David Cameron seemed all but assured of another five years in power last night after his pro-austerity Queen's Speech was passed amid angry scenes in the Commons. The vote was carried by 296 votes to 71, with only the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and a handful of Labour rebels entering the opposition lobby in an attempt to kick the Tories out of office. Outgoing Labour leader Ed Miliband instructed his troops to sit on their hands, even though his party and the SNP would in combination have had easily enough votes to oust the Prime Minister.
Constitutional experts warned that Labour were now "caught in a trap of their own making". Having abstained on the pretext that the largest single party has a "moral right" to form the government, it will be nigh-on impossible for them to seek to bring the Tory administration down at any point over the coming five-year term. Mr Cameron will however be well short of a majority in parliament, meaning he will require help from Labour to implement his programme. With the Fixed Term Parliaments Act making an early election very unlikely, Labour know they will be severely punished by the electorate in Middle England if they create a US-style 'gridlock' scenario by failing to cooperate with the government.
Speculation mounted overnight that a leading Blairite will be lined up as Mr Miliband's successor, in order to smooth the path for the informal Tory-Labour alliance that now seems inevitable.
Immediately after the vote, former SNP leader Alex Salmond rose to his feet to denounce Labour's "final and deepest betrayal of the Scottish people". In an ironic echo of Neil Kinnock's attack on the Militant Tendency thirty years ago, Mr Salmond observed : "You end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour opposition - a Labour opposition - allowing their blind hatred of the SNP to lead them to install a slash-and-burn Tory Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street."
Westminster observers broadly agreed with Mr Salmond's contention that the only real bar to Labour voting against the Queen's Speech had been the party's unwillingness to work with the SNP. Although it was believed that Mr Miliband had been keen to explore the option of forming a minority Labour government after narrowly failing to take top spot at the general election, he found himself boxed in due to the "Nat-phobic" views of several Shadow Cabinet members and a significant chunk of the Labour parliamentary party.
One seasoned Scottish political commentator drew a parallel with the stigma suffered by the SNP after helping to bring down the Callaghan government in 1979. He suggested that the opprobrium that will now be heaped on Labour north of the border "could be a hundred times worse than that", because the SNP's actions in 1979 had merely brought a general election forward by a few weeks, whereas Labour have just needlessly put the Tories back in power until 2020.
A Scottish poll published this morning showed the early signs of a backlash, with 74% of respondents - including 53% of Labour voters - agreeing with the statement that "only the SNP were serious about getting the Tories out". Meanwhile, support for independence had crept up again to 54%.
James, the twitter feed of Jason Allardyce @SundayTimesSco referred to a Scottish poll being out today in his paper. I haven't seen any numbers for it yet. I guess this must be the poll that Scottish_Skier was referring to earlier in the week.
ReplyDeleteThere's some sort of BES "analysis" out. I think that's probably what he's referring to - it's quite a bit out of date. It looks like the poll Scottish Skier took part in was some sort of internal poll.
DeleteOkay. BES have at least written up the analysis on their own site. Gist is that the Labour 2010, voted yes, now say they will vote SNP vote appears to have hardened since September.
Deletehttp://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-impact/the-ongoing-independence-referendum-in-scotland-implications-for-7th-may-2015/#.VRek2OFinjQ
May well have been internal then. The questions didn't seem leading / anti any particular party, hence my impression it was for a paper like the Times.
DeleteSunday Times write-up (paywall)
Deletehttp://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/scotland/article1537780.ece
There is no way Miliband will give up the chance to be PM by refusing SNP support. Remember that those most opposed to an SNP/Labour agreement are Scortish Labour MPs. With a bit of luck there won't be many of them left anyway so what they think may become irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteYou may well be right, Donald.
DeleteBut in Scotland "The largest party forms the Government" has been the foundation of Labour's entire campaign. They've now repeated it via the MSM many hundreds of times, and probably hundreds of thousands of times on doorsteps. Could they really go back on that after the election? Has any party in any country ever pulled off as blatant a con job on the electorate as that, in which immediately after the vote they go back on their campaign's central message?
Why have they kept pushing that line so obsessively when it's been doing little good in the polls? Is it possible that our distrust of them is blinding us to what's right before our eyes: that Labour have been preparing us for their refusal to work with the SNP in any way, as James Kelly suggests above, and their willingness to give Cameron five more years?
Going back on the stuff they've been saying about the government always being formed by the biggest party would be a very minor problem. In the unlikely event they were ever actually asked about it, they would just give some waffle about how it's always been that way in the past, and that's all they were pointing out in the campaign. They wouldn't admit to having claimed that this was an inviolable constitutional rule, and they wouldn't be pressed to admit it.
DeleteThat's very possible. "You must have misunderstood us. We weren't necessarily talking about *this* election."
