Remember Alex Salmond gained indyref on the basis of an SNP majority

The National

10-07-2025

This can be seen very clearly from the Hamilton by-election, where had Reform not taken part it is conceivable that the Conservatives would have won; similarly if the Greens hadn't been so scunnered a couple of years ago, the SNP could have. This is based on the figures alone, as obviously there would have been many other factors involved.
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This principle applies to the list votes, which Alba seem to be majoring on. The difficulty here is that, based on the voting system, any party that has no constituency MSPs has a significant chance of winning a seat if and only if it has a very substantial number of votes, enough that the phase divisors act in their favour. This concept itself produces a number of other issues. How will a shared mandate be agreed and seen by voters, and how will that translate into anything better than, yet again, another coalition majority?
The underlying basis of the D'Hondt system as set out on the Scotland Act is that the party that has the most constituency seats is handicapped significantly and has purely been set to minimise the likelihood of anyone succeeding in gaining a majority. Like it or mostly not, the Westminster establishment, who have the final say on the Scotland Act and devolution itself, do not recognise a coalition as forming a public mandate.
While there are demands for the SNP to bend over and accept unquestionably others' support, they are the largest party by far and with the most visible media presence, such as it is. So, it really needs the other parties to join in and accept and acknowledge the larger partner in that shared goal. In this it has to be remembered that Alex Salmond gained a referendum on the basis of a Holyrood majority, not for any other reason. Alba, for all their best stated intentions, are saddled with the Marmite presence and legacy of Alex Salmond, who had used his platform and visibility as a means of attacking Nicola Sturgeon and by inference the rest of the SNP. The wider public then saw factional infighting and lost their trust that Scotland could go it alone. The message of Independence became lost in the media mire, leaving Unionists laughing at us.
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It is of course fair for the larger partner to be gracious and accept others' assistance and support, but that also requires the smaller to play its part by not undermining the other. In each of the elections since 2011, the SNP went from a list-vote high to fewer and fewer list seats. It is not possible to predict the outcome of the regional vote as it is down to the various proportions of votes cast. There are far too many ifs and buts for this to be reliable, other than to reiterate that any splitting of voting intentions can only harm prospects. Which again illustrates the difficulties of involving smaller or fringe parties. For Alba to have any significant bearing on the outcome they must be prepared to fully support the SNP, and acknowledge that another coalition may not actually help the ultimate goal.
To gain public acceptance we need to demonstrate firstly that we can govern ourselves without factional fights, and secondly that we have a credible financial plan. The first means we need to show people how the country would work through a written draft constitution, and secondly how we can budget with all of our GDP and taxes. The public can then see tangibly what they are being asked to support. This needs to show how pensions would be managed, how and when we would introduce our own currency, what we would do about defence in tomorrow's uncertain world. These need to be in simple presentable and meaningful form, not embedded in multi-thousand-page white papers of options. All independence supporters need to get behind these common messages and all the internal bickering, argumentative navel-gazing, new or changed parties can wait until after independence.
Ultimately, what is more important: being independent, or being the ones who gain the kudos of getting us there?
Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire