MAY 7, 2011 • BY PHILIP TERZIAN [short article in full]
The news has flown a bit under the radar here in the United States, for understandable reasons; but the results earlier this week of the Scottish parliament elections are historic. Whether this is good or bad history, of course, remains to be seen. For the first time, and much against the odds and recent opinion polls, Alex Salmond's Scottish Nationalist Party has won an absolute majority in the Edinburgh parliament--something that the Hollyrood system was designed to prevent, and which now puts the future of the United Kingdom itself in jeopardy. Let me explain.
The Scottish Nationalist Party is, ostensibly, committed to independence for Scotland. But because the SNP has never had an absolute majority in parliament--something which might conceivably lead to independence--Salmond's party has had the luxury of appealing to nationalist (and/or anti-English) sentiment without worrying very much about specific policies, or actually governing a Scottish republic. That must now change. Salmond and the SNP are committed to a referendum on detaching Scotland from the United Kingdom, and Prime Minister David Cameron is equally committed to opposing any such referendum. The battle lines are drawn.
The significance of this week's vote, in the short term, is that Labour, which had dominated Scottish politics since the Thatcher era, has been devastated: Most of its leadership in Scotland lost their seats, the total Labour vote was significantly reduced, and Labour's new leader, Ed Miliband, has suffered a stinging rebuke. Social Democratic voters seem to have transferred, en masse, to the SNP while Scottish Conservatives, who have no seats in Whitehall, did manage to stave off further losses.
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