The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


McGoldilocks and the three McBears

Posted on December 02, 2011 by

In the wake of a duller-than-usual First Minister's Questions, most of the press today is covering the report released by the Electoral Commission detailing the various parties' spending in the 2011 Holyrood election. The headline soundbite is that the SNP's expenditure was, in the words of The Scotsman, "close to the combined total of the three other largest parties", at £1.14m compared to £1.27m for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories together.

Predictably enough, Labour seize the opportunity to complain about large donations, with MSP Drew Smith pouting that "the SNP is addicted to big money, reliant on huge donations from a small number of wealthy individuals", in the light of the SNP having received two such large sums in recent months from the will of the former Makar Edwin Morgan and lottery winners Chris and Colin Weir.

We're not aware of Mr Smith having raised any such objections when, for example, Lord Sainsbury donated £2.5m to Labour in 2003 – eclipsing the SNP's two big donations put together – but we'll gladly publish any corrections should he have done so. We're also not sure that Mr Smith's party will enthusiastically welcome his objections to large donations from wealthy individuals, as a cap on such contributions (currently being proposed by the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life) would have slashed Labour's income by 72% over the last five and a half years.

Most of the coverage today notes the growing financial health of the SNP compared to the other parties relative only to the situation in the 2007 Holyrood election, with its spending rising while that of the Unionist parties declines. What we found curious, though, was that none of the papers took the trouble to also make what would seem to be the most obvious comparison in a recent Scottish context – the parties' expenditures in 2011 compared to the 2010 UK General Election.

We had a little dig around on the Electoral Commission's website, and turned up its 2010 report, whose figures reveal some moderately interesting things.

The EC report contains a figure for the SNP's spending in 2010, which was £316,000. (Unhelpfully it doesn't list the other parties' Scotland-specific expenditure, just their UK totals and the overall total for Scotland, which was £3.09m.) At barely over a quarter of what the party spent on the Holyrood election, the sum throws the SNP's priorities into sharp focus. As we've previously noted on this blog, standing in Westminster elections is basically just an inconvenient distraction for the Nationalists, something undertaken more for show than practical purpose.

With the SNP's expenditure making up just over 10% of all-party 2010 spending in Scotland, it also shows that the others have plenty of cash when they need it – they just prioritise the UK Parliament massively over the Scottish one.

A quick burst of Googling revealed the precise magnitude of that priority. In 2010 the Conservatives spent a whopping £1.27m in Scotland – almost exactly £1 million more than for the Holyrood election – in order to win themselves precisely one seat. (Which means their MSPs cost a bargain £18,200 each whereas poor lonely David Mundell cost almost 70 times that much to send to Westminster. See table below for more.)

Labour, meanwhile, found £0.97m in the coffers – £160,000 more than for Holyrood – to secure its large Westminster block, and the Lib Dems burnt through £0.47m, more than two and a half times what they spent on the Scottish Parliament, but got more than twice as many MPs as a result.

(If you apply the 9.8% recorded by the EC report as the Scottish percentage to the various parties' UK expenditure, you find that the Tories actually "underspent" on Scotland by around £360,000 – 9.8% of their UK spend would have been £1.63m rather than £1.27m. Labour proportionally overspent by just under £200,000 and the Lib Dems spent exactly the "right" amount, devoting exactly 9.8% of their UK expenditure to Scottish seats. They are the Unionist "baby bears".)

What we've learned, then, is that the Scottish Parliament is of vastly more importance to the SNP than the Westminster one, of slightly more/less importance to Scottish Labour (depending on how you measure it), of equal importance to the Lib Dems and significantly less importance to the Tories. We could probably have predicted as much without too much trouble, especially Labour not knowing what they thought. But it's odd that the Scottish mainstream media doesn't consider this fact worthy of a single mention when discussing the SNP's economic bludgeoning of its opponents.

The Nationalists did indeed expend a lot more money than everyone else in 2011 to secure their history-making majority (although at cost per head their MSPs were the best value for money). But only because the other parties chose to effectively surrender Holyrood to them in favour of Westminster, not through any unfair imbalance in overall funding. Nevertheless, we should probably expect the issue of the big bad SNP's financial bullying to suddenly become a lot more prominent in Scotland's almost-uniformly Unionist media in the coming years.

 

COST PER MSP ELECTED

SNP: £16,500

Conservatives: £18,200

Labour: £22,100

Lib Dem: £35,300

Green: £66,000

 

COST PER SCOTTISH MP ELECTED

Labour: £23,600

Lib Dem: £42,800

SNP: £52,667

Conservative: £1,273,000

2 to “McGoldilocks and the three McBears”

  1. peter says:

    i think the voters a usually intrerested in who donated as opposed to how much

    Reply
  2. Rev. Stuart Campbell says:

    I don't think the voters much care, to be honest. They're bothered about policies, not bank balances.

