I grew up in a little village in Banff and Buchan.
The local MP lived nearby. He was a Conservative. Altogether there were 22
Conservative MPs in Scotland. There were 2 SNP MPs. What happened? The answer
is simple, there was tactical voting.
After the traumas of the 1980s, the Conservatives were condemned as the
“nasty party.” From then on Labour, Lib Dem and SNP voters would gang up to
make sure that the Tory always lost his seat. Scotland is one of the best
examples of how well tactical voting can work. It got the Conservatives down to
no seats at all in 1997 and to 1 seat in 2010. This handed the SNP one of their
best arguments and is a primary cause of the growth in support for
independence. Remember all the times they went on about England voting Tory,
but there being only one Tory in Scotland. That’s their grievance and it was caused
by tactical voting. So don’t let anyone say that tactical voting doesn’t work,
or that it’s somehow an illegitimate tactic. This is how democracy has long
worked in Scotland.
I had hoped that having decisively voted No in the
referendum, Scotland could have got on with the rest of our lives with ordinary
political/economic debates. But this was not to be. The SNP put us all through
years of turmoil, but they have refused to accept the result. They remain a
single issue party dedicated to achieving independence. They only want more
devolution in order that it will make Britain unworkable. They don’t want
devolution to succeed in making Britain a better place. They want it to fail
and to topple into independence. They have shown themselves to have no respect
for the rules of democracy, because fundamentally they believe that a decision
is democratic only if they win. They will keep on like this until they achieve
their goal. But No voters who cooperated so well during the referendum campaign
can cooperate again. We can punish the SNP for ignoring the fact that we voted
No by a large margin.
No other party has ever tried to break up my
country. No other party has behaved in such a nasty undemocratic way as the
SNP. So let them be the new “nasty party.” Never again vote tactically for the SNP as
huge numbers did in 2011. We’ve all learned that lesson surely. Rather let all
No voters vote tactically against the SNP everywhere. There is no political goal more important to
me than keeping my country intact. If we
all send the SNP a message via the ballot box, it is just possible that they
might begin to focus on ruling Scotland rather than breaking up Britain.
There is one seat in particular where tactical
voting has the power to bring about a major defeat for the SNP. This is the
seat where I live now, Gordon. Remember when Alex Salmond appeared to retire
from politics on the morning he discovered unexpectedly that he’d lost the
referendum. He also ruled out another referendum for a generation. But that
didn’t last long. Soon enough he began plotting a return to Westminster. It has
to be said he is the favourite to win in May. Gordon has long been a Lib Dem
seat held by the well-liked Malcolm Bruce, but he’s now 70 and deserves a long
and happy retirement. We all know that the Lib Dems are in trouble in national
polls. They have an excellent candidate
in Christine Jardine, but, of course, she’s nowhere near as famous as Salmond.
So she has a fight on her hands to retain the seat for the Lib Dems and for
Better Together or might we say #GordonTogether?
How should no voters respond in Gordon? The one
thing we must do first of all is to agree who has the best chance of defeating
Salmond. Let me explain the reasons why that candidate has to be Christine
Jardine. Tactical voting works best when there is a candidate from the
centre. It’s much easier to persuade
Labour and Conservative supporters to vote for the Lib Dems than for each
other, not least because they know it is highly unlikely the Lib Dems will form
the next UK government. Most importantly
however we all need to vote for Christine Jardine because she’s the only one
who has a chance of beating Salmond.
The odds quoted by bookmakers recently are as
follows:
Salmond (SNP) 1/6
Jardine (Lib Dem) 5/1
Davy (Labour) 33/1
Clark (Conservative) 50/1
We learned during the referendum campaign that
bookmaker’s odds are far more reliable than polls. As soon as I saw these odds,
I immediately realised that we all have to back Jardine. Why though should
Salmond be such a favourite in a seat that has been held by the Lib Dem’s for
decades? The reason clearly is that bookmakers do not believe that we will vote
tactically in sufficient numbers, neither for that matter does Salmond. Let’s
surprise him twice in one year.
