Latest news with #ElectoralReformSociety
The Herald Scotland
24-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
SNP on track for Holyrood landslide on 35% vote
Using the Gallagher Index – a standard international measure of electoral disproportionality – Mr McGeoghegan found the 2026 Scottish Parliament election would score 27.3 for constituency seats alone. He said this would be the third–highest level of distortion globally if it occurred in a national election. READ MORE The current Additional Member System (AMS) used to elect MSPs combines first–past–the–post constituencies with a proportional top–up via regional lists. But Mr McGeoghegan warned that the balance has become increasingly skewed, particularly as the political landscape fragments and the pro–union vote is divided among multiple parties. Writing in The Herald, he said: 'This disproportionality is almost entirely a result of the first–past–the–post component of Holyrood's electoral system. The SNP are set to win just short of 60 of [the 73 constituency seats] – 82% of the seats on a 35% vote share.' The total Gallagher Index score for the full 2026 election is projected at 11.2 – more than 50% higher than the 7.1 recorded in 2011, when the SNP won a majority under a system designed to prevent any one party from doing so. The warning follows what has been described as the most disproportionate general election in British history. Labour won 63 per cent of seats at Westminster on just 34% of the vote, with a Gallagher Index score of 23.6 – higher than any UK election before it. The Electoral Reform Society said 16.6 million voters were now 'unrepresented' as a result. While the level of distortion in Scotland is not as extreme, the consequences could still be profound. According to Mr McGeoghegan, the likely result in 2026 is a pro–independence majority in Parliament – even if most voters back unionist parties. 'There is something grimly ironic about this,' he wrote. 'Holyrood's electoral system is a creature of Labour's creation. The lopsided Additional Member System, skewed towards constituency MSPs, was a compromise intended to keep power in Labour's hands. But… it now functions to keep power in the SNP's hands instead.' He added: 'If the SNP remain in power after next May, which they are likely to do, it will be thanks to the constituency vote. They are set to lose just four seats compared to the 2021 election, despite their vote share falling by around a third.' Responding to the research, Willie Sullivan of the Electoral Reform Society said the system could be improved, but was far better than the alternative. He said: 'My initial thoughts on this are thank God we do not have a first–past–the–post system for Scottish elections. We would be seeing large majority governments on nowhere near majority votes – and as the projection shows, no majority is expected in Scotland next year. 'As you know, it is an associative world, so it is important to be careful when suggesting a system that gives a huge majority on 34% of the vote is even in the ballpark as an election or system where the largest party will likely fail to get a majority on a similar or higher vote share. "Armed robbery and shoplifting are both theft – but they are not really the same thing. 'AMS does give much more representative results in multi–party systems, so is a vast improvement on FPTP. It is relatively very good, but could always be made better. 'The split in FPTP to the regional lists that adjust to make the result more proportional is 50 per cent to 45 per cent – and if it was wanted to make it more proportional, that could be 50/50. 'Also, the formula for calculating the top–up might be changed from D'Hondt to Sainte–Laguë, as D'Hondt does tend to provide a bit of a largest–party or winner bonus. In theory, these changes could be made fairly easily.'