DeleteStill, I'm not sure we can discount Labour letting the Tories back in.
This was all discussed in detail yesterday on the Guardian threads and Bella's FB page and a number of people suggested this may be the only way for Labour to save their necks in England.
It's possible that some in that party are looking at the current Scottish polls and their ageing voter base and seen the writing on the wall. Scotland may now be gone for them, just as it is for the Tories. If so it's good for indy in several ways, not least because keeping their Scottish seats was obviously Labour's main motivation for supporting No.
It's also hard to think of a greater electoral con in history than "The largest party forms the Govt" being your central campaign message and then dropping it the minute the vote is in. You're right about the MSM, of course, but I'm not convinced the Scottish electorate would view that as a very minor problem. At the very least Labour would never be able to use that as a campaign slogan in any future election.
It's also interesting that Nicola is now pressing Labour to state categorically that they'd vote down a minority Tory Queen's Speech.
DeleteIf she and the SNP hierarchy keep pressing Labour on this and Labour quickly state they would indeed vote the Tories down, this will have been pretty poor tactics by the SNP. Do we believe they'd be that naive and hand Labour such an easy way to slap them down? Or do Nicola and co. know or suspect something that we don't, and are therefore confident in pressing Labour on this issue, because...?
I don't think it is poor tactics - quite the reverse. If Labour commit to voting the Tories down "quelquefois les circumstances" (to quote Jacques Chirac), it kills the "largest party" attack line stone dead. If, on the other hand, Labour don't commit to voting the Tories down, voters in Scotland will be invited to draw their own conclusions.
DeleteBut I don't think it is poor tactics. The SNP know it's a question that Labour simply cannot answer publicly -- as you suggest, Labour *cannot* answer Yes to this (or No) -- and SNP canvassers should ask voters to put this same question to any Labour candidate.
DeleteBut it's interesting that Nicola feels so confident pressing the Labour leadership on this in a way that she never has IIRC regarding a Labour-Tory coalition. The latter would have been a similarly nothing-to-lose question for the SNP hierarchy, but they never asked it, at least not in such a high-profile way.
It's been suggested that this was because they knew it was a non-starter. But if so, they clearly don't feel the same about Labour not voting down a Tory Queen's Speech. I'm not saying they won't vote it down btw, but it's intriguing that this weekend so many people have been discussing this as a distinct possibility.
What with his London tax for Scottish nurses and his "biggest party forms the government" line, I wonder if Murphy is deliberately trying to sabotage Miliband's chances in the election and forming a government after.
DeleteCan anyone help me with this? Seasoned and generally sensible commentator Ian Macwhirter of the Herald wrote a piece the other day saying the SNP would have nae power over a minority Labour government because it couldn't be seen to let the Tories in so would have to vote for everything Labour put forward. But surely this is wrong, thought I. The SNP can scupper Labour plans if it refuses to incorporate SNP demands by abstaining or voting against specific policies. Not by bringing down the government itself. That's where the SNP's power would lie. Now, I may be missing something. Is Macwhirter havering?
ReplyDeleteAye, it's wrong. SNP just need to abstain if they want. Or vote against.
DeleteThe power comes from offering votes. If the SNP were in a position to give Labour a majority, then by not voting with them due to a petulant Ed, then Ed couldn't get anything through. Government would cease to function.
However, at the same time, Cameron et al. would be unable to bring down Ed if the SNP supported Labour in a confidence motion. Likewise if the Tories tried to form government, SNP could just vote with Labour to block them.
Stalemate.
If the SNP do hold the balance of power, best thing for them to do is just go for a pint and await the phone call. If no phone call is forthcoming, it's because Ed has gone for a grand Lab-Tory coalition. Bye bye union.
Right, thanks for that. This is what I assumed, though I didn't quite understand the procedural detail as you do. Pretty weird that Macwhirter is writing such erroneous stuff. Hmph.
DeleteMacWhirter probably realises how the press will play such a scenario and crucify the SNP for doing anything other than slavishly support labour - however whether or not the public care what the press say is another point.
DeleteJames Coleman
DeleteMacWhirter is havering and I told him so on twitter when he was being silly about it. He was advertising his article in today's Herald where I understand he has reversed course.
Of course the SNP will have much power; by, as you say voting against different LAB policies which do not amount to a confidence vote. And by other mechanisms in the House of Commons. And always ensuring that LAB is blamed in Scotland for losing the vote. So LAB will be hamstrung for up to 5 years unless it plays ball with the SNP.
James Coleman
DeleteMcWhirter has been going off piste lately on a number of SNP matters. I've had a few disagreements with him recently on Twitter.
It appears to me that he basically disagrees with the hard attitude that the SNP is taking vav what it will and won't do at WM and he is not alone with that view amongst the media fraternity. And make no mistake they ARE a fraternity.
