Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off
The last faint hope of any remotely positive or at least interesting outcome of May’s election just left the building.
It wasn’t MUCH of a hope, and it’s absolutely no surprise in the wake of the comically shambolic, belief-defyingly inept farce that has been the birth of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s fringe-of-the fringe Your Party, but all the same its extinguishing means the next two months will be even more of a waste of time than they looked like being.
Frankly, readers, we may as well not bother having an election at all.
Firstly because it’d save a fortune. A whopping 40 MSPs are standing down at the election, and they’ll all be eligible for redundancy payments (called “resettlement grants”), and some will also be eligible for additional payments for standing down as ministers or officeholders – we reckon Alison Johnstone, the current Presiding Officer, will score the biggest payday, picking up a tidy £105,706.
Most will trouser the maximum (£77,710), and the total will be in the region of £2.65 million. That’s a heck of a wedge for hard-pressed taxpayers to be laying out just because people have voluntarily decided they don’t want their jobs any more. (It’s not like we’re SAVING anything from their redundancies, because their roles will be taken over by new gravy-seekers.)
But it’s small beer compared to the overall cost of the election, which will be in the region of £50 million. The 2026-27 budget allots £37m for the election specifically, but there are various other costs and contingencies that come on top.
So what will we get for this £53m? Well, more of the same. While there’s actually a fairly wide range of possible arithmetical outcomes, they all amount to the same thing. There is zero doubt that the SNP will form the “new” government, and zero prospect of them doing anything differently.
The best-case scenario for the SNP (though it’d actually be a nightmare) is probably around 66 seats, backed up with double-digit Greens. The absolute worst-case for them, if Unionists really get their tactical voting together – which they won’t – is maybe 45-50, which would still be double anyone else, and there’d be no credible way for anyone else to get enough support to form a government.
The Unionist parties will rearrange the deckchairs, swapping a bunch of Labour and Tory MSPs for Reform ones, but all will be equally irrelevant. Polling (which is all over the shop) suggests that Reform, Labour and even the Greens are in the running for second place, but who other than themselves actually cares? (There is no “official opposition” at Holyrood.)
Independence? Don’t make us laugh. Less than a quarter of SNP voters even think it’s a pressing issue, and no other party’s voters are interested in the constitution either. Everyone knows it’s a dead political duck and only political pundits and (during the campaign) candidates are forced for professional reasons to pretend otherwise.
A “pro-independence” majority now looks all but a certainty with the collapse of Your Party Scotland, and an SNP-alone majority is a possibility, but neither outcome would be any different to a minority and more to the point, everyone knows it. Whatever the result, the SNP will bleat pitifully at Keir Starmer for another referendum, Starmer will tell them to sod off, and they’ll scuttle away happily to bag another five years’ wages.
So why are we bothering with six more weeks of wretched, transparent pretence that anything about this election matters? Nothing will change except the names on the paycheques. We’d be as well just carrying on as we are, and if anyone wants to stand down we’ll just have a by-election. The only real losers would be Reform, but pretty much everyone seems to hate them anyway (including, irrationally, SNP voters) so there wouldn’t be much of a protest.
Of course, we’d still be left with a useless government almost nobody likes. Barely half of SNP voters think the party’s record has been even fairly good in anything but the vague, unmeasurable “standing up for Scotland”.
And almost six in ten of them are unwilling to even say John Swinney is “honest”, let alone have faith in him to turn the country around.
But they understandably don’t think any of the other halfwits applying for his job are any better. Hilariously, the least unpopular political leader in Scotland is the Lib Dem UK leader Ed Davey, who gets a negative approval rating of only -9, mainly because 57% of Scots can’t be bothered to have an opinion of him at all.
(Swinney gets -17 in seventh place, just below Russell Findlay and Malcolm Offord on -16 each, and Anas Sarwar gets a brutal -31, although he’ll be pleased to be only seven points behind Nicola Sturgeon. Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer tie for last on -52, so it’s not looking good Prime Minister-wise for the UK for the next nine years. Poor old Humza Yousaf, meanwhile, doesn’t even get a look-in.)
Last night STV called this “the scunnered election”, but we think a better word is “accursed”, because like COVID-19 it’s a plague nobody wants but that we’re all going to have to grit our teeth and endure anyway, at enormous cost to the public purse, to gain nothing.
