Today’s election of Green MSP Alison Johnstone as the sixth Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament puts the final touches to the new parliamentary arithmetic, which looks like this…
SNP 64
Conservatives 31
Labour 22
Greens 7
Liberal Democrats 4
Presiding Officer (non-voting) 1
SNP: 64 seats
All others: 64 seats
Pro-independence parties: 71 seats
Anti-independence parties: 57 seats
PRO-INDEPENDENCE MAJORITY OF 14 SEATS
The SNP are no longer a minority government – with exactly 50% of the voting members they’re neither a majority or a minority, and the media should be picked up if they inaccurately use the term minority government. However, this is only the starting position, and we know from past experience that at some point over the course of a five-year term it’s highly likely that at least one or two SNP MSPs will lose the whip. There’ll be the odd personal scandal along the way, and of course Fiona Robertson will be gutted if at least five MSPs aren’t expelled for “transphobia”. We also hear that three or more MSPs were thinking of defecting to Alba if Alex Salmond had been elected, and they’ll still have that option at a later stage if the SNP drag their feet too much on an indyref.
So we probably will revert to minority government eventually, but for now that’s not where we are.
