It looks from the rumours emanating from the various counts that the SNP will fall short of the 58 seats forecast by the exit poll, but perhaps not by all that much. The overall battle for power throughout the UK remains on a knife-edge - the exit poll would only have to be overestimating the Tories by 15 or so seats (well within the margin of error) for the SNP to be in a pivotal position in a hung parliament. In that scenario, the Tories would still lead the government, but they would be losing votes in the Commons regularly, and it might be very tempting for them to offer the SNP substantial Home Rule in return for English Votes for English Laws - thus transforming the Tory administration into a majority government on English matters.
If, however, the exit poll is bang-on accurate, the SNP will have limited influence - BUT there will be a clear majority in the Commons for an in/out EU referendum. That obviously opens up the possibility of the one and only event that might lead to Scottish independence in the short-to-medium term - namely British withdrawal from the EU against the wishes of Scottish voters.
Looks like the SNP have won this pretty decisively, to put it mildly. I'm even hearing rumours of Jim Murphy losing his seat.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the case, congratulations.
Thanks, Stoat, that's very gracious of you. And I certainly wouldn't write off your party in England just yet.
DeleteAmazing how fast things can change in politics isn't it?
ReplyDeleteAstonishing. Lol
It looks like a majority Con got is a real possibility.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's not impossible - and Peter Kellner has effectively just conceded that the exit poll is going to be closer to the final result than YouGov's own prediction.
DeleteIt's looking increasingly like the good professor Curtice will be coming out of this smelling of roses. And the pollsters looking like chumps.
DeleteCongratulations to the SNP on a stunning result. Tomorrow we have to find a way to work together in our mutual interest....
ReplyDeleteWell done James on your coverage of the campaign. Great to see the site still going. I don't think you're far from your goal
I'm a Tory who voted SNPin Edinburgh North & Leith today to get rid of Lazarowicz - I couldn't be happier with a UK Conservative Government. plus 55 or so SNP MPs. Independence will be closer (despite being right-wing I'm no Unionist).
ReplyDeleteWord in us is murph had lost...anyone know #s?
ReplyDeleteWord in us is murph had lost...anyone know #s?
ReplyDeleteJo Swinson out.
ReplyDeleteTom Greatrix out.
ReplyDeleteEdinburgh South is Labour's only hope. I suspect the Labour inspired press smear campaign will be enough to save them a solitary Scottish seat. Tories might still take down in Berwick and Lib Dems in Orkney. I think 56 is the most likely number, but nothing is impossible given these huge swings.
ReplyDeleteWhat a night!!
Spot on James. We can't let our euphoria in Scotland about the annihilation of Labour here divert us from the bigger UK picture which is crucial.
Davidson has just said Murphy must now fall on his bayonet.
ReplyDeleteHope Jim Murphy stays as branch leader, he's been a source of endless entertainment and there will be half as many posts on Wings over Scotland without him. Also, he will help labour lose in Holywood in 2016.
ReplyDeleteVery tired still after a hectic 72 hours of almost non-stop campaigning.
ReplyDeleteStaggering,astonishing, jaw-dropping final day then night.
I could write pages about the campaign but the utterly unprecedented and historic result says it all.
Ignore the westminster bubble twits who still won't understand that we were working to get this result from January because they sure as fuck won't understand that a great many of us are starting in a few weeks for 2016.
Meanwhile we have the panic spectacle of the Labour and Lib Dem implosions playing out for weeks/months/years to entertain us.
Aye Labour! yer problem wiz obviously that little Ed was too right wing hence you losing scotland LOL Clegg's ostrich faction utterly deluded to the very last.
Not only that but we have the out of touch tory twits celebrating a probable John Major style tiny Cameron 'win' that will see the tories European split take centre stage soon enough along with all those Eurosceptic and far-right backbenchers who are plotting right this second to ensure they drag Cameron and the tory party further and further and further to the right.
Huge thanks to James for a truly remarkable blog that has kept us all informed and up to date with every twist and turn of the polling.
To all those fellow activists, members and supporters who have created such a historic result, well done and enjoy. :-D
56 SNP MPs at Westminster, but no power or influence there.
DeleteAnd therein lies the reason why the UK is finished, John. You just don't get it, do you?
DeleteI think you underestimate the influence of the leader of SNP Delegation to Westminster, Alex Salmond.
