Letter to a friend in a far away place of which we know little...

[f4f3]

He asked for a an update on the election. Or rather, he said "What the hell's happened over there?"


Christ, where do I start?

So first of all, Scotland.

The SNP polled 44% at Holyrood elections in 2011 under PR they got a narrow majority in the Scottish Parliament. The Yes vote was around 45% last September - in a yes/no vote, that was a loss. The SNP polled around 50% last night - under First Past The Post, that gave them 56 out of 59 seats. I don't see this as a huge change in Scottish views, just a continuation of the results from 2011.

But if you make the comparison with the 2010 General Election, then you come up with some crazy, crazy swings from Labour to the SNP. A 20% swing was disappointing. 30% commonplace, and the largest, in Glasgow North East, which is my old constituency, was 39%, which actually broke the BBC's swingometer. Labour are down to one seat, as are the Tories and the LDs. The big scalps were being taken almost contnually - both Alexanders, Charles Kennedy, Jim Murphy, Margaret Curran... Any Scottish MP you've ever heard of. Amazing as this was, it was pretty much in line with polling, which showed around 50 SNP seats. All of these were pledged to vote with Labour against a Tory Queen's Speech, so so far so good.

But then there was England.... Labour, to put it kindly, failed to launch. They made no impact on seats they had to win, and lost some big names (Ed Balls being the biggest). The LD vote collapsed, switching mostly to the Tories (much to my surprise). UKIP were a damp squib.

So in one way this was a fairly typical result, seen from Scotland. As in 79, 83, 87, 92 and 2010 we vote against the Tories and get a Tory government based on English votes. It's actually atypical, in that the Tory majority is a very narrow one - they will just break 330 seats, I think, and face the 1992 scenario of a narrow majority and back bench rumblings.

it's early days to say how this will play out. I think the SNP will be offered additional powers for Scotland, to try to take them off the board. It's a little counter-intuitive that the Tories will offer Scotland independence in all but name, but the name is all that's really important to the Tories. So long as England, sorry, the Union, is preserved, they will be fine. That offer will be a poisoned chalice, of course, but might have to be taken anyway.

Labour will fall into their usual "we must be more pure", "we must reach out to the right" squabble. At the moment, they are mostly blaming the SNP for them losing in England - the argument is that wavering voters in England dashed into the Tories arms to save them from a putative Labour/SNP coalition.

Is that true? I wouldn't like to think so, but the fears were fanned by David Cameron, and stoked furiously by the right wing press - so maybe there's truth in it.

I was up till about 5, and back up around 9, so my analysis may be less than astute right now....