Ruth Wishart: Tactical voting can’t hide Unionist drubbing

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of ­Scotland will remain so. Ditto Mark ­Drakeford in Wales. So beloved is Boris Johnson in Scotland that he took very great care not to venture north of Berwick.

It’s not just the Labour Party in ­England which is scratching its collective head over why people desperately in need of an ­equitable future would plight their troth to a third rate administration led by a man who wouldn’t give truth the time of day in stuck lift.

A man whose indecision has been final throughout the pandemic; whose strategic vision rarely rises above the latest three word soundbite: Get Brexit Done, Build Back Better. (With doubtless an upcoming Keep Britain Great.) Trite slogans are a poor substitute for intellectual rigour, nor is an ability to sprinkle the odd Latin phrase into speeches evidence of any fingerhold on contemporary realities.

Johnson rushed into print yesterday for his former paymasters and Tory crib sheet, AKA the Daily Telegraph, assuring readers that the “gent” was not for turning. He was just a boy couldn’t say yes to a second independence referendum. Not now. Now is not the time. Truth to tell the 12th of never would be way too soon. He affects not to notice that Ms Sturgeon agrees any referendum would require to be post pandemic. Where they part company is who should be in charge of the subsequent recovery from the inevitable economic carnage.

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The tartan Tory troops stayed well on their solitary message – No To Indyref2, the gift that keeps on giving them a dizzie from the voters. Were it not for the devolution settlement they once opposed with equal fervour, they’d be lucky to fill a taxi to get them to Holyrood.

So confident were they of gaining any constituency seats, they only asked their supporters to vote Conservative on the list. And kept flagging up the colour of the ­voting sheet in question for the particularly hard of thinking. At least that was the over the counter offer – below stairs was a ­message reprised round all the Labour/SNP

LibDem/SNP marginals; put party ­loyalty on hold, chaps, just vote for ­whoever can ditch “the separatists”.

Take the seat where I am a registered voter. Jackie Baillie has represented ­Dumbarton since the beginning of ­devolutionary time. Her majority pre Thursday was on the anorexic side of slim. In the event, although the SNP vote rose, Jackie’s went up by 6% and the ­Tories went down by precisely the same percentage. I long since gave up believing in coincidences. Her leaflets even contained endorsements from Conservatives – not, of course, that they were so described.

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Evidence of that tactical voting was widely available, not least in North East Fife where those of a blue persuasion ­dutifully placed their cross against the name of Willie Rennie, the man who has made a campaigning career out of photo opportunities. Voting to ensure the success of someone not of your preferred party is a perfectly legal option of course. It’s just that I would require an NHS ­lobotomy to vote Conservative, and I gather the surgical waiting lists aren’t ­getting any shorter.

Incidentally, “gorgeous” George Galloway used to say something very similar. Wonder whatever happened to him. (Not really!)

Amongst the Nationalist failures to gain a seat, I mourn the loss of Joan ­McAlpine in Dumfries, a doughty ­fighter for ­women’s rights and much else. Her high profile support for the proposition that while gender can be a fluid as individual preferences dictate, sex is binary, inevitably found her described as transphobic; the current kneejerk response to anyone who dares to raise the possible dangers of self identification.

Long-serving MSP Joan McAlpine has lost her seat

Normally she might have expected to get in as number one on the SNP list in South Scotland, but instead she was bumped to second place by neighbouring nationalist Emma Harper, who has a disability status and is therefore entitled to top spot.

The SNP’s NEC works in what we might charitably call mysterious ways.

Joan’s fate, and for that matter, the feisty Jo Cherry being bumped from the Westminster front bench despite her ­invaluable legal skillset, are classic examples of what my dear departed momma would have cried, “cutting off your nose to spite your face”.

Politics needs strong female voices, however much they may get up the odd male nose. Or even the ­nasal channels of some in the sisterhood.

Perversity was also the hallmark of what the Greens did to the redoubtable Andy Wightman when they backed him into one voting corner too many. As these thoughts required to be put to bed before all the list winners were revealed, I know not whether Mr Wightman has bucked the odds which bedevil any independent contender. Then again, there are independents, and independents. How irritating to win or lose by a few hundred votes which were scooped up by individuals with nothing much to offer outside of a rampant ego.

Andy Wightman went into the election as an Independent candidate

But today, if you know what I mean, is all about tomorrow. The idea that a government run by an administration not wanted on tour in Scotland for 70 years should exercise a veto over Scottish aspirations and votes is the very definition of a democratic deficit. No verb causes more steam to emanate from my ears than “allow”. As in “Boris Johnson has reiterated that he will not allow Scotland to have a second independence referendum”. Butt out, Boris. Scotland has had its fill of old Etonians and the carnage they wreak.

Like an unnecessary Brexit poll ­casually put in place by your erstwhile Yooni pal Dave Cameron to buy off the swivel eyed section of your party. That went well. And how dare you talk about not having the ­division and distress of ­another ­referendum when you finally, years later, “got Brexit done” in the very teeth of a pandemic; done so hastily and clumsily that you were prepared to risk peace in Northern Ireland whilst giving the Scottish fishing and sea food industries a near death experience.

Away and work! You’ll find it a bit of a novelty.

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It’s said that Johnson may choose to differentiate between the legitimacy of a clear SNP majority in Holyrood, and a parliamentary one bolstered by the Greens. It’s certainly one of the straws at which he’s likely to grasp.

Yet here’s the thing; accepted wisdom has it that the Holyrood voting system was devised to ensure the Nationalists could never win 65 seats on their own. (Though they did in 2011).

It’s true those who worked on the template would have shed no tears if it stopped the Nationalists winning. Yet the corollary of that is that it also stopped any other party for the same reason.

When the first administration was formed, despite Labour then enjoying the electoral supremacy the SNP has now, it could only go into government in ­coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Labour, as we know, ­subsequently ­imploded thanks to a mixture of ­complacency and failure to ­recognise the pro indy sentiment in its own ranks. The SNP has to learn that lesson. ­Complacency is a fatal political disease.

The new government needs to ­recognise and acknowledge all the talent in its ranks, broaden the base of policy making beyond a favoured few, and remember too that Alba only came along because, long before the pandemic hit us, many natural supporters found the pace of progress to independence frustratingly glacial.