The big problem with tactical voting is that we are
competing with each other as well as cooperating. Labour voters want a Labour
government and so do Lib Dems and Conservatives. Everyone wants others to vote for
them tactically, but no-one wants to return the favour. But tactical voting
only works if we are all generous. If Labour and Conservative voters would vote
for Christine Jardine, they should do so with the expectation that they too
will be helped elsewhere.
A few weeks ago there was a poll that suggested that
Labour might lose all but a few seats in Scotland. So many former Labour
supporters have deserted to join the SNP that they will struggle to maintain
anything like their 41 seats unless they get help from other No voters. Let’s be honest if Labour could beat Salmond
in Gordon, they would win a landslide in Scotland and wipe out the SNP on their
own. Labour party supporters must above all be realistic of where they have the
best chance of success. It’s not in Gordon.
The Conservatives could well remain stuck on one
seat or even lose that unless they get help from other No voters. On the other
hand with the help of Better Together friends they could well win seats in
places like Perth and North Perthshire that they would otherwise lose. It’s not
unreasonable to expect that the Conservatives could in this way win 5-6 seats in
Scotland, but they can’t do so on their own. It is therefore in Conservative
interest to help the Lib Dems win Gordon, not only to keep out Salmond, but so
that they can begin their own recovery in Scotland. The Conservatives too must pick the seats
where they have their best chance. It’s not in Gordon. Salmond would just love
to have the Tories as his main challenger. Always do what your opponent least
wants. The one thing he fears is that we all get behind Christine Jardine.
But how in general are we to determine fairly which
party has the best chance of winning a particular seat? This will all have to be
done informally. There obviously won’t be any formal pacts. But that’s not how
tactical voting works anyway in this country. Rather there can be local
arrangements. But how do we work out who to vote tactically for? We must do so
with a combination of polling and bookmakers odds. We should all vote
tactically for the Better Together party that already holds a seat, or for the
party that came second last time in a seat held by the SNP. There may be room
for some local negotiation, but remember if we squabble we just split the No
vote and let the SNP win by default.
Some people think it is strange to suggest that
Conservatives should vote for Labour or vice versa. I don’t think so. Of course
they want different UK governments, but they equally and above all want to
defend Scotland’s constitutional status as a part of the UK. Moreover, there
are seats in the Central Belt where the Conservatives have no chance
whatsoever. Why not therefore help Labour and at the same time hinder the SNP?
Better a Labour MP than one who wants to break up our country. The same
argument goes for certain rural parts of Scotland where only the Conservatives
or the Lib Dems have a chance. Why waste a vote for Labour when it could result
in another Better Together MP being elected?
In theory we could make it so that the SNP would
have to win 50% of the vote in every seat in order to win it. That would be
very difficult to achieve, especially in parts of the country like
Aberdeenshire which voted 60% for No. Of course, not everyone will vote
tactically, but if enough of us do, we can turn Gordon into one of those
election results that everyone remembers. Imagine what it would be like if Alex
Salmond found himself beaten by Christine Jardine. Imagine him driving away and
someone taking another photograph of him looking glum. This would be a result
that would eclipse the defeats of Chris Patten and Michael Portillo. It would
also seriously damage the SNP’s chances of causing mischief in Westminster.
If we each fight our own campaign in Gordon, Salmond
will win. But if we could just turn the SNP into the new “nasty” party and
remember how well we worked together last summer, we can cause a major
upset. I will be campaigning for the Lib
Dems and Christine Jardine in Gordon, but at the same time I will be
campaigning for the Conservatives in places like Perth and Labour in places
like Glasgow. Join me in making the next election one that makes Scotland’s
position in the UK more secure rather than less secure. In the end if we can’t cooperate to defeat
Salmond in Gordon, we may as well give up cooperating at all. In that case I’ll
campaign for my party, you campaign for your party we’ll split the No vote and
the SNP will be the winners. The one thing they fear is if No voters gang up on
them, because they know from the referendum result that they are outnumbered
nearly everywhere.
If you like my writing, please follow the link to my book Scarlet on the Horizon.
The first five chapters can be read as a preview.