There is a flaw to all this though and that is that if the SNP disapproved of a Labour proposal, the Tories would probably be supportive of it and this is especially true on all the big-ticket items; austerity, trident, Smith, fracking.
DeleteThis is the trouble, outside of the queen's speech there are going to be precious few opportunities where Labour will need the SNP to implement its agenda precisely because they are so much further to the right.
There will be some things of course but they likely won't be issues that Labour would consider mission critical and so any concessions to be won on these votes will be commensurately modest.
So any meaningful concessions will have to be won off the bat, beyond that it will simply be a case of demonstrating how poorly the Labour government serves Scotland. And that might be the best outcome of all in the medium to long term.
Anon : The largest opposition party generally finds ways of setting aside ideology to inflict a defeat on the government. Look at the way the Tories voted against tuition fees and foundation hospitals, or the way Labour voted with the Euroscpetics over Maastricht.
DeleteEven if that weren't the case, think how it will play for Labour in Scotland (and the rest of the UK, to be honest) if they rely on TORY votes to get some of their big policies through. On Trident in particular, knowing the Tories will back it means that the Labour rebels can afford to come out in force. Not wanting to be seen as both Tory-lite and anti-Scottish will be a strong factor for Labour, even before you consider that they ALL apparently are "desperate to see a whole world free of nuclear weapons."
DeleteA Labour government propped up by Tories on all the stuff Scotland doesn't want and didn't vote for? That's pretty much inviting us to never vote for a British nationalist party again, isn't it?
OK, can I confirm the last paragraph is part of the whole 'story' and is not true?
ReplyDeleteCertainly not true. In the scenario envisaged I trust that support for independence would be a sight higher than 54%!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA chilling premonition but it's possibly one that needs to come true for the end of colonial London rule.
ReplyDeleteScottish Skier said: "Aye, it's wrong. SNP just need to abstain if they want. Or vote against"
ReplyDeleteAlex Salmond said that what they would do is put forward an amendment to any bills put forward by Labour, he used the high speed rail as an example.
So if Labour bring forward the 'High speed Railway Bill' the SNP put forward an amendment that says they agree with the government but that the line should start from Edinburgh and be built towards Leeds in the first stage.
This seems pointless as the Labour Party would just vote against the proposal, however, it would be a massive problem for the Labour MP's who voted with the party, against the best interests of their own voters.
The SNP could put forward the massive boost to the jobs/economies of Edinburgh and the North of England, so it would make the Labour MP's from these areas seem to support the fact that all the best spending decisions, favour London.
It would play havoc with Labours traditional vote and would cause a massive headache for them.
It's a no brainer and they know it, they must come to some agreement with the SNP before Ed Milliband could enter downing street.
This argument about a 'moral' right for the largest party to form the government isn't going to wash.
ReplyDeleteIf Labour seats in Scotland go to the SNP because of ex-Labour voters switching their vote, then much of that is TACTICAL voting for a Labour Government held to account by the SNP.
People know that the SNP can't run a UK government.
The public mandate will be for a deal.
Remember how easily the Labour party got into bed with the Tories, during the referendum. I think we are heading for an unholy unionist alliance to block Scotland's voice yet again. It's why the Labour party keep saying only the largest party forms the government.
ReplyDeleteIf Labour have one more seat than the Tories. They will enter an informal agreement to form the government with the Tories and vise versa. SNP and Scotland are going to be frozen out. It's the ultimate betrayal but will be spun as fair for the largest party.
Scotland will become ungovernable other than by force. I see this as the end of the union of their own making. If 40 Scottish Mps are left impotent in Westminster Scotland can not be kept in a union.
Two UK polls today - YouGov Lab 36% Tory 32%
ReplyDeleteAnd now, ComRes for ITV/Mail Tory 36% Lab 32%
Cue lots of political activists from either party on Twitter saying both are biased, ;)
Not seen full YouGov figures, but SNP on 4% - so a return to the high polling? For a sub-sample?
The Com Res Scots sub-sample is small, and a bit weird - Lib Dems quite high!;
SNP 39 Tory 24 Lab 21 Lib 13 Green 2 UKIP 1
http://www.comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ITV-News-Daily-Mail_Political-Poll_30th-March-2015_1749.pdf
The YouGov sub-sample was SNP 45, Lab 33.
DeleteWill Trident be deployed in protection of the British state? tongue firmly in cheek.
ReplyDeleteThanks James, for the YG sub-sample numbers.
ReplyDeleteI'd certainly take 45% SNP 33% Lab come Election Night.
If Labour take 33%, they'll get about 20 seats. If they drop to 30%, they'll only get 12. If they get less than 30%, they'll only get 9.
ReplyDeleteIf the SNP take 45%, they'll get about 45 seats. If they get 46%, they'll take 49 or 50.
Every % counts!