Daily Mirror
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Farage's Reform UK reached a 'tipping point' - and it's worrying news for Labour
Analysis of the local election results by the Electoral Reform Society shows Reform getting an almost 10-percentage point 'winner's bonus' in their haul of council seats last Thursday compared to their vote share Reform UK have reached a 'tipping point' where Britain's electoral system works for them rather than holding them back. Nigel Farage's party has long opposed the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system which holds back challenger parties. But analysis of the local election results by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) shows Reform getting an almost 10-percentage point 'winner's bonus' in their haul of council seats last Thursday compared to their vote share. Across 22 of the 23 councils contested last Thursday, Reform won just under 31% of the vote but garnered just over 40% of the seats, leading to a 'winner's bonus' of 9.8 points. In the 2013 local elections - when Ukip got its strongest vote - the party got just 5% of the council seats available, despite winning 20% of the vote. The ERS analysis shows that just a 12.2-point increase in Reform's vote share in 2025 compared to UKIP's in 2013 has resulted in a huge 35.5-point increase in council seat share. Darren Hughes, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said: "It is clear from these results that UK elections are turning into a random lottery to see which party will get the 'winner's bonus' under First Past the Post. " But in worrying news for Labour, Keir Starmer's party suffered the greatest electoral penalty from the FPTP system at the local elections, seeing a difference of -8.2 points, with its 14% vote share yielding just 5% of council seats. Labour benefited from the system hugely in last year's general election, turning a slim lead in votes to a huge commons majority. The FPTP system saw Labour win a landslide 63% of the seats in Westminster on just 34% of the vote [2], leading to the most disproportional parliament in British history. Mr Hughes added: "At these local elections we again saw that people are voting in an increasingly multi-party way and our two-party voting system is simply unable to cope. "That is why it is throwing out distorted results that don't represent the way people voted with parties winning majorities on councils on just over a quarter of the vote. "This just underlines the need to move to a fairer, proportional electoral system for town halls, as well as Westminster, that accurately reflects the way people vote in the seats parties receive. "Rather than gifting different parties massive electoral bonuses that don't represent the votes they won, the only bias the electoral system should have is to the voters."
The Herald Scotland
03-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Holyrood is not the people's parliament - it is run by an elite
First, there are desires shown by the recent findings of the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) Scotland survey. It highlighted a clear decline in the levels of trust in political parties and politicians at Holyrood. Indeed, those political parties and politicians are ranked even lower in the trust table than their counterparts at Westminster. And investigations by The Ferret on 'who runs Scotland' in 2021 and 2025 have shown that corporate lobbyists have too much influence over Scottish governments and Scottish governments have been too willing to be influenced by them. Those polled by ERS Scotland also wanted a certain type of consensus politics to operate, showing that they have not given up on all hope that the situation could be rectified. They also favoured more decentralisation of democracy. Second, there is the means to have a considerable changing of the guard at Holyrood. Of the current 129 MSPs, 25% have already indicated they will no longer stand again for re-election. Critically, of these MSPs, 75% are SNP MSPs. Among these are the likes of Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousuf and Shona Robison and a host of other former and current cabinet secretaries. This churn in SNP MSPs is crucial because polling has shown that for some time since mid-2024 that the SNP will again be the largest single party in the parliament and, thus, able to take the lead in forming the next Scottish Government. Put another way round, the Scottish Labour Party is in the doldrums and Anas Sarwar will not become the new First Minister as he predicted in both 2022 and 2025. Concerns about the SNP's incompetence, ineptitude, tardiness and arrogance have slipped somewhat as citizens increasingly complain about the austerity 2.0 of Sir Keir Starmer (aka Sir Kid Starver). Apprehensions about losing experienced figures, as expressed by likes of The Guardian in mid-March this year, are then seen to pale into insignificance compared to the opportunity for younger and fresher blood to enter Parliament notwithstanding that some of these may be from Reform. Indeed, losing experience is seen as a veritably good thing because it has been the main part of the problem. Read more Yet this is all misplaced optimism if not also downright naivety. For example, in The Herald's sister newspaper, The National, one of its columnists, Ellie Gomersall, in mid-March proffered that with so many MSPs standing down, there is a chance for reset. Put as plainly as possible, all the political parties that will have representation in Holyrood on 7 May 2026 will have drawn their candidates from the