There's no replacing Margo

When my grandmother went to her grave, an SNP symbol beamed out from the cover of her order of service. It was a pleasing touch of the absurd in the kirk, reflecting the dead woman's true religion more accurately than the God and Saviour invoked by the Church of Scotland minister officiating. In life she never had much time for the Christian god, but perished, her belief in Scottish independence undiminished. As we draw closer than ever before to realising these dreams of national independence, these losses sting with an acute sense of injustice.

Today yields up another, with the tragic news of Margo MacDonald's death this afternoon, her work unfinished, the campaign unwon. A Biblical parallel seems apt, recalling Moses who, after his decades and travails in the desert, gave up the ghost on the boundaries of the Promised Land, leaving the Israelites to trek on alone. It just doesn't seem fair.

Tributes are already being written. More will, I'm sure, flow.  In a time where politicians often seem feart to be themselves - cautious cardboard cut-outs or superficially slick, soulless voids - Margo shone, a character, independent, irreverent, quick with the repartee.  

There will be an empty chair in the chamber when Holyrood next reconvenes. Under section 10 of the Scotland Act, it will remain vacant until the next Scottish parliamentary election in 2016. In contrast with constituency MSPs, the devolution legislation provides that where an individual wins a regional seat and steps down or dies, there can be no by-election to replace them. Nor is there a party list from which the next-ranked parliamentarian could be selected. 

This may seem odd, but the purpose of the regional list is to moderate the lack of proportionality generated by the first-past-the-post contests in the constituencies. A by-election would disrupt that proportionality and would have to be region-wide in scope. In its wisdom, Westminster declined to consider that option in setting up the Scottish Parliament, which will now sit on with just 128 members.  There is a certain fitness to that.  It remains to be seen whether any parliamentarian will take up the fallen banner of Margo's much-improved Assisted Suicide Bill, which Holyrood was due to consider this session. I hope so.

In both senses, Margo's premature departure from the stage, before the curtain call, is Lothian's and Scotland's loss.

It's D(unfermline)-Day

Get your lamb's livers out. Strive to discern the prophetic resonance of a cloud of starlings. Take the tarot. Today, the folk of Dunfermline go to the polls to decide who they would like to represent them in the Scottish Parliament. So who will it be? 

Will Fife councillor, Labour's Cara Hilton, prevail? Might the SNP's Shirley-Anne Somerville just sneak ahead? Will a yellow wave heave the Liberal Democrat candidate back into contention, or will James Black, Jacobite, take dirk and targe to everyone else, triumphing in the Kingdom before sweeping south to take the strategically-important city of Edinburgh (and heaven knows, continuing on to Derby and an excellent showing in the imminent Prestonpans by-election)? Will Zara Kitson's Green shoots show any sap, or will they be ground under heel by the blazered pub landlord figure nominated to represent the seat by UKIP? Oh. And there's a callow Tory youth to take account of as well, who has been railing against the flabby "centre left consensus" offered by everyone else. 

At the outset of the race, Bill Walker having been confined to a prison cell with the worst grace conceivable, I thought the SNP were going to get stuffed. Much of this was down to the Walker Factor, though not entirely. Although he demitted office as an independent, in disgrace, I could sympathise with the unaligned Dunfermline voter who felt that the Nationalists had, in some vague sense, let them down by nominating such a man to represent them in the national parliament. If they felt that way, we had to take it on the chin.

But if the SNP vote was going to collapse, the people wreaking their vengeance, you'd expect to see that reflected in the initial round of canvassing.  I'm told by knowledgeable hands on the ground in Dunfermline that this doesn't appear to have happened.  Ian Smart's recent by-election blog corroborated this diagnosis from the other side of the aisle.

A couple of potential explanations for this apparently limited Walker Effect.  One: the ex-MSP's conduct and manner after his conviction as a serial domestic abuser was so outrageous, and so idiosyncratic, that Walker managed to focus minds on his own character and its defects, rather than on the party which made the mistake of nominating him to represent Dunfermline.

Secondly: it has proved more difficult to hang Walker around Shirley-Anne's neck than it might initially have seemed, despite Cara Hilton's zealous early efforts to do so. Shirley-Anne is palpably a different sort of person from the bluff, pompous and domineering Walker. If the SNP had nominated an ashen suit of a certain age, you can wager ten groat that the outgoing representative for Dunfermline would have remained more of an issue in this campaign.