DeleteWith Cameron likely to be held hostage by his own sizable number of nutbag right-wing backbenchers (oh the delicious irony! :-D ) I think you'll find there will be plenty of times when we can and will make a difference.
DeleteYou also underestimate how the SNP in Holyrood will try and mitigate the worst excesses of the nasty party while highlighting them to the scottish people.
But the plain facts are there for all to see. Labour cannot protect us, don't even want to and will move even further to the right as the red tories make the same mistakes all over again while they try to please the idiot Blairites and right-wing press.
And the more the tories try and steamroller the democratic will of the scottish people the quicker independence becomes a certainty.
@James Kelly, a succinct but profound statement of fact.
DeleteI think some maybe many on the side of Independence just did not originally grasp the path that needed to be taken to get to Independence.
We had to lose the YES vote to get to yesterdays election.
Yesterdays election was necessary for the English to realize it is time to end this three hundred year old marriage.
Hopefully the next time around we can have the divorce and not be fighting about the furniture.
Hi James, I get it ok. Whatever the Tories say and promise in public, they will continue to ignore the SNP and the electoral will of the people of Scotland.
DeleteWell we now know who the leader of Scottish Labour, Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Conservatives is.
ReplyDelete@All, a remarkable result in Scotland one that was very encouraging after the Indyef. We are now another step closer to independence.
Indeed. "Scottish" Labour was the last big obstacle to independence. Not pleasant, but it had to happen this way. If/when the people decide, we will be independent. Time is on our side.
DeleteI was neglectful for not putting Scottish in "quotes." mea culpa
DeleteThe SNP will represent the interests and people of Scotland, the former "Scottish" Labour Party represented not the Scottish People but the Westminster Labour Party.
Listening to Jim Murphy being broadcast on the BBC........aaargh......though he brought up the rise in English nationalism which I have no quibble with as long as the two great Nations those being Scotland and England may be great friends but not in bed together.
I do believe that this election has changed the calculus in England making Indyref2 more likely and being supported south of the border.
I "think" we have something like a couple who are engaged in a talk of breaking up a marriage/partnership. The difference is that talk is taking a few years!!! The problem is, is that once the talk starts it is inevitable the marriage/partnership is going to be dissolved.
The interests of Scotland do not equal the interests of England and vice versa.....
This is going to be exacerbated in the now coming EU referendum. England MUST NOT take Scotland out of the EU if it does not want to go and Scotland MUST NOT keep England in the EU if it wants to leave. This can only happen with independence.
I just seen Murphy's speech. Sounds as if he has no intention of standing down. Secondly it sounds that Labour hasn't learned any lessons from the crushing defeat. Bitter bitter Brit Labour.
ReplyDeleteJohn Reid for instance wants to basically bring back Tory Blair. They dot see that Scotland is going in a diametrically opposite direction from England and southern England in particular.
Today I will enjoy my four figure winnings. It is a stunning SNP victory despite having to fight the heavily biased anti Press and Media.
I wonder if any party anywhere has ever achieved a result like the SNP's last night against the near total opposition of the press and state broadcaster. It was a wonderful night, and today's parties will be too, but the UK's media and political Establishment's relationship to Scotland is a bloody shambles, an affront to reason and decency, and is getting worse all the time.
DeleteAs James suggests above, *this* is the absurdity now staring the remaining Scottish Unionists in the face. Just how long can they continue submitting to this and the contempt behind it? Inevitably many of them over the next five years will say enough's enough and switch to supporting indy, so you wonder why don't they just save themselves some time and make the switch just now?
Come over and join us, lurkers, and end this f*cking sham.
I watched the odious Jackie Baillie last night insisting that all Labour's problems, and that seemed to somehow all UK wide and not just Scotland, were the fault of the SNP alone. Even for Baillie's horrendously low standards, it was a bravura performance of utter horseshit.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt it will go down in Labour folklore that their 2015 GE disaster was entirely the fault of the SNP.
ReplyDeleteYes, the Pouters are already making this claim on Twitter. I expect this will be SLAB's line from now on. But is anyone listening to them anymore?
DeleteSome riotously funny stuff from the westminster bubble twits already with many of them whining that the SNP can only go downhill from here.
ReplyDeleteLike after the 2011 Landslide you mean?
