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Modified Rapture All Round: The First Elections to the Scottish Parliament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2017

William L. Miller
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Extract

AS ELECTION DAY APPROACHED IT SEEMED CERTAIN THAT LABOUR would come out on top and the Scottish National Party (SNP) would come second. Thanks to the new German-style electoral system it also seemed certain that Labour could not win an overall majority in the new Scottish Parliament and that the Conservatives would get some parliamentary representation however low their vote. But each of the parties had hopes and ambitions as well as expectations. Labour hoped to get over 60 seats in the new parliament of 129, enough at least to have the option of forming a minority government. The SNP hoped to get well over 40 seats, enough to let it assume the undisputed role of the opposition, and to mark a further step along the road to independence. The Liberal Democrats hoped to be more than a small but useful coalition partner in the new parliament. Out in the country they hoped the new electoral system would end the traditional handicap of a Liberal Democrat vote being dismissed as a ‘wasted vote’ and so let their votes rise to equal their underlying level of popular support. ‘Other’ parties and candidates hoped that the new electoral system and the new inclusive politics would somehow include them.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , July 1999 , pp. 299 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1999

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References

1 Modified rapture’ was the comment of Nanki‐Poo in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, when told by his intended bride that she was shortly to marry her guardian instead but that, on the other hand, she continued to love Nanki‐Poo and not her guardian.

2 Both the direct and indirect quotations of Canon Kenyon Wright’s remarks come from Cunningham, Jennifer, ‘Voices that will not be heard’, The Herald, 8 05 1999 , Election Results Supplement, p. 8 Google Scholar.

3 Sunday Times, 9 May 1999, p. 3.

4 Tories back Labour to save Union: McLetchie pledges party support if Dewar faces no‐confidence crisis’, Scotland on Sunday, 21 March 1999, Main headline on p. 1. See also the Scotsman, 22 March 1999 p. 4 and The Herald, 22 March 1999, p. 7.

5 The Jenkins Report. The Report of the Independent Commission on the Voting System, Cmnd. 4090–1, London, HMSO, 10 1998, p. 21 Google Scholar.

6 The Sunday Times Election Supplement, 9 May 1999, published figures that apparently showed an even more strikingly deviant pattern in the Highlands and Islands. They miscalculated, however, by averaging the constituency percentages rather than cumulating votes across constituencies. Usually this produces only minor discrepancies. But not in this case, because the constituency averages were unusually distorted by huge Liberal Democrat percentages in the Orkney and Shetland constituencies which had tiny electorates. Thus Jim Wallace won a massive percentage in Orkney based on surprisingly few votes.

7 Front page headline, Sunday Times Election Supplement, 9 05 1999 Google ScholarPubMed.

8 Centre page headline, Scotland on Sunday, 9 05 1999 , pp. 14–15 Google ScholarPubMed.

9 Scotsman, 8 May 1999, p. 11.

10 George Kerevan ‘Back to the drawing board for the Nationalists’, Scotsman, 10 May 1999, p. 9.

11 Scotsman, 11 May 1999, p. 4.

12 Brown, Gordon and Alexander, Douglas, ‘Overwhelming rejection of nationalist vision’, Scotsman, 8 05 1999 , p. 2 Google Scholar.

13 See Miller, William L., Timpson, Annis May and Lessnoff, Michael, Political Culture in Contemporary Britain: People and Politicians, Principles and Practice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, especially at p. 438 and pp. 366–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Brown, Alice, McCrone, David and Paterson, Lindsay, Politics and Society in Scotland, 2nd edn., London, Macmillan, 1998 at p. 170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Brown, McCrone and Paterson, , p. 209 Google Scholar. See also Miller, William L. The Periphery and its Paradoxes’, West European Politics, 21:1 (01 1998), pp. 167–96 at p. 193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Bennie, Lynn, Brand, Jack and Mitchell, James, How Scotland Votes, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997, p. 140 Google Scholar.

16 Kerevan, George, ‘Milosevic’s Nationalism is not Ours’, Scotsman, 5 04 1999, p. 15.Google Scholar