Beyond the Walker Effect, it is important for us remember that Dunfermline was always going to be a very promising seat for the Labour Party. An unexpected gain in the 2011 Holyrood election, the SNP won it, beating Labour by just 590 votes.  In the 2012 local government election, Labour enjoyed a massive lead in first preferences, running 3,710 votes ahead of SNP candidates in Dunfermline wards. Factor into that the prevailing wisdom that incumbent governments struggle with by-elections, and the constituency always looked like a difficult hold for the Nationalists, and a must-win for Johann Lamont's Labour Party. 

To reframe that in a nakedly cynical way, we'll go into tonight with a pocket full of plausible and temporising explanations. By contrast, if Labour comes out anything but top of the heap in Dunfermline, excuses there are none. The ongoing Grangemouth story will knock the by-election result into a cocked hat, but if one of Johann's isn't sworn in in Holyrood, expect a volley of critical questions about the quality of her leadership and her party's current lack of direction.  

Whatever happens, Dunfermline also attests to the bother which Lamont's unfollowed up "something for nothing" speech continues to give her colleagues. Are Labour in favour of or against retaining universally-accessible free prescriptions, an un-means-tested bus pass for the elderly, the state paying for university tuition and arresting additional rises in the council tax across all bands? Bracket the question of who introduced these policies, and whether the Labour Party have supported them in the past. The record speaks for itself in that respect.  Is this the policy platform which Lamont and her colleagues now wish to stand on?

Even trying to be fair-minded, I'm not entirely sure. It may be that the Scottish Labour leadership hasn't made up its mind yet. That's grand. Periods between elections are periods for reflection, particularly for a party reviewing its fortunes after two consecutive defeats. But for folk like Cara Hilton, obliged to snatch up the party banner unexpectedly, and to set out and defend a policy prospectus, Lamont's under-explained "something for nothing" speech is an absolute nightmare. You can't make credible policy commitments on any of these core issues "when everything is up for review", but until Labour decides what it makes of the council tax freeze, university funding, prescriptions and bus passes, all of these policies hang under a vaguely-threatening cloud.  

We saw identical wriggling from the Labour candidate in Aberdeen Donside. Neither he, nor Hilton, have their marching orders. And caught in the eye of the camera, subject to the tender inquisitions of Brian Taylor and Bernard Ponsonby, both Hilton and Aberdeen's Willie Young took on the consistency of blancmange, vaguely trembling as they attempted to explain their positions on very basic, well-established issues of devolved policy.  I feel for them.  They're the ones obliged to look like numpties on telly, and in order to shore up their awkwardly indeterminate policy positions, to put out leaflets on these issues in a spirit of creative compliance with the truth. 

If, as most folk predicted on twitter this morning, the numbers stack up for Cara Hilton, and Labour win in Dunfermline this evening, it will be in great part despite, rather than because of the tactical position Johann has abandoned her party to, mid-term.

Notes on Govan...

Long-term readers may recall the obsessive twinge which consumed this blog in May 2012.  The spring elections of that year represented only the second time Scotland has gone to the polls to elect its local authorities using the Single Transferable Vote system.

Stuff to conjure with? For many of you, probably not, but for this tragic soul, unpicking how the process worked, how it allocated seats in multi-member council wards, and how voters transferred their support across parties, was marvellous if wonky stuff.  You can still find the fruits of these labours in the sidebar, with a breakdown of how seats were allocated in every Glasgow ward, aiming to show you which races in the city were close and which foregone conclusions.  

One of those wards was Glasgow Govan, which went to the polls in a by-election this week, after the death of Allison Hunter, the long-standing SNP cooncillor in the ward. Labour's John Kane beat the SNP's Helen Walker, winning 2,055 first preferences to Helen's 1,424.  In 2012, Govan was one of the city's most interesting races. The by-election, by contrast, was essentially resolved on first preferences.

In 2012, while Allison and Labour's James Adams comfortably exceeded the threshold on first preferences, the battle for the third seat was a close-fought ruck. The race was complicated by a couple of factors. Firstly, the SNP optimistically fielded three candidates in the ward rather than two, diluting their vote. Labour faced its own difficulties, fending off a "Glasgow First" insurrection composed of deselected former. Labour councillors. In the final allocation, Stephen Dornan ran the second Labour candidate close, eclipsing the SNP's Jonathan Mackie in the twelfth round but falling behind the second Labour candidate, who took the second of the ward's three seats. 