The Six Nations is over and the World Cup isn’t until June. If you’ve been thinking of taking a lengthy holiday somewhere with no internet access, readers, there’s never been a better time than now.
Well, this poll proves, yet again, that pollsters ask people who have no idea of what is really going on in politics.
I think, Rev, that you are mistaken in saying that 10% of poll answers will support anything e.g. eating people. That looks to be a conservative estimate.
“Standing up for Scotland”? The pollsters must have asked only current SNP and Green MSPs to get over 75% agreeing. They haven’t stood up except to bow to some billionaire or other as they hand over OUR assets.
I’m afraid that hope is fading on the election bringing in better people into Holyrood. A plague on all their houses is my earnest prayer.
The wages of colonialism.
Alright everybody. The electron’s here. Beautiful Scotland. Great people. Run by lunatics and morons. Ok. Everybody knows this. You have an undertaker as a First Minister. Unbelievable. Your country is a disaster. You’ve been led by the Alphabet people. Very low IQ people. How will that work out. Not good. Very sad.
Baby Trump.
This was always on the cards- after Craig Murrays’s (latest) defection.
Lets call the whole thing off is a good idea,
This is meant to be a Scottish election, not parties registered from down south, sucking finances oout of Scotlands people pockets.
Colonialism in the devolved parliament sent to Scotland under Englands Westminster parliament legislation.
And Scotland not in the treaty of union or in the Anglo Ireland agreement.
Colonialism is accurate in phrase legally. Lets call the joke off. And run a Scottish election from Scotland with Scottish parties registered from Scotland.
“So what will we get for this £53m?”
A cheap, and not very entertaining, second-rate circus laid on by Westminster to fool the Scots into believing they live in a democracy instead of a colony.
£53 million is a small beer bribe to keep the Scottish colony’s riches flowing unhampered southward to England only to be pissed away on nostalgic imperial grandstanding and whatever other ‘fancy new clothes’ England wants to pimp itself around the world wearing; flamboyantly spending Scotland’s wealth and calling that stolen wealth its own.
“Frankly, readers, we may as well not bother having an election at all.”
And the Scots may as well not bother turning up to vote in Westminster’s cheap-seats farcical circus clown show of democracy.
England will happily spend billions of Scotland’s money to maintain the illusion of a real and fair Union and an equal partnership and still make billions in profit out of the Scots while the Scots grow poorer and more desperate with each new Westminster-sponsored Scottish Parliamentary dancing clown and puppet show festival for fools.
New poll predicts a 18 Pro-Indy majority lead for May’s election, so what? The parliament has had a Pro-Indy majority before and nothing has come of it.
For me I’m not surprised at all about Your Party not running. So Westminster here we come and of course I’m talking about Your Party.
Indy supporters are going to have to look at the next Westminster election if they want Independence. If Your party got its act together and won the Westminster election even with the greens help to form a UK government in everything could change in the UK.
I feel sure Your Party will be up and running for the Westminster election because that’s where the money and power is and lets remember certain individuals want to be elected again.
If Craig Murray is correct about Your Party and the information we’ve heard from the Greens south of the border is correct about granting Scotland a new constitutional settlement on the question of Independence the SNP might have just signed there own death warrant on banking everything on Holyrood election.
The SNP have proven without a doubt that the party cannot deliver Independence and the party certainly cannot win a Westminster election and Your party isn’t going to help the SNP win the Westminster election when Your Party can offer what the SNP have admitted they cannot.
Lets be honest, all of us part from ManChild realized that if the SNP told its supporters to vote for the SNP 1 and ATLS 2 they’d have the majority they needed, but they didn’t, they told everyone to vote SNP 1 & 2 which isn’t going to work and the only person who believes that is ManChild. The SNP could have formed a new party calling it the SNP2 and told everyone that they needed to vote for SNP2 on the list, but they didn’t. There is so many ways the SNP could have won the election to John Swinney specifications but they didn’t and the leadership might just pay a hefty price in the Westminster election if other party’s In England stand by there guns On Scotland.
I’d say John Swinney couldn’t turn a car around never mind the Country. The man is so unappealing I wish someone would throw him a wig.
The de Hondt system is skewed to stop having a majority but essentially if enough folk wanted the SNP out they could.
The problem is that a majority of those who actually vote, vote for the SNP.
I think Craig Houston the You Tuber representing the SDP will be a surprise winner of a seat on the Glasgow list vote.