seats – and the remaining one is all but certain not to survive the next General Election – if Scotland remains a participant in that electon, which is itself now unlikely.
Orkney and Shetland, the long time redoubt of liberalism in Scotland, held this time by the skin of his teeth by the then Scottish Secretary, Alastair Carmichael, is not what it was.
For Argyll has had communications and information from troubled Orcadian Liberals since election night. The story is that Shetland voted SNP and it was only the greater weight of the Liberal Democrat majority in Orkney that produced the overall Lib Dem majority – reduced to 817.
This will see Shetland an SNP gain in the 2016 Scottish Election, where each is a separate constituency; and, if Scotland remains in the Union, the Orkney and Shetland Westminster seat is likely to be an SNP gain in the 2020 UK General Election. All it will take will be a modest number of additional SNP recruits in Shetland and some more in Orkney to reduce the height of the bastion.
Last Thursday night saw the Lib Dems predated by all other parties in Scotland in what reads like a feeding frenzy. Of course the SNP quartered them and drew their vital organs – but Labour, the Conservatives, UKIP and the Scottish Greens were all at the party in seats across the country.
In 27 seats the Lib Dems fell from 4th place to 5th or 6th place, behind one or other or both of UKIP and the Scottish Greens. They also had a further 13 4th places, leaving them clearly amongst the bottom feeders.
The situation following these successive demolitions – one for Holyrood and one for Westminster – leaves it very hard to see where recovery can come from for the Lib Dems. How can they maintain any viable party organisation on the ground when they have virtually no elected representation? And without that network of local organisations, how can they hope to campaign successfully?
Of all of the political voices, that of the liberals is the most important to Scotland right now.
Scotland sees an authoritarian, centralist one-party-state now all but in place. 2016 will see that point achieved. The voice that must be heard is the voice arguing for reasoned limits to the role of the state and for the retention of as much individual freedom as is consistent with respecting the greater needs of society.
That voice is a liberal voice.
The tragedy of the Liberal Democrats and of Scotland is that the party of liberalism lost sight of what liberalism was – and left its audience unaware of it.
Tactical voting
On the votes as recorded, there were 22 constituencies across Scotland where the SNP vote was in the 30% and mostly the 40%s, where organised tactical pro-union voting might have made a difference – but that was never going to happen to the necessary degree.
Tactical voting did support to victory two of the three non-SNP seats in Scotland – in Edinburgh South where Labour’s Ian Murray held his seat; and in Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale where the Conservatives’ single Scottish MP, David Mundell, held his.
Beyond that, there was evidence of tactical voting in several seats – often those with high profile pro-union candidates – but it was not enough to prevail; nor in many cases, given the SNP vote of 50% and over, would any change have been possible.
Given that both the Liberal Democrats and Labour suffered rout after rout, it was generally hard to identify reliably what if any tactical voting was going on in those camps – and particularly with Labour. In most cases, with each of these parties fighting for survival, tactical voting would have been unlikely.
Since the Conservative vote held up well right across Scotland, uncharacteristic falls in the Conservative vote was a reliable indicator of tactical voting from that quarter. On the evidence, the Conservatives seem to have been the most public spirited and the most intelligent in the tactical voting in which a percentage of their voters engaged.
Argyll and Bute
Finishing this account back home in Argyll and Bute, the sitting MP, the Liberal Democrat’s Alan Reid, actually increased his vote but lost vote share [-3.7%] against a turnout increased by 8% [6.596 votes] to 75.3%, one of the highest in Scotland. This will have contributed substantially to the SNP’s 14,396 increase of vote in this constituency.
If you subtract from that 14,396 the increased turnout of 6,596 -almost all of which will have been for the SNP – you get an actual vote growth on the 2010 election of 7,800. If you add that to the vote achieved by Alan Reid in 2015 – 14,486 – you get 22,226, shy by 733 of the SNP’s actual vote of 22,959 last Thursday
That picture provides the basis for insights into the tactical voting. carried out by Conservative and some Labour voters here – and into the predation by the SNP on the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties in Argyll and Bute.
Alan Reid may have lost but in these circumstances he has a great deal to be proud of in the support he was given – and earned from his record of genuinely dedicated service to this constituency.