With Allison's untimely demise, a Govan by-election was always going to be a difficult win for the Nats. While the SNP enjoyed a very narrow lead over Labour in total first preferences in 2012, it's important to take a couple of factors into account when considering (understandably cheery) Labour boasts about a whopping great by-election swing their way. If you take Gordon Matheson's word for it, this result represents a stonking, unanticipated win for Labour.  As is often the case, the reality is more prosaic and the People's Party had a couple of important cards in its hands here.

Firstly, in 2012, the leading Labour candidate took the most first preferences of any candidate: 1,727 to Allison's 1,460.  STV elections in multi-member wards are different from an STV election for a single seat, particularly in a ward like Govan, overwhelmingly dominated by two parties, with a tiny knot of alternatives trailing way behind the leading candidates. The number of available transfers are unlikely to disturb the outcome in the first round, unless it is very close, particularly on a low turnout.  Secondly, it's also important to take the impact of 2012's Glasgow First rebellion into account. A full 15% of the Govan electorate supported their former but deselected Labour representatives in 2012, to the official candidates' total of 32%. 

From the looks of this week's result (albeit on a much lower turnout), the Glasgow First folk at least have "come home to Labour".  Let's look at those first preferences again, for this week's poll:

A few other entertaining notes: James Trolland, the Scottish Democratic Alliance candidate, received a single, solitary vote in the Govan by-election. Just the one, which transferred to the Nats. The Liberal Democrats were outpolled by UKIP, a somewhat eccentric secessionist from the separatist cause, Tories, Greens - and the third-placed anti-Bedroom tax campaigner. Having attracted nineteen first preferences, some solitary supporter of the Tartan-BNP in the ward - the schismatic outfit, Britannia - actually thought the Greens next best represented their aspiration for an ethnically monochrome but ecologically sensitive Scotland.  The mind boggles.

And what does the Govan result tell us about the independence referendum, or the approaching Dunfermline by-election? 

Bugger all.

Are the SNP due a Dunfermline drubbing?

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly. Bill Walker is clearly no devotee of Shakespeare, and in resigning his Dunfermline seat a few days ago, he didn't heed Macbeth's advice about the charms of celerity.  But resign the villain finally has, and under the Scotland Act, we'll have a by-election in his Fife constituency within the next three months.  

So what are the chances? Who's in with a shout? And from the SNP perspective, critically, are we going to get stuffed? Let's take a look at the data.

Riding on the coattails of the national party, in 2011, Bill Walker won the seat with 37.6% of the vote, beating the Labour candidate Alex Rowley by 590 votes. Reflecting the mood in much of the rest of the country, the notional incumbent's support went through the floor, Liberal Democrat Jim Tolson polling just 5,776 votes to the winning 11,010 secured by the SNP.  So much we know, but it is also instructive to look forward and backwards from 2011. The party is still polling rather well nationally against Lamont's Labour. But, but...

In the Council elections of 2012, after the accusations against Walker first surfaced but before his trial and conviction, SNP candidates won 5,814 first preferences votes compared Labour's 9,524 in the four Dunfermline wards which the constituency completely covers. The Liberal Democrats trundled in next, with just 3,341 first preferences.  The constituency also takes in parts of The Lochs ward on Fife Council - but Labour won that too, comfortably, snaring 1,729 first preferences to the Nats' 708.  Obviously, the dynamics of the local elections are different from national elections, and different again from a by-election.  For all that, however, these can only be promising figures for the Labour Party in the area. 

Putting the 2011 result in broader context, between 1999 and before 2011, Dunfermline was bifurcated into two distinct constituencies, East and West.  The new seat takes in the the old West constituency, and part of the East, the result of which is now represented by Helen Eadie, as Cowdenbeath.  Going into the 2011 Holyrood election, the Liberal Democrat, Jim Tolson, sat for the western constituency.  As we all now know, in 2011 the SNP came from a notion third place in the seat, behind the Labour party, to take it. To add another layer of complexity to proceedings, the Liberal actually snatched the seat from Labour in 2007, who had held it since 1999. 

Now, I'm no Fifer, and don't know this territory well, but figures lead me to conclude that - at the best of times, in a favourable national election with a tolerably popular SNP government and a suitably incompetent Labour opposition - defending and retaining Dunfermline might prove a tall order for the Nationalists.  Liberal Democrat fortunes have not, and may never, fully revive in the area. The Labour Party may not have the springy vitality of an excitable Cocker spaniel, but if I was a Scottish strategist in John Smith House, Dunfermline would already be circled on the electoral map, as low-hanging fruit.  Even without the scandal of a Nationalist parliamentarian being revealed as a domestic tyrant and unlawfully handy with his fists.