professional-managerial class (PMC). The PMC is a concept coined by two radical American activists in the late 1970s but it has recently been revised by American academic, Catherine Liu, in her Virtue Hoarders book. She characterised the modern PMC as a group of people afflicted with a superiority complex in relation to the hoi polloi. These virtue hoarders not only engage in virtue signalling to show that they align with progressive popular sentiments but also to show that they are technocratically best placed to prosecute these sentiments through the public positions they hold. The PMC is the same class that more than 90% of MSPs have been drawn from since the return of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. So, 2026 will not be a game-changer but another case of plus ça change. Indeed, in the 2021 Scottish parliamentary elections, 34 MSPs chose not to stand again, the highest number ever and currently two higher than for 2026. Was there any discernible difference from 2021 onwards because of a new batch of new MSPs? The ERS Scotland survey suggests the answer is definite no. (Image: Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf) The new would-be MSPs standing for election in 2026 for the SNP, for example, are a collection of councillors, political campaign operatives, party staffers and current and former MPs. These types are supplemented in the SNP and the other political parties by those with professional backgrounds in accountancy, law, medicine, journalism, public relations, management consultancy and education (schools, colleges and universities). All are highly educated in formal terms at least. But their quintessential qualification for parliament comes from their monopoly of knowledge and expertise from these professions which crucially then brings forth personal self-confidence and self-esteem, networking skills and public speaking abilities. A long time ago, former miners' union leader in Scotland, the gravelly-voiced Mick McGahey, conceived of what would become Holyrood as a 'workers' parliament'. This was part and parcel of the process by which the STUC became an advocate for home rule as it was then called. Over the years, fewer and fewer MSPs came from union backgrounds as Scottish Labour became subject to the sycophancy of 'new Labour'. Recalling McGahey's injunction is not necessarily to make a plea to have bricklayers, plumbers, warehouse workers and care assistants selected for and elected to Holyrood. Of course, that would help. Rather, it is to try to see the wood for the trees so that seen in the round, the party and individual politics of the news MSPs are far less important than this shared worldview. They believe that they are then in a better position than anyone else by reason of their virtues to make legislation and direct government on our behalf. The rub is that as an elite class, they are defenders in one way or another of the status quo. The only revision that needs to be made about the PMC in Scotland is to note that we now have a sub-group of it, namely, the political PMC or PPMC. And, of those MSPs that do not stand again or are not re-elected, many become lieutenants of the lobbyists identified by The Ferret. Professor Gregor Gall is a research associate at Glasgow University and editor of A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society (Pluto Press, 2022).
The Herald Scotland
28-04-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
We will pay a heavy price for messing up the national grid
The result: a bewildering confusion of complex regulatory measures, inter-business contractual arrangements, short and long-term energy bidding, Contracts for Difference and system planning by politicians instead of independent engineering experts. All create Byzantine complexity, plus rich pickings for lawyers, accountants and speculative investors. It is very bad for consumers. It has also resulted in the death of the UK's electrical engineering industry employment, as the new owners procure plant from outside the UK. With the necessary requirement to eliminate CO2 emissions and rely on remote, weak, intermittent generation resources and energy storage, all financed by private capital, the system complexity and supply insecurity has increased, as have costs for consumers. All three will continue increasing. Not only will the populace have to endure increasing energy costs, they will have to suffer the psychological consequences of the associated landscape destruction and the increased chance of blackouts, rolling load-shedding and/or voltage reduction. Sadly, the UK national grid "silver tea set" was sold and it is very unlikely we could ever afford to buy it back again. Norman McNab, Killearn. Read more letters Go local with our democracy I note with interest your front page lead story on Friday ("Angry, anxious Scots say no to 'strong man' politics", The Herald, April 25) and thank you and the Electoral Reform Society for summarising and quantifying what many Scots feel. Every year our council leader, senior members of their team and the supporting civil servants do a round of the six wards that make up North Ayrshire Council. The objective is to share good news from the past year and plans for the future. That it is a good thing. The bigger objective is to highlight the inevitable large funding gap for the next year's council budget. Apart from agreeing how tough it must be, the ward audience can offer no meaningful suggestions on how to manage this six-ward council budget. What better way to 'bringing power closer to our communities' than by identifying the