There is a chance pro-Union voters in Scotland are about to shoot themselves in the foot, but every time I try to pry the gun away I’m met with outrage and incredulity. The source of the consternation is All for Unity (previously known as Alliance for Unity), or rather my insistence on pointing out some facts they would rather I didn’t. AfU is standing on the regional list in May’s Holyrood elections, hoping to capture the hardcore anti-SNP vote and those frustrated with the mainstream pro-Union parties.
AfU urges Unionists to vote tactically to send a group of anti-independence MSPs to Holyrood. I have pointed out the flaws in this proposition a couple of times now. My problem with AfU is simple: what it says isn’t true. It encourages voters unfamiliar with the electoral system to believe they can vote ‘tactically’ on the regional list. I am in favour of tactical voting in close seats like Dumbarton (vote Labour), North East Fife (vote Lib Dem) and Galloway and West Dumfries (vote Tory) because those are elected under first past the post and that is when tactical voting is most effective. Others would object that the effectiveness of tactical voting in constituencies is offset by the list, which calculates seats by dividing votes received by constituencies won in each region, plus one. However, there is little dispute on this point: it is all but impossible to manipulate the list vote because its purpose is to increase overall proportionality.
ListVoteSense, a pro-independence blog challenging the claims of AfU’s nationalist analogues, cautions: ‘Unless someone can show you actual modelled outcomes to prove their assertions about list “tactical voting”, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. But they won’t because they can’t.’ While it is aimed at SNP voters flirting with Action for Independence and the Independence for Scotland party, I recommend ListVoteSense’s blogging to pro-Union voters similarly tempted. (D’Hondt geekery: bridging Scotland’s constitutional divide.)
A vote for any other party will either be wasted or, worse, could split the pro-Union
Another snag in the AfU narrative is the fact this alliance isn’t allied with anyone. The three mainstream pro-Union parties — Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats — are not involved in it. AfU may try to spin this as evidence of hidebound tribalism or shabby self-interest, but the explanation is more straightforward: established parties, even mid-ranking ones, do not stand down to make way for raging neophytes.
It’s like subbing out a reliable League One striker in favour of a bloke from the stand who is graphically describing what the referee ought to do with himself. Playing to the crowd may satisfy some diehards but it does not win the match. Many who vote for the pro-Union parties don’t do so with the Union as their chief priority. Were these parties to stand aside for AfU, indeed even if they endorsed it lustily, the result would more likely than not be a collapse in the ‘pro-Union’ vote.
There have been a lot of tall claims made about the regional list. Voters have been told that ‘tactical voting unites the anti-SNP vote’; that ‘the SNP have only been able to form governments in the last 14 years because the opposition vote, while bigger, is split between a number of parties’; that ‘the best way of maximising list votes and list seats against the SNP is to vote for All for Unity’. That is not how the additional member system works. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is at it.
‘Tactical voting’ on the list will further split the anti-SNP vote, not unite it. In 2016, the SNP won only four of its 63 seats from the regional lists. How would an Alliance for Unity have stopped them forming a government when their constituency seats plus the six Greens comprised an overall majority? The objective isn’t to divvy up pro-Union votes between established and newcomer parties. The objective is to convince voters who aren’t pro-Union (or who don’t prioritise the constitution) to vote for parties that are.
The electoral system works against fringe parties like AfU in other ways. Although Holyrood doesn’t have a fixed threshold (such as the 3.25 per cent required to enter Israel’s Knesset), there is an effective threshold of around 5 per cent. (Again, acknowledgement is due to ListVoteSense.) On the face of it, 5 per cent doesn’t sound all that insurmountable. That is until you look at how minor parties have fared in the past. In 2016, none of them managed 5 per cent on any of the regional lists. In fact, if you added together every vote for every minor party (and every independent) across Scotland in 2016, it would still amount to less than 5 per cent nationwide.
So for AfU to get any seats, you have to believe that a new, tiny party, without any of the resources of the main parties, unable to do any in-person campaigning in the last year, with almost no media coverage, no platform beyond a Twitter account, and which is currently polling at 2 per cent, will do better than every minor party that stood on the list last time combined, yet to do so in a way that doesn’t cause mainstream pro-Union parties to lose seats to nationalists. If AfU have that kind of mojo, they don’t belong in Holyrood, they belong in Hogwarts.
The immediate electoral goal for supporters of the Union is to maintain (or, ideally, increase) the number of pro-Union MSPs. This can only be done by voting for the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour or the Scottish Liberal Democrats on the regional list. A vote for any other party will either be wasted or, worse, could split the pro-Union vote in such a way that more nationalists are elected. Three list results from 2016 are instructive. In Glasgow, the nationalist Greens came within 6,000 votes of the Tories; in Highlands and Islands, they were 8,000 behind Labour; while in North East Scotland they were just 3,000 below the Lib Dems. Senior SNP figures are reportedly talking about a formal coalition with the Greens if the two parties hold a majority of seats between them after May. Is there a Unionist in the land who wants to be responsible for bringing the phrase ‘Deputy First Minister Patrick Harvie’ into existence?
The idea behind All for Unity seems to be that it’s better to have fewer pro-Union MSPs provided some among their number now shout a little louder. But parliaments are a matter of arithmetic, not volume. Fewer pro-Union MSPs means more pro-independence MSPs and more pro-independence MSPs makes it more likely that the SNP gets its own way for another five years. It won’t matter if their opponents are angrier. Anger doesn’t win parliamentary votes, numbers do. Anger, however, seems to be what distinguishes AfU, much more than Unionism or, indeed, political coherence. How else to explain the fact that a party which claims to be standing to oppose indyref2 has endorsed a candidate in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse who says indyref2 should be up to Holyrood, not Westminster?
Like the SNP, All for Unity doesn’t handle criticism well and lashes out at the critic instead of convincingly rebutting their criticism. Perhaps they feel I should be on their side. After all, I am not only a critic of nationalism but of the current devolution arrangements and have argued against a second referendum and for a new Act of Union. I am not on their side, however — in part because experience has taught me the wisdom of fleeing immediately from any side you begin to feel sympathy for, but more so because All for Unity are not a serious side. They are a vanity project, an exercise in cynicism and might even prove a boon, albeit a very minor one, to the cause of Scottish nationalism.
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