Arguably, the party's poor showing in the area in 2012 is as nothing to the reception we can hope to receive in this by-election.  At that time, Bill Walker was suspected, but innocent until proven guilty. Today, the luckless and brave SNP candidate will have to contend with press hostility, and most likely, an electorate none-too-enamoured with the party which nominated such a goon for election in their constituency.  You needn't subscribe to the idea that there was any jiggery-pokery in the way the party dealt with the Walker case to see that he will hang around the neck of the Nationalist candidate like the Old Man of the Sea, however vigorously or acidly they denounce him in public.  This is one for Nationalists to take on the chin.  Anything short of a drubbing would be a relief. 

As the erstwhile Labour blogger Stuart MacLellan noted a few years back, Labour has never actually won a seat back from the SNP, having lost it. If they can't heave themselves over the finish line first in this Dunfermline by-election, a disgraced Nationalist incumbent having been forcibly pitchforked from party and office after twenty-four criminal convictions and an outrageous display of contempt for his constituents, Scottish Labour really are jiggered.

Thanks, Bill. 

Mark McDonald channels the Marquis of Montrose...

Interesting developments this morning in Aberdeen Donside. SNP MSP Mark McDonald has announced this morning that he intends to seek the party's nomination for the constituency seat, vacated by the recent death of the SNP's Brian Adam, in the upcoming by-election. It remains to be seen whether party members will endorse McDonald's candidacy, but if they do, it throws up a few tricky and interesting legal implications under the Scotland Act, and the dual franchise of regional and constituency members of parliament it provides for.  

In 2011, McDonald was elected as a regional member in the North East, ranked fifth of seven places down the SNP list.  Not, you might think, the most promising situation for a young fellow with a family to feed and a political way to make after the next election, subject to the caprice and uncertainty of ranking by the party membership. Aberdeen Donside, by contrast, looks a far more comfortable berth. But there are risks. Section 9 of the Scotland Act governs how vacancies in Holyrood constituencies are to be filled. Subsection six makes plain that in any by-election to fill a constituency seat in the Scottish Parliament:

"A person may not be a candidate at such an election if he is a member of the Parliament or a candidate in another election to fill a vacancy."

The upshot? If he wants to stand in Donside, McDonald will have to resign first. If he does so, another vacancy will open up in the already almost-exhausted SNP list in the North East. Under the Scotland Act, regional vacancies are filled in a different way.  No by-elections here. Instead, to find our replacement have to go back to the party list from the 2011.  The parliamentary seat is allocated to next ranked person on the list.  Where the party list is exhausted, the regional seat sits vacant until the next Holyrood election. The party cannot simply nominate a replacement.  In this case, the beneficiary of McDonald's bravery would be the North East list's last candidate, Christian Allard, seen most lately in this parish as an unsuccessful candidate to be one of the SNP's six nominees to represent Scotland in the European Parliament.

For Mark, the game may be worth the candle. Brian Adam first won Donside in 2003, and held it with increased majorities in the two subsequent elections, topping off at more than 55% of the vote in 2011.  The Labour Party would be his main competitors, and named their candidate this morning, picking Willie Young from amongst the ranks of their Aberdeen City councillors.  Even with these starting advantages, the idea of resigning your seat and running for another can hardly be one anybody would approach without trepidation. In your enthusiasm to acquire a safer seat, you mean lose your political job altogether. If he is nominated to stand, McDonald will have to live by Alex Salmond's favourite motto, from the 1st Marquis of Montrose:

"He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all."

Glasgow NE: Gubbed

Some off-piste thoughts on Glasgow North East may be in order this morning. The BBC coverage had its moments – but why, ever so often, did they seem to press the replay button and all the yammering political types would simply reiterate previously furnished statements. I assume that they were operating under the assumption that they might acquire new audience members mid-way through. Hope springs eternal in the newscaster's breast. Nevertheless, despite its relative tedium, I wanted to highlight a few themes which struck me as being of particular interest.