council budget at the ward level, by population to start with? Show local people how money is being spent in their name, in their ward, as a first step. Then create structures that empower them to decide how 'local' priorities are set and money spent to deliver them. Arran is the only one-ward island in Scotland and an excellent place to start this experiment. We have a locally developed and managed Island Plan, supported by the local and national government. Participatory budgeting and an active community council: all the ingredients to create a ward or island assembly are there. This would establish local priorities and the budget to deliver them. This goes a long way to making sure that as your report says, 'what comes next must ensure decisions are made closer to the people they affect'. It does not have to happen all at once, but "Scotland in Miniature" could offer a model to engage the 'unheard and disempowered'. In any event, it is worth a try. Tom Tracey, Brodick. • I note with interest the Electoral Reform Society survey. Consider the last nine months since the new Labour Government came to power with promise of change and all the pledges from the party north of the Border that it would defend Scotland at Westminster. To date there is no evidence of that to report; however it can be noted that Scottish Labour MPs have fallen into line behind the PM and Chancellor who are going after the vulnerable and pensioners. A new Labour Government continuing the cost of living crisis with increases in energy costs, increases in employers, National Insurance and austerity cuts; is it any wonder the general public are disillusioned and angry? Catriona C Clark, Falkirk. Why does even Iceland do better? In questioning why support for Scottish independence has remained high (and in fact is now apparently growing again), Michael Sheridan (Letters, April 23) conveniently ignores the fact that since 2014 Scotland has been taken out of the European Union by Westminster and, in spite of claims to the contrary, our oil and gas resources have not run out (in fact we now have considerably greater access to our vast energy resources, although regrettably this is not reflected in the UK pricing mechanism). In the meantime, the United Kingdom has become increasingly broken – democratically, economically and socially. In addressing Mr Sheridan's rhetorical questions I would pose some questions of my own that would dispose entirely of his arguments that Vladimir Putin would wish for Scotland to achieve independence in a new constitutional referendum. Would Mr Putin wish the UK to remain isolated from Europe or prefer an independent Scotland to further strengthen and possibly embolden the European Union? The United Kingdom did not substantially honour its commitment to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum (1994) when Russia invaded Crimea (2014) and in failing, along with the United States, to take significant action proved not to be a 'last bastion' of support. Would Mr Putin have real cause to think that the UK would act differently in future, unless the United Kingdom itself was to fundamentally change? Flying kites is a diversionary pastime but if we wish to seriously debate Scotland's constitutional future we should perhaps first consider why other small countries, and even relatively tiny Iceland, can make better progress in advancing the wishes and aspirations of their peoples than a country manipulated for the benefit of the British Establishment by a Westminster Parliament out of touch with the wishes and aspirations of the people of Scotland. Stan Grodynski, Longniddry. This is not independence Why do those who write in support of Scotland leaving the UK and joining instead the EU persist in trying to pull the wool over our eyes by misidentifying that as gaining 'independence"? In reality it would involve our sovereignty passing from Westminster to Brussels, so where is the independence in that? To clarify its intentions, a step in the right direction for the SNP would be for it to rename itself as the STP (Sovereignty Transfer Party), but I won't be holding my breath. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the original concept of the European Common Market, but not the ever-closer political union which some empire builders seem determined it must become. Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop. Jamie Greene (Image: Scottish Parliament) A task for Jamie Greene Jamie Greene's recent defection to the Lib Dems, while retaining his role as the deputy convener of the Public Audit Committee, will perhaps help to focus the parliament on some of the bread and butter matters fixable without major legislative changes. To mention but two of these matters: public money paying for paracetamol prescriptions is not value for money and is fixable, and burdening small businesses in Business Improvement Districts (BID) with taxes above 4% of their non-domestic rate is fixable. Lib Dem compatriots south of the Border will be aware of English BID guideline limits, resulting in most levies being 1%-2.5% of non-domestic rate. In Scotland it is limitless. And levies can go wild. In Alloa town centre, the majority of businesses pay the highest BID levies in Scotland. There is no opt-out, so a tiny unit can be charged as much as 300%. And as a local tax it has to be paid. With oversight of the Public Audit Committee, as well as influence on the Government's programme, there is a glimmer of hope that this political switch by Jamie Greene will help to resolve some real bread and butter issues. Daphne Hamilton, Alloa.
