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Holyrood2016

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  1. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Both Labour and the Tories seemingly fell (well, the Tories jumped willingly) into the trap of trying "not mentioning the war" yet actually going on about it all too often.

    Lesley Hinds went so far as to send out late, personalised letters in her constituency specifically detailing the referendum (or the neverendum as she put it) and how opposed to another one Lesley is. Moving on, if that's what you want to do, has to involve some element of not going on about it still and not trying to set yourself out as an explicitly anti-referendum candidate (particularly in a constituency where there's a reasonably close Yes:No split)

    Posted 8 years ago #

  2. acsimpson
    Member

    @erob, yes I'm sure I'll let them know but will wait to give them a chance to finish being congratulated first.

    @ps, yes I can't imagine any manifesto would be agreed on in it's entirety by anyone. Except possibly a party leader with Kim Jong control. It's always a case of deciding who you agree with most and picking priorities. That's what I don't like about some of the SNP supporter's rhetoric when they say that because they got a lot of votes in an election people must agree with everything they stand for.

    @ECT. There is still some pretty strong independence support on the greens website. Refusing to rule out a repeat of 2014 and saying that they will continue to work towards independence-lite.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  3. chdot
    Admin

    http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/holyrood-2016-full-edinburgh-results-1-4120579

    Posted 8 years ago #

  4. kaputnik
    Moderator

    Re the Greens, "Green" politics extends pretty far beyond the popular conception of muesli, sandals, bicycles and windmills. It's not a nationalist party per se, but it's certainly anti-British State and a lot of what it stands for and how it acts; both in its current form or any form it's realistically likely to take.

    I do get the feeling a lot of people kind of expect the Scottish Greens not to actually be such a Green party (in the strict definition of the term)!

    Posted 8 years ago #

  5. Stickman
    Member

    @kaputnik

    True, but it's also easier for individual SNP candidates to "move on" when the mood music from their party leader and other senior MPs is that another referendum is the aim. Let them do the PR so that the candidates can concentrate on other issues.

    Until the SNP either change their view on independence (ie never) or fall back in the polls (eventually) then other parties are going to have to state their views on it.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  6. kaputnik
    Moderator

    @Stickman of course and that is the difficulty candidates/parties face until something gives.

    Let's face it, the SNP have been at the same thing for 80 or so years, most of it through lean times for their popularity and I don't think they're about to give up their core belief any time soon just when they are at their most popular and so close (yet so far) from what they're after.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  7. Mandopicker101
    Member

    I opted for a Labour / Green split.

    - Labour because the candidate (Midlothian N & Musselburgh) had a positive and personal line on active travel although his side were pretty invisible in Musselburgh (no signs, no posters, nobody in the street hassling you on a Saturday, one leaflet).

    I did however swither with the local LibDem candidate who had a very strong background in active travel and the Dunbar transition town stuff. It came down to a degree of realism though - Labour had a (very slight) shot at winning the seat.

    - Green obviously for the active travel position but also because they were the only other party who made the effort to canvas on my local high street. Having read the manifestos of all the parties, the Greens social and environmental policies outweighed their IndyRef2 shtick.

    Responses to Walk, Cycle, Vote and the speeches at PoP definitely shaped my choice of constituency vote - I haven't voted Labour since the UK General Election of'97 and voted SNP/Green last time round. I was fairly resolved on giving the Greens my second vote again. The SNP 'commitment' on active travel at PoP pretty much sealed the deal for me, although I was minded to give my constituency vote to another party.

    I'd hope WCV could canvass candidates in the local authority elections.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  8. Stickman
    Member

    @kaputnik - absolutely, but as you say for most of that time they were a marginal party so others didn't need to make much comment on their position on independence other than "opposed".

    The others are "rerunning the referendum" because the SNP are without having to say they are.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  9. LaidBack
    Member

    Green pro-Indy stance was pretty explicit any time Patrick Harvie was questioned by media.
    I'm pretty pleased that despite almost being frozen out of having proper election broadcast time they will be helping to shape policies at Holyrood.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  10. Mandopicker101
    Member

    FM just confirmed the SNP will form a minority government, albeit one that seeks to build consensus.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  11. crowriver
    Member

    "I'm pretty pleased that despite almost being frozen out of having proper election broadcast time they will be helping to shape policies at Holyrood."

    No representation on the BBC Scotland election special either this morning as the North East results came in, though there was a Lib Dem. Guardian web site lists Greens under "others" in results graph: the Greens ARE the "others"! Sky news also did the same trick. I know the SNP like to complain about media bias but really the Green party has a much stronger case to complain about it.