Firstly, racism in Scotland. Tom Devine suggested that the idea of egalitarian Scotland being a welcoming society was mythological. Racism, the historian continued, could not be imagined as another English illness, without Scots symptoms. Here, the supposed egalitarian gloss and its associated good conscience actually conceals the extent to which Scots are prejudicial – and creates a self-image which will be highly resistant to a recognition of that self as racist. We can find this argument in the work of David McCrone in his sociologies of Scotland – arguing that part of what sustains this idea of an egalitarian Scotland is its amenability to different political projects. Historically, leftists could see themselves as the bearers of an egalitarian tradition which rejects social distinctions of class – emphasising a sort of human capital in the face of laxer, more class-conscious English society. Simultaneously, old Tories can take to their tartan-trooed pins on Burns Night and roar out A Man’s A Man for A’ That, confident that the egalitarianism they are expressing relates to merit, and is thus, inherently stratifying in its ends. Its an intriguing question, and Devine’s doubts are familiar. Does thinking you have an equal and welcoming society tend to conceal the hidden transcripts of your society’s wrongs, its cruelties? I can certainly see the case.

Yet also, while such descriptive accounts of the nation may not reflect underlying human experience – there is also an aspirational element to this which we ought not too hastily to squander. Assume, as we must assume, that Devine’s suggestion can be demonstrated – that Scottishness is no vaccine to racism. Its certainly not obvious to me that the answer to that recognition of fallibility is to reject the political discourse which accounts for Scots authenticity in terms of an openness which may not be a sociological universal. Mythologies can be rejected – they can also be lived up to.

The second theme I wanted to return to was the broad commentary on the approach of Labour’s campaign. Said many, localism was emphasised. Ripping off Glasgow its chorus. Labour in opposition to Edinburgh SNP the cheeky undernote. Margo MacDonald deplored this approach to argument, insisting on the importance of collaboration between Scotland’s city states. I’m not so condemnatory. I can see the storied narrative it furnishes Labour with, whether or not I’d agree with the elements of the indictment. What interests me – and it is a subject I’ve posted on before in the context of the defunct airport rail link – is how this apparently politically expedient argument for a Glasgow by-election resonates in the wider community. Part of Labour’s problem, strategically, across the country, is its clotted constituencies in the West Coast, its Glaswegian voice and its representational limitations. Success, for Labour, seems to rely on getting its vote out - not by making alternative appeals outside of their primal, primate-electing constituencies.

From the result, it seems as if Willie Bain could have stodged his way onto the stage with a victorious clutch of votes without this story, re-emphasising that Labour seems as if it is for Glasgow and nowhere else. Ordinarily, of course, I doubt this would matter. The local arguments which by-election candidates make are soon forgotten, their little heresies from the party line to accommodate local sensitivities subsumed under the wider tales of the party’s national fortunes. Why this case is, I’d submit, a little different, is that Bain’s tack is strongly consonant with Labour’s wider, Scottish themes. He contributes to a swelling account of the party, often implicit discourse about the geographic and social divisions in Scotland’s political commitments and presages a return to the drear of hegemonic political Clydesideism in Scotland. This account is, I’d suggest, problematic in the wider constituencies of this country. Precisely because Bain et al. plucked on this string so insistently, and I suspect gratuitously, its interesting to speculate whether, for the sake of grubbing up an extra vote or two, they may actually have sustained a wider account of Labour politics apt to depress their broader electoral fortunes.

Oh, and I'm fed up of hearing about honeymoons and their inevitable (and apparently multiple) endings. Has media creativity died a death? Is there no other metaphor in the whole of bright existence which they could employ to communicate the same process of increasing attention, marginally upped focus and the accumulation of failures or the failures to succeed? No, I feared not...

Glasgow North East By-Election Blues...

I've not really commented recently on the Glasgow North East by-election. Too busy. However, this morning, I was lucky enough to stumble across the following verse-lyric, smuggled to yours truly from the personal scrapbook of an artist, too self-effacing to put his name to the text. I publish it here, merely for your diversion and the enquiring interest of political scientists of remote posterity. Any similarities to the popular poem "Funeral Blues" by Mr Melted-Wellie face (left) is, I'm sure, simply coincidental.

By-Election Blues

A poem written from the perspective of a hypothetical dejected and defeated by-election candidate D----d K—r after Wystan Hugh Auden

Stop all the benefit, cut off the telephone
Prevent the hacks from barking and Bain I might dethrone
Silence my opponents and with muffled drum
Bring out the Lodge, let Orangemen come!

Let the voters circle moaning talking-heads
Scribbling on their ballots the message ‘fuck the neds’,
Push crap prose down the soggy necks of public pigeons,
Hope they don’t say “He ain’t from round here, we don’t like his religion”

There was my Willie, my Ruth, my Bax-an-dale,
My Baillie weak and my Tommy pale
Our drone, our cant, our talk, our song,
I thought this vote would last forever: “Thank God I was wrong”

Your votes are not wanted now, spoil every one;
Hack up my fliers, slump at the end run
Implore no more Glasgow 'cos I’ve now understood
That you gave not a toss which one of us stood.

