A few thoughts on the Tory/Labour plan to legalise sectarian abuse at football matches

It's been suggested today that because the SNP won a clear mandate at the Holyrood election, it's wrong for the opposition parties to press for the repeal of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act.  It may surprise you to hear that I don't agree with that line of argument.  In this particular case (and it's a very rare one), a tiny majority of MSPs with a vote - 65 out of 128, or 50.8% - were elected under the banner of a party that opposes one specific SNP policy.  If those MSPs want to attempt to use that numerical edge to reverse the policy, there's no democratic problem there - quite the reverse, in fact.  But the operative word is "attempt".  There's a fair chance this episode may actually end up demonstrating just how strong the SNP's arithmetical position is.  The opposition parties will need total discipline across four party groups who agree on little else and who don't particularly like each other - and that will only get them to 65 votes.  By contrast, the SNP group is cohesive and should easily be able to turn out 63 votes.  There's very little margin for error as far as the opposition are concerned, and the devil is often in the detail.  At this stage, the smart money should probably be on the Act remaining in force.

However, if by any chance the repeal attempt succeeds, the Tories and Labour are quite right to say that we have to accept that there is a 65-63 mandate for that to happen, albeit a complicated four-party mandate.  But the principle cuts both ways.  The 69-59 mandate given to the two main pro-independence parties is of course considerably less complicated and much more emphatic (one might almost say "decisive").  I therefore look forward to the unionist parties displaying their customary logical consistency, and showing the same respect for democracy that they demand of us.

By the way, my popular Labour MSP namesake has made this mind-boggling observation on the subject -

"Labour will work [with] other parties in the Scottish Parliament to repeal the Football Act. The law has become a symbol of the SNP's arrogance in government. No other party supported the law but the SNP used their majority to bulldoze it through anyway."

Kelly-speak to English translation : The SNP used the overwhelming mandate they received at the 2011 election to outvote the losing parties.  This is in line with what majority governments are typically expected to do.  Presumably Kelly thinks the Attlee government shouldn't have used its 1945 mandate to establish the National Health Service, but should have been less "arrogant" and entered into a compromise with the Tories instead.  But hey, a 10% discount on medical bills would be almost as good as a free NHS, right?