    I am delighted that Andy Wightman was elected. Also that the Scottish Greens now are back to six MSPs, a bit like 2003 when we had seven.

    Also disappointed there were no Greens elected in the North East, and only one in Glasgow. This seems to be the effect of 2xSNP, which mostly had the effect of boosting representation for the resurgent Tories. Also a pity no Greens from South or Central Scotland, but I'm not really surprised.

    I've seen analysis that if 10% more of SNP votes cast on the list went to Greens instead, there would now be 11 Green MSPs.

    Anyway, it seems to be true that politics in Edinburgh and the Lothians is different from the rest of Scotland to a considerable degree. We saw that in IndRef, to a lesser extent last year, and certainly this year. We also see that in the different transport priorities at City of Edinburgh Council.

    Speaking of which, there will now be a by-election in a council ward in west Edinburgh somewhere. I reckon the Tories might get another councillor soon...

    As to next year's council elections, they might be a bit more interesting than we have feared. Are the wheels beginning to loosen a bit on the SNP bandwagon? If so, how wobbly will they be by this time next year?

    Posted 8 years ago #

  12. crowriver
    Member

    Ian Murray MP on Radio 6 music news just now:

    "It seems we're still stuck in this constitutional politics and we are going to have to seriously address that."

    Posted 8 years ago #

  13. acsimpson
    Member

    "The Tories got the last Lothian seat with 18,744 votes (scaled down due to previous seats won), so had Alex not got EdW he wouldn't have got a list seat."

    @Hankchief, I'm not sure what your source is but I'm pretty sure the Greens got the last regional seat with half their total (17275.5), So Alex would have got in at Green's expense.

    In fact had any of the 3 non SNP seats gone to SNP then greens would have been the losers.

    Labour were just 834 regional votes short of taking the green's second seat while SNP were 2043 votes short.

    It looks to me like The Green's Andy Wightman seems to have been the big winner at Sarah Boyack's Expense.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  14. chdot
    Admin

    Not about 'transport'...

    "

    Douglas Henshall (@djhenshall) is an actor

    The SNP have won, but will form a minority government. Scotland has voted the Tories into second place and Labour into oblivion. The Greens did well but… Oh what’s the point, I can’t be bothered.

    What’s going to happen to the arts in the next five years ? Anybody care ? Not one party had the arts or culture anywhere near the front of their manifesto. In fact it’s so far down the list of anyone’s priorities that John Swinney managed to cut £20m from the arts budget and no one batted an eye.

    Which is the equivalent of one of your neighbours kids having a limb hacked off and your only reaction was “That’ll need a bandage”

    ‘Culture’ in Scotland, which apparently we’re all so proud of, is disappearing down the drain, faster than the NHS. Wake. UP.

    "

    http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/05/06/sp16-report-more-election-context-from-cosgrove-lindsay-henshall-katwala/

    Posted 8 years ago #

  15. HankChief
    Member

    @ac You're right. It was a quick bit of analysis I did on a spreadsheet which wrongly assumed the Tories got the last seat.

    Complex system to get your head around what impacts what...

    Posted 8 years ago #

  16. chdot
    Admin

    "It looks to me like The Green's Andy Wightman seems to have been the big winner at Sarah Boyack's Expense."

    If the Greens hadn't had AJ in Central it's likely that SB - or the SNP candidate would have beaten RD.

    Don't know how that would have affected the List.

    It's possible that if AJ had been in Northern and Leith she would have won.

    Obviously it's a question of money and human resources, but in future perhaps the Greens either need to stand in a lot of constituency seats or none.

    Second vote Green would then make sense and it would be easier to counter the other parties' 'two votes for us' calls.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  17. acsimpson
    Member

    @chdot, That's a lot of what ifs but here goes. I'm assuming list votes remain unchanged regardless of who stands in which constituency.

    "If the Greens hadn't had AJ in Central it's likely that SB - or the SNP candidate would have beaten RD."

    If SB had won then there would be no change to the parties seats. Although SB would be in at the expense of whoever got the last Labour list seat. If SNP had won then they would gain a seat and green would have lost.

    "It's possible that if AJ had been in Northern and Leith she would have won."

    In that case she would have a constituency rather than a list one and SNP would have gained a list seat in place of it (no change).

    If I'm reading the results correctly that means that by AJ standing and losing against Ruth she couldn't have lost anything but by standing elsewhere (or nowhere) she could have lost Green their second seat.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  18. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    I honestly see nothing in the results or the constituency demographics that suggest a Green candidature in EN&L would have attracted more than a derisory vote - it's a straight two-way Labour/SNP fight, although not much of one nowadays.