Dispatches from Glasgow North East...

I’m sure in the course of the long, trudging campaign, the candidates for the Westminster Parliamentary seat of Glasgow North East experienced a flourish of relief as one Mr Kenneth MacAskill put on his red suit, donned an archery-target waist coat and proclaimed the sovereignty of mercy in Scotland. Cue furore, heated. With a nose for gluing the stories of the moment together, Scottish Unionist pointed out the less than consonant character of the SNP candidate David Kerr’s positions once juxtaposed.

On the 21st, Kerr argued:

“I don’t believe that Al Megrahi should have been released. He was convicted of murdering 270 people so I believe justice would have been best served if he had remained in the care of the Scottish Prison Service.”

By Tuesday 25 August, this had amended itself to the crisper: “The Justice Secretary took the right decision, and above all he took it for the right reasons.”

Obviously, don’t lets be too devilishly insistent that a soul must adhere to its past sins, when it yearns for repentance. Its alright for folk to change their mind. Indeed, the polling around the whole brouhaha seems to indicate that Kerr's developing sense of the rightness and wrongness of the move mirrors that of other Scots. There is, however, a wider point. Do we really believe Malcolm Chisholm was the only opponent of this measure who bums the Labour benches? Given the more divided general opinion in the population at large and among Labour member, this seems unlikely. Equally, how plausible is it that all 47 SNP members thought that in his trundle across the tightrope before him, MacAskill balanced himself unerringly correctly? How many in both tribes swallowed their private sentiments, donned the political war paint and marched for the chief? I’d be confident that the count of such tribesmen and women who made primary their party political calculations must at least amount to a decent clutch. So I agree, there is something that smells distinctly implausible about the neatness of these divisions – which might make us look on the apparent transformation of Kerr’s views with a critical eye.

Indeed, as the recess recedes, I anticipate a spidery battery of eyes will be shifting again to the Glasgow North East by-election. And on this point, via a fellow peat worrier – we’re a close fraternity and sorority – I have a few dispatches from the field by way of an informed source within the campaign.

I’m totally unfamiliar with the constituency myself – hence what follows it a bit of third-hand repetition. It does give an indicative glimpse into the cognitive processes churning away behind the scenes, however. It is anticipated that the writ will be moved sharpish when Westminster resurrects itself, resulting in a polling day of around the 12^th of November*. On the campaign itself, apparently Kerr’s going down a storm among the more conservative, religious populous of the area – but there’s a fly in the proverbial ointment. In the more liberal parts of the constituency, which on the campaign intelligence, apparently includes Dennistoun, disquiet rumbles over precisely the same issues which might coax others into Kerr’s corner.

Along the lines of my argument, which insists that religious opinions are fair game when they inform political choices, it seems that this section of the populace may find the ominous Latin of Opus Dei a challenge to overcome, when mulling over where to put their enfranchised ‘x’s. As a consequence, I understand that the candidate’s messages are being finessed depending on the setting as an attempt to overcome the difficulties presented by the trumpet lobby of press coverage at the inauguration of the campaign. I’m a bit sceptical of all this sort of talk myself, including the happy but textureless labelling of places religious areas and whatnot. Indeed, I’d have thought the surest way these days not to communicate with your electorate is to talk to local clergy. Then again, its not just who can vote, but who will vote – and on this point, my own youthful, godless existence may not be typical of our greying electoral enthusiasts.

At any rate, these personal caveats aside, I thought you might be curious about the campaign related scuttlebutt…

* As the estimable Monsieur Burton pointed out in the comments below, the 8th of November poll date which I originally mentioned falls, as any lackadaisical examination would suggest, on Sunday. I suspect Monty's moles are stabbing far closer to the mark with their anticipation of a Thursday the 12th of November date - so have slyly amended the electronic record accordingly.

David Kerr: Thoughts on God in politics...

An act of informed voting is always going to be a trade-off among the voter’s priorities. Yes, the candidate is in favour of independence, but he is a schmuck. No, she doesn’t think that there should be a poll tax, but she also is against gay adoption. Another candidate has exemplary ideas on criminal justice, but cannot fathom climate change and is disposed to deny its significance. Nuclear power, wars, guns, free care for the elderly, graduate endowments, tuition fees – the informed voter is drawn by the nose this way and that by individual candidates’ opinions, which are never easy simulacra of the exact political positions of the voter who decides on them. You have to fudge – at least a little, sometimes a lot.