ROFL
Mick, the BBC in Scotland and most of the MSM used to crow about the second election in 1974 being what they called the 'high water mark of the SNP'. Since 2007 they have been very quiet about that for some reason! Kirsty Wark was looking very pissed off again at a SNP leader this morning!
ReplyDeleteSo Jim Murphy did tell one truth during the campaign. Labour would not lose a single seat in Scotland. That seat turned out to be Edinburgh South. And we came close to taking that.
ReplyDeleteThank you to all my fellow Scots who did the right thing yesterday. And thank you to those elderly traditional Labour voters whom I have a feeling abstained. You did the right thing for your grandchildren yesterday.
And thank to all the people who joined the campaign, made tea, put up posters in their windows, shoved thousands of leaflets through letterboxes in all weathers, and in so many ways convinced our people to vote for the SNP.
John McTernan loses yet another election. Perhaps he should accept that he's not suited for this line of work.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that the Scottish polls were much closer to the mark than the UK ones.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. It will be fascinating to see if anyone comes up with a convincing explanation. Clearly there must be some factor or factors at work in England but not Scotland (or vice versa). But what?
DeleteCongratulations guys. I don't think UK politics has ever seen anything like it.
ReplyDeleteI can't even blame you lot for my Party's failure - with every seat in Scotland we still would have lost. Just waiting for the inevitable lurch back to the "Blairite" right to really put the nail in our coffin. John effing Reid has already been piping up.
I'm pretty numb tbh, and fearful of the future under a majority Cameron govt.
Still, enjoy your moment, you deserve it.
An admirable post. Sadly most of your former MPs are less gracious than you. Ed Balls was just whining that the reason he lost his seat to the Tories is that the SNP dare to stand in elections.
Deletethe "but 59 labour mps from scotland still wouldn't be enough" falls down because it doesn't count the snp effect putting off voters in england off voting labour. Why do you think cameron kept saying "you fancy that nicola you do" to poor old gormless ed, who had to keep publically saying "urrr, I do not". Of course that wasn't helped by nicola going "urrr, david smells of poo but ed's lush" to start with. Battle won for the SNP, but the war's lost for now.
ReplyDeleteerrr, VOTE LIB DEM :-p
So Scotland and England are politically incompatible? Strange argument from a No man.
DeleteJust shows you the fundilymundily unfairness of this rancid union.
DeleteWhat the result shows is the fundamental crux of our Yes argument. It does not matter who we vote for, we get who England votes for. And if that happens to be Labour thats a coincidence.
DeleteAnd a lot of your MP's were removed yesterday because they are crap. They don't serve the people who pay their wages. The voters I spoke to named their crap MP and the opportunity to remove him as their reason for voting SNP.
We must run our own country if we want to elect a different party than England does. Why don't you just acknowledge that, and vote yes the next time.
Yes, we've got the government england voted for, but we've got the snp politicians who made a lot of them vote that way. Nicola not just saying she'd only work with labour wasn't just showing her cards but setting fire to them. And as for salmond and his "wu'll write labour's budget for them".... good god, the conservatives in a forty-eight-hour pr marathon couldn't have wrote a better line than that. You have to wonder if this suits the snp, five more years of going "it's that nasty westminster" and none of that nasty real decision making that fubar-ed the lib dems....
DeleteDe-nial is not just a river in Egypt......... Your reasons for failure is simple, Labour party too far to the right, Ed Milliand not winning the English or Scottish over and Jim Murphy, a Tory with a red tie. A mixed policy message; supporting Tory cuts whilst supporting spending increases.
DeleteYou really need to stop insulting people's intelligence....this is another reason for your failure,
Yes, we've got the government england voted for, but we've got the snp politicians who made a lot of them vote that way. Nicola not just saying she'd only work with labour wasn't just showing her cards but setting fire to themAnd as for salmond and his "wu'll write labour's budget for them".... good god, the conservatives in a forty-eight-hour pr marathon couldn't have wrote a better line than that. You have to wonder if this suits the snp, five more years of going "it's that nasty westminster" and none of that nasty real decision making that fubar-ed the lib dems....
DeleteHahahahahahaha :-D
Completely fucking clueless.
It is the SNP 'whot made them do it'.
DeleteThat is like a centre forward complaining that the goalie is too good and keeps saving his/her shots. Your post is an evasion of responsibility....not willing to face up to the weak and craven efforts of the Labour/Milliband to deal with the Tories and and media. That's is why Cameron is back in. Are you seriously saying that because the two Eds couldn't manage anything a bit difficult, the SNP should have gone soft on them for the greater good of the UK?