    There is logic in the constituencies chosen by the Greens (EC & Glasgow Kelvin), urban university areas with a high concentration of students & prob higher than ave proportion of non-Scots born.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  19. mgj
    Member

    @chdot re Dougie Henshall's comments, the vast majority of the cuts referred to was caused by capital projects completing; we don't need two Opera houses in Glasgow etc so in the current year we are spending £20m less. It's only an opinion that that is a cut.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  20. crowriver
    Member

    @MB, actually if you look at the regional vote stats on the Edinburgh Council web site, the Greens were in 3rd place in Edinburgh North & Leith. That's the list vote of course, doesn't necessarily predict the vote in FPTP constituency contest, but it's a good showing compared to nearly every other seat in Lothian where Greens came 4th (yes, in every one except Edinburgh Western where we came 5th).

    Posted 8 years ago #

  21. jonty
    Member

    mgj: If the council finished the Roseburn cycle lane one year then didn't build anything comparable the next year such that they spent £[one Roseburn cycle lane] less on cycling, we'd probably call it a cut.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  22. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    @crowriver well, the Greens stood in EN&L (different boundaries) at the recent GE and came 4th on 5.4%. Alison Johnstone's Central result is very good in comparison. And the GP not standing constituency candidates would have deprived Patrick Harvie of perhaps the single best result of the night for any party, getting 24.3% of the vote and 2nd place in Kelvin. A 7% swing SNP to Green would get them the seat next time, not impossible if SNP popularity slips and voters are looking to vote tactically.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  23. crowriver
    Member

    "It's only an opinion that that is a cut."

    Right, so there are no other arts projects needing capital spend? A cut is a cut, no matter how it's spun. Whether the cut is justified or not is open to debate of course...

    Posted 8 years ago #

  24. crowriver
    Member

    @MB, Greens stood in GE 2015 in Edinburgh East. I know because I was able to vote Green. :-)

    Greens were only 100 votes behind Labour in Edinburgh Central on the regional list vote. More than 1,000 more votes than Alison received in the constituency contest. The gap between Alison and Sarah Boyack was nearly 3,000 votes in the FPTP result.

    Theoretically if you apply the same formula to Edinburgh North & Leith, that suggests Alison (or Andy Wightman) could get around 6,000 votes in that constituency contest, which might just pip the Tories for 3rd place, or take enough votes from Labour/SNP for 2nd place.

    So might be worth a punt for 2020, and certainly bodes well for next year's council elections in the north of the city.

    I personally think the Greens should be standing in more constituency contests, but it's a question of resources as much as anything. Unlike the 'big' parties, despite having more members than the Lib Dems (and possibly Scottish Labour), we don't have millionaire businesspeople backers... On the evidence of this year not much risk of lost deposits, but campaigning across lots of constituencies costs money, not just activists' time...

    Posted 8 years ago #

  25. crowriver
    Member

    Handy stats from Edinburgh Greens web site.

    Breakdown of Green regional list vote by area as follows:

    Edinburgh Central: 17.0%
    Edinburgh Eastern 11.5%
    Edinburgh Northern and Leith 18.1%
    Edinburgh Pentland 7.0%
    Edinburgh Southern 16.8%
    Edinburgh Western 6.9%
    Midlothian North and Musselburgh 7.3%
    Almond Valley 4.6%
    Linlithgow 5.6%

    Posted 8 years ago #

  26. acsimpson
    Member

    I suspect the Western figures are lowered by the fact that the other candidates campaigns included reducing congestion and supporting cycling projects.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  27. crowriver
    Member

    Much of what we think of as west Edinburgh is now Edinburgh Central. Edinburgh Western is mostly the peripheral suburbs and semi-rural hinterland.

    See maps here:

    http://www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/maps/spc/2011/

    Posted 8 years ago #

  28. gembo
    Member

    In Which Edinburgh constituencies did the greens have candidates standing?

    Posted 8 years ago #

  29. crowriver
    Member

    @gembo, just one, Edinburgh Central.

    Posted 8 years ago #

  30. gembo
    Member

    Ah well, can't draw any conclusions that way. We only had four constituency candidates in pentlands. Only lib dem have never held one or other of the Holyrood or Westminster seats from the four who stood. Rifkind, Iain gray, mcletchie, the almost invisible Joanna cherry and the much more visible Gordon McDonald and of course darling Alasdair. In the 15 years I have been out here. In just another 15 I will be able to call myself a local. In shallah

    Posted 8 years ago #

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