I’m a Pro UK Scot whose main concern is defeating the
SNP. Scottish politics has been about independence alone since at least 2011.
This has not only been divisive it has meant that all of the political parties
and especially the SNP have ignored other issues. This has damaged Scotland
hugely and made it a poorer place to live, which is a huge pity as otherwise
Scotland is a wonderful place to live.
I voted Conservative in 2019 and for Brexit in 2016. I
am on the right economically, but I am hugely disappointed by how the Conservative
government has failed to take advantage of Brexit, has left the economy in a
worse position than it found it and has allowed almost unlimited migration both
legal and illegal. The city where I work has become almost unrecognisable in
the past few years. The demographic change has happened incredibly quickly and
is greater I believe than the official figures or census tell us.
I am not really represented by the Scottish
Conservative Party, which is a centrist party or even a social democratic party
of the centre left. There is minimal difference between the Lib Dems, Scottish
Labour and the Scottish Conservatives. All three accept the Scottish
establishment view that the solution to all problems is collective and involves
spending more public money.
So, who should I vote for?
I will vote for the Scottish Conservative Party?
Why? Because of where I live.
This I think is the key to thinking about how to vote.
If I lived in Clacton I would be tempted to vote for Nigel Farage. As I have
written previously, I have mixed feelings about Farage. But if I lived in parts
of England where Reform is doing well, I might well choose to vote for it too.
If I lived in Northern Ireland, I would vote for
either the DUP or one of the other unionist parties. I would reflect on who had
the best chance of defeating Sinn Féin.
If I lived in Wales, I would make a similar
calculation about who had the best chance to defeat Plaid Cymru. But I don’t. I
live in the north of Scotland and here I have to work out who has the best chance
of defeating the SNP.
It’s not difficult to figure it out. If I lived in
Orkney and Shetland, I would vote for the Lib Dems. If I lived in most of the
central belt I would vote Labour. There are any number of guides online that
will tell you objectively who has the best chance of defeating the SNP where
you live.
We all have a pretty good idea of how the campaign is
going. Labour is doing better than in 2019, the SNP is doing worse. So, it is
not simply a matter of looking at what happened last time. There is also quite
a lot of selfish misinformation on leaflets. But still, you should with ease be
able to work out in most cases who has the best chance.
Where I live the Conservatives have the best chance.
Unless something very odd happens, the Lib Dems and Labour are too far behind
to challenge the SNP.
So, the logic is simple. I may not much fancy a
Labour government and I may not much like how the Conservatives have ruled, but
I will vote Conservative because it has the best chance of defeating the SNP
where I live.
The prize on offer to us in Scotland is different from
in England. If by our efforts, we can make the SNP lose twenty or thirty seats
we won’t have to worry about it demanding a second referendum and we will
barely hear the word independence for the foreseeable future. If on the other
hand the SNP does better than expected and has more seats than Labour, it will
the next day claim to have won Scotland and we will hear nothing else for the
next five years.
Unfortunately for Reform and Nigel Farage we are in a
1983 situation. In that year the Alliance of SDP and Liberals won 25% of the
vote and gained nearly 8 million votes but won only 23 seats. Labour won 27% of
the vote and had 8 and half million votes but won 209 seats. It may be that
Reform wins a similar number of votes to the Alliance, but it is still likely
to gain very few seats indeed. I would be astonished if Reform won a single
seat in Scotland. There is not one seat anywhere in Scotland where Reform is
best placed to defeat the SNP.
Like me you may sometimes agree with Farage during the
election debates. You may like me hope for a new alignment on the right with a
party that offers us genuine free market economics, lower taxes and a smaller
state, but none of these things will happen by you voting for Reform in
Scotland this time. The only result of voting for Reform in Scotland is to decrease
the chance of either Labour, the Lib Dems or Conservatives defeating the SNP.
You may not like this. I may not like this, but nevertheless it is true.
We are going to have to wait and see what happens
after the election. The two parties that are nominally on the right, the
Conservatives and Reform are going to cancel each other out and together could gain
less than 100 seats even though their share of the vote together might be
higher than Labour who could win closer to five hundred seats.
My view is that there is a natural majority in the UK
for a genuine moderate right-wing party that is serious about limiting immigration,
Brexit and undercutting the EU to bring us prosperity. These are the Leave
voters of 2016 who won that referendum. The failure of the Conservative Party since
2016 is that it has allowed the Tory wets to frustrate the aims of these voters
so much that they have been driven into the arms of Farage and Reform. It was
the Conservative Party that split the right by moving so far to the centre that
millions of ordinary Conservative voters can no longer support it.
In Scotland around 60% of voters as shown in 2016
support the wet mush of Remain, but the rest of us are unrepresented by anyone.
It would have been sensible if the Scottish Conservatives appealed to those
Scots who supported Brexit and if it offered a genuine alternative to the other
centre left parties. The folly of Scottish Conservatism is that it is not conservative.
All it has to offer Pro UK Scots is that it is Pro UK. But if the SNP is
decisively defeated at this election there will be little point in Scottish
Conservatives banging on about independence either. This leaves them indistinguishable
from Labour and the Lib Dems.
Politics above all is about offering a genuine choice.
When everyone is in the centre there is no choice and therefore no democracy.
This is why Reform is doing so well.
But these are the issues that must be resolved after the election. For the moment we have one battle and one battle only. We must do all we can to defeat the SNP in each constituency. I will vote Conservative because of where I live. You must work out who has the best chance of defeating the SNP where you live. But be quite certain of this point. Reform will win no seats in Scotland. Voting for Reform merely helps the SNP.
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