Did the SNP choose Labour’s new leader?
So the new leader of Scottish Labour (or as some would have it, the first true leader of "Scottish Labour") is Johann Lamont, with Anas Sarwar as her deputy. The result came as no surprise to those of us who 12 hours earlier had spotted Henry McLeish giving the game away in the Scotsman by saying "the new leader should not put all her political eggs in one basket", but the nature of the result is the intriguing thing.
Lamont actually lost the popular vote within the Labour membership to Ken McIntosh. She won by securing a far greater share of the trade-union section of Labour's electoral college, taking 21% to McIntosh's 8%, in order to win the overall race by 52% to 40% (with dear old Tom Harris trailing in last with an embarrassing 8%). Why is that intriguing? Because the trade union vote isn't restricted to Labour members, voters or supporters. Anyone who's in a trade union, even if they're members of the SNP (or the Tories or the Lib Dems or anyone else) could vote in the leadership election.
The bare electoral arithmetic suggests that SNP voters make up a very large chunk of trade union membership, quite possibly even a majority. Could it be that they all voted for Lamont (knowing Harris couldn't win) as a deliberate act of sabotage against Labour? We'll never know. But it's interesting to think about, isn't it?
You raise an initial interesting question, but the answer to your final question is that few SNP people would contemplate such an approach – it's just not our style. Anyway, it would have been bad tactics – better to have voted for the Blairite Westminster Iraq bomber, Tom Harris MP as a spoiler.
I note in one of your tweets you make the even more fundamental point that she is the Labour leader who will fight against Scotland's independence in the referendum campaign. Now the key question is – will Scottish Labour publish the full breakdown of the vote, and multiple counting possibilities?
As I’ve subsequently edited the piece to say, any potential sabotage vote would I think have to take account of the fact that Harris had no chance of winning.