I think its in this context one has to see the warm words and interesting discussion around David Kerr’s candidacy in Glasgow North East, and precisely what weight his religious opinions should have in the decision to vote for or against him. Some, including the man himself, suggest that they shouldn’t, that it doesn’t matter, or indeed that it is villainy to enquire. I disagree, strongly.

Here is why. As has been reported, David Kerr was asked, predictably, what his views were on abortion. Avoiding providing a direct answer, Kerr justified this evasion by saying that he was not there “to talk about theology.” The quote is truncated, excised from a wider context, and hence, one ought to be cautious about being too expansionist about what he means to imply. But put it this way. Think of the many ways one can label the debate on abortion. A political issue, perhaps – one of public health – of ethics and morals – of an epistemology of embryology – in the final analysis, also one of law. To this, we can add another calculation – and cannot accuse Kerr of being exhaustively evasive of his views on the abortion question. After all, to reply that he wouldn’t talk about theology entails that if he was to talk about abortion – he would be in the theological realm. His wasn’t an absolute non-answer, since he candidly frames how he would discuss abortion as a personal and religious issue.

That said, if we were firmly in favour of abortion, it being a high priority on our voters catalogue of interests, we would probably want to know other things. For example, would he oppose or support particular approaches to public policy in this area, based on these religious norms? Alternatively, would he suspend judgement, conscious of the privacy of these feelings, and abstain on the relevant votes? Or would he go further, submitting to the party whip and follow the political commitments of his overseers, despite his personal views? One can envision similar tribulations in any number of areas where the godly norms Kerr perceives conflict with the pressing political directions taken by party and parliament. What would he do? These are relevant questions, fairly asked. There really are no protest votes – if your candidate and party win – the individual voter is implicated in giving those characters their mandate and social authority. We’re not exhaustively responsible, clearly, but if our men and women begin making mischief, or oppressing others, our continuing support for them in that knowledge is blameworthy. Given that the ideology of Opus Dei - quite consistently - seems to deny any division between public and private, just as Catholic theology generally insists that God's laws are objectively true and hence, ethics isn't as atheists imagine it - Kerr faces a problem. If he is unable to deny the religious call to wholeness in public and private life, voters who disagree with him on these issues have every reason to reject his candidacy. Depending, of course, on the priority among their individual preferences. Folk maybe don’t consciously think of it in this way, and perhaps don’t reduce these preferences to writing, but they play out in every Labour voter who gave up on the Red Rose Brigade after Iraq, or every Tory who turned UKIP on Europe.

Lets look at the religious norms in public life issue atheistically. Assume, for the moment, that God is false, that the Bible and the rules of the Church are man-crafted and without divine sanction or objective resonance. Say instead that every person has an individual notion of ethics – but some people are more individual that others. When Kerr says this is right, he is making a statement of the same sort as my statement this is right. He may feel less responsible as the originator of this ethical ejaculation – attributing it to a magic book or the word of an invisible spirit – but if his surrounding cosmology is false – he is reduced to the same, plain human level my moral views must be couched in. There is no substantive category difference.

That being so, consider the following hypothetical scenario. I am a would-be lawmaker and hate homosexuals, but for resolutely secular reasons. Heaven knows what these might be – but given man’s irrationality – anything is possible. I argue against adoption, against civil unions, even against gay teachers. For some, this is not an issue to rouse them from their lethargy, and my other virtues and views may overbear and prove conclusive. Not so for those who place equality of this sort higher up their agenda. They would vote against me with feeling, and would be correct to do so. Change this scenario only in one particular – that the aforementioned hatred and activism was animated by a religious sense rather than a godless one – and the same conditions obtain.

While it doesn’t matter whether Kerr believes in the Almighty, if you the voter do not believe in God, you have every good reason to reject him based on his views. Since the boundary between religious ethics and ethics simplicter must be fictional in an atheistic world view – it is simple consistency to hold Kerr to account based on those opinions. Faith matters, precisely because morals matter. You can’t have politics without politics. Crucially, however, how significantly particular moral positions matter will be a point of variability between different people. That is why it is erroneous to insist as a universal truth that one can excise personal faith from the political agora. While for some people, this may well be true, for others, it must be of the most intimate consequence.

Recognising this diversity is to take ethics – and religion – seriously. As we ought to.

'Indygalling' paradigm shift!