    Reply


Comment - please read this page for comment rules. HTML tags like <i> and <b> are permitted. Use paragraph breaks in long comments. DO NOT SIGN YOUR COMMENTS, either with a name or a slogan. If your comment does not appear immediately, DO NOT REPOST IT. Ignore these rules and I WILL KILL YOU WITH HAMMERS.


  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,787 Posts, 1,222,037 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “TBQH Sarah I would disregard ANYTHING that Bastard Tax MOAN and his wee Scotland Hating sidekicks like Aydun Corporal Batshit…Jul 16, 01:58
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “@ Northcode: “mirkie watter”. I like it, Northcode. Your knowledge of poetic forms puts me to shame.Jul 15, 22:58
    • sam on According As We Need Them: “https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52524-europeans-would-welcome-an-independent-scotland-into-the-eu “That Scotland may vote in a second independence referendum to leave the UK cannot be discounted, and Scottish nationalists…Jul 15, 21:43
    • sam on According As We Need Them: “The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a United Nations treaty that the UK has ratified (meaning…Jul 15, 21:38
    • Northcode on According As We Need Them: “Thanks, James. Here’s another: mirkie watter Rever stanes smuithed roond; shaped by watter no thair ain; drouned in silence, worn…Jul 15, 19:17
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Thanks for the info, Aidan. On the face of it then, it sounds like just another ruse by which the…Jul 15, 19:11
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Fair enough, sarah, I stand corrected. How about a link so we can all see what it’s about?Jul 15, 18:58
    • Captain Caveman on According As We Need Them: “@TwatByName You know what they say, “there’s no fool like an old fool”. Silly old sod. Take up bowls or…Jul 15, 18:56
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Sure, TH. I have little doubt that the humous boys will be hunted down to the ends of the earth…Jul 15, 18:54
    • Aidan on According As We Need Them: “I’ll save you the trouble, it’s another cunning plan which says that if the Scottish Government implemented the ICCPR, because…Jul 15, 18:34
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: ““clearly a good thing because Angus R…oppose it.” This is an example of humour.Jul 15, 18:32
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Guid Gowd, sarah, but you’re a dunderheid. Things are intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. Their goodness or otherwise is not…Jul 15, 18:17
    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “Ewen used to be a regular contributor BTL on Yours For Scotland and was asked by Iain Lawson to do…Jul 15, 18:16
    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “There’s Chas focusing his inner franchise fanny and CLAIMING that he knows what the MAJORITY of visitors to WOS are…Jul 15, 18:10
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Writing of drunk arses …Jul 15, 18:08
    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “The problem wi that is the humous boys have probably witnessed what is currently being done to innocent women and…Jul 15, 18:03
    • twathater on According As We Need Them: “And as if any proof were required about the relationship of yoons and lunacy, immediately up pops Bastard Tax MOAN…Jul 15, 17:50
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Ah come oan noo, sarah. We need to all focus on supporting the good news you report above to a…Jul 15, 17:50
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “O/T Ewen Kennedy [retired lawyer and an independence supporter] has made a submission to Holyrood’s petitions committee in support of…Jul 15, 17:45
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “There is much truth in what you write here, James. A phrase I read a little while back sticks with…Jul 15, 17:38
    • James Cheyne on According As We Need Them: “Sven. Indeed it appears that Labour are finishing and finalising what the Tories Started, with considerable help from the greens…Jul 15, 17:27
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “Seriously, Alf? You’re now getting info from the scatological ravings of Confused? ‘as the saying goes : “a drunk arse…Jul 15, 17:26
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “Rev, have you a proposal for the campaign over the next 9 months? It would be useful to hear which…Jul 15, 17:22
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “That is good news, sarah. I expect they’ll agree a stern resolution calling for the humous boys to come out…Jul 15, 17:14
    • Hatey McHateface on According As We Need Them: “@DaveL says: 15 July, 2025 at 2:20 am “Can you explain why or how?” I think you’re new here, Dave.…Jul 15, 17:09
    • Chas on According As We Need Them: “Congratulations Sven. You must be one of the very few people who actually read any of the repetive gibberish produced…Jul 15, 16:30
    • Sven on According As We Need Them: “James Cheyne @15.29. Dear Lord, “James”, how I wish I wasn’t in complete agreement with so many of those points.Jul 15, 15:55
    • James Cheyne on According As We Need Them: “The social engineering experiments on the populations is an ideology effecting all governances from enforced migrations across borders being encouraged…Jul 15, 15:29
    • Captain Caveman on According As We Need Them: “‘… hence also that “the moon is made of cheese” (Cesaire)’ I’m sorry, but you just have to laugh, right?…Jul 15, 15:21
    • sarah on According As We Need Them: “O/T Good news today – Republic of Ireland, Spain, China, Brazil, South Africa and 15 other countries are meeting today…Jul 15, 15:19
  • A tall tale



↑ Top