At the bottom of the previous post, I added my reply to Peter Grant MP’s peculiar tweet about the local elections next year. However, I think it’s worth amplifying the point before any disinformation about the voting system is allowed to take root. Peter’s subtext appeared to be that anyone who votes Alba next year will be “voting against the SNP” in a way that they were not if they voted Alba on the list in this month’s Scottish Parliament election. But, of course, the polar opposite is true.
On the Holyrood list you can only vote for one party, so with the best will in the world, if you chose Alba that meant you were not choosing the SNP and there was at least a theoretical risk of costing the SNP a seat. That risk almost played out in South Scotland – the initial BBC projection suggested the SNP would narrowly miss out on a list seat in the region, meaning voters drifting to Alba could well have swung the balance. In the end, thankfully, the SNP took a seat in the south, meaning Alba cost the SNP no seats at all anywhere in Scotland.
But with the Single Transferable Vote system used for local elections, that risk is eliminated, because it’s a preferential system which allows people to effectively use the same vote for both Alba and the SNP simultaneously. A pro-independence voter might rank the candidates in his or her ward as follows…
1) Alba
2) SNP
3) SNP
4) Green
5) Labour
6) Labour
7) Liberal Democrats
8) Conservatives
Ideally that will help elect an Alba councillor, but if it doesn’t, your vote will automatically transfer to the SNP and will have exactly the same effect as it would have done if you’d given the SNP your first preference. So in no sense have you “voted against the SNP”.
Alba, of course, will be urging their voters to use their lower preferences for other pro-indy parties. On past form, the SNP will not follow suit and will instead tell their supporters to rank SNP candidates only. That could well reduce the overall number of pro-indy councillors elected. Whatever you think of Alba’s prospects, there are certainly wards where the Greens are in with a shout, but a lack of transfers from the SNP will reduce their chances.
There may have been a legitimate debate in the Holyrood election about whether the SNP or Alba had the better plan for maximising pro-indy representation (in reality that debate ended in a no score draw), but in the local elections it’s a no brainer – you get the most Yes-supporting councillors if you rank all of the pro-indy parties. It may be uncomfortable for the SNP, but in the context of a Single Transferable Vote election, the time has come for them to stop trying to “bury” Alba, and instead to start cooperating with other pro-indy parties for mutual benefit. If they prove too tribal for that, it’s the whole independence movement that will suffer.