It would seem that I coined too soon. The Herald is reporting this morning (at least constructively) that I misread the political runes and Grant Thoms will not be standing in any by-election in Glasgow North East, as was mooted. Interestingly, however, the paper alludes to the problem of “indygalling” (though tragically, not joining me in my mission to popularise the notion):

To indygal (v.) A state experienced in the early stages of a blogger turned politician’s life when the media discovers their candid reflections on individuals or sensitive subjects on the internet, and immediately seeks to embarrass the fresh-faced politico with lurid incidences and choice examples drawn from their free flowing prose. Frequently a matter for repentance.

After all, how many politicians suddenly appear in parliament without conducting a campaign or submitting themselves to some sort of election, during which the persistent bloghounds of the press would root about in the candidates electronic rubbish?

Quoth the Herald,

“Thoms was known to have been worried that his "Tartan Hero" blog, which often dealt in religious and gay rights issues, would return to haunt him and had removed it from the internet - but traces had been retrieved by his opponents.”

That reference to so-called “gay rights” issues is a bit snide. Why should they “haunt him”, as if an occult, spectral set of opinions? Why would they, unless one was a ghastly homophobe and bigot? Why should the media concede, on any level, that any of this might be legitimate?

Indygalling, by an organic process and growth, has already ballooned in significance within a few days! How exciting. Thus, instead of the shame and sticky gloop mudpat discovery of a blog post election, making Indygal herself a paradigm case, Thoms’ alleged discomfort is probably now more paradigmatical. In the Kuhnian sense, we've already enjoyed our first paradigm shift. Indygalling is thus, the property of Indygal no more. Grant's face is the fresher. I should stress, however, that the man himself denies that he is eschewing election due to any indygalling threat or expectation, but instead because he enjoys being on Glasgow City Council:

“It is a role I love. I feel I have work still to do in that role and therefore want to continue with it." Being able to make a difference to constituents at a very local level is a rare privilege and the issues the council deals with are of the utmost importance to the people I represent. I also believe that the SNP has a great chance of taking the administration at the next council election and I want to play a part in that. I will give the successful SNP candidate my full backing and I look forward to working hard for another famous SNP by-election victory in Glasgow.”

If, however, Thoms was a’feart about the perils of being inygalled simply on the basis suggested by the Herald, that is shocking, contemptible. As Montague Burton put it, nothing less than a smear.

Glasgow North East: Scuttlebut and Speculation

I want to propose a new term. It’s a useful little word, I think. And is of particular interest to we creaturely characters of the politicised and speculating “blogosphere”. Indeed, I firmly anticipate that its significance and incidence will only increase as time marches by. It is, in short, a good coining investment. But I’m getting ahead of myself in the red heat of the neological prospects. Here is the proposed addition to the lexicon:

To indygal (v.) A state experienced in the early stages of a blogger turned politician’s life when the media discovers their candid reflections on individuals or sensitive subjects on the internet, and immediately seeks to embarrass the fresh-faced politico with lurid incidences and choice examples drawn from their free flowing prose. Frequently a matter for repentance.

Why this sudden enthusiasm for adding a page to our already voluminous dictionary of the English tongue, you may ask. In short, because I think I’ve spotted an attempted incidence of pre-emptive indygal avoidance. And a rather interesting example it is too. As you’ll have read in the papers, it is expected that the by-election in Michael Martin’s Glasgow North East Westminster parliamentary seat will fall to be determined in September. Which monkey will have the red rosette slapped on it – and symmetrically – which will wear the SNP’s tacky canary yellow – has been the matter of some speculation. Martin’s son, Paul “Moomin” Martin MSP has apparently rebuffed suggestions that Springburn ought to observe election by primogeniture or any other sort of direct political entail from his father. Who the Labour party will produce remains a mystery. Perhaps my favourite phizog whittler, Margie Curran, might try her luck.

On the nationalist front, as I understand matters, Grant Thoms, Glasgow City Cooncillor and once-active, now lapsed blogger at Tartan Hero had been nominated to stand in the constituency at the next Wesminster General Election. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr Thoms will stand for the Nationalists in the early by-election. He remains a reasonable bet, but matters remain uncertain.

If, however, the fear of indygalling has any nip to it, recent developments might lead us to make the educated guess that Grant Thoms will be the Nationalists’ candidate. What developments, pray? Simply that his Tartan Hero blog is no longer simply languishing without the fresh fluids of new posts, but has now simply been deleted, presumably by its author, presumably because he wants to head off the threatening promise of being indygalled before the computer semi-literates in the press charge up their google search engines, and begin their vigorous “investigative journalism”.

A reasonable conjecture, do we think?