So England voted Tory because the Scots wanted a say in the 'Union'?
DeleteOh really? SNP politicians made them vote that way? Are you delusional? Do you not think the people of England, are more intelligent than to listen to the right wing press? There you go again, assuming that people are completely gullible. The SNP offered a (almost) truly left wing agenda hence why Sturgeon won every debate. If England didn't want that and by that I mean a left wing agenda then so be it. This just shows that England and Scotland are pulling in different directions. The population figures will never work in our favour from now on. If you don't want England deciding your politics then you should have voted Yes.
DeleteAs for your insults, this is a sure sign of a petty individual who is loosing an argument.
"WeSaidNoToYesMen" : You're going to need a new name. We said Yes to the Yes men and women yesterday.
DeleteScottish people not taken in by MSM Jim Murphy bullshit
ReplyDeleteso happy & proud
my jaw dropped hearing Jim staying on
Well, that was one hell of an enema . . .
ReplyDeleteThe people of Scotland now know there is only one way to obtain control over their own affairs . . . independence.
"If, however, the exit poll is bang-on accurate, the SNP will have limited influence "
ReplyDeleteTotally disagree with that remark. SNP will have plenty off influence: in committees, ability to put forward amendments to legislation, voting against motions with which they disagree and other parliamentary tricks. And I'm willing to bet that both Trident and HS rail are dead in the water due to SNP being against them. Many others in parliament, Tory, Lab, Lib Dem et al are against them too and it just needs some leadership which SNP can now give to kill them off.
I doubt that Trident is going anywhere. The Tories have a majority and there are very few in the party who would rebel on the issue. The Tories would just whip their MPs on the issue and even if a few of them rebelled, there would be enough in Labour voting for it to pass.
Delete
Delete"Scottish National party leaders expect the party to wield far greater power at Westminster after the general election by winning seats on key committees and earning substantial Commons speaking rights.
The SNP is the third largest party at Westminster. That would entitle the party to sit or win chairmanships on many of the most influential select committees, including the Treasury, defence and foreign affairs committees.
It would also entitle Nicola Sturgeon’s party to have automatic speaking and tabling rights during Commons debates and at prime minister’s questions – putting it ahead of the Liberal Democrats for the first time in the party’s history."
There is plenty of scope for SNP MPs to influence Westminster for the betterment of Scotland.
But not on Trident.
DeleteFull fiscal autonomy has to be on the table. Not only for any chance to save the Union, but it allows the Tories to scrap Barnet, introduce full-blooded EVEL and reduce the number of Scottish MPs.
ReplyDeleteThe Tories opposed Devo Max and it's not as if the scottish public trusts them and the incompetent fop Cameron anyway.
DeleteStill finding it difficult to think of Morningside as the new Labour heartland. Maybe that is where they went wrong.
ReplyDeleteMoi pretentious aussi?
DeleteWell, I should be feeling pretty bad. My party (Lib Dems) destroyed, huge SNP landslide, Conservative majority.
ReplyDeleteBut... Ed Milliband isn't PM. UKIP didn't win any good seats. Milliband, Clegg and Farage are gone. Murphy, Balls and Galloway lost their seats. Federalism and/or enhanced devolution is back on the agenda, along with a wider interest in voting reform.
Overall, I think I can live with this one for 5 years.
A lot of my Yes friends were sadly ungracious in defeat last year, but I don't hold the same kind of grudges. Congratulations to the SNP on your big win, and I hope it works out well for both Scotland and the UK.
Actually that last bit sounds kind of passive-aggressive, sorry.
DeleteSeriously, sincere congratulations on an extraordinary result.
Yes voters being ungracious is understandable but obviously not entirely justified. There was a lot more of an emotional connection involved. Having what you feel is your identity handed to you and then ripped off you was difficult.
DeleteSome folk just don't get it.
ReplyDeleteIf 56 Scottish MP's are to be denied a say in the running of the UK, then what is the Union for?
They'll have exactly the same say as any other opposition MP from any other part of the UK.
ReplyDeleteYou must be a disgruntled SLABBER.
DeleteYou've got it.
DeleteWe don't think we are any other part of the UK.
Stoat : That logic has its limits. The SNP plainly have a distinct mandate.
Delete