In just over a fortnight there will be the seventh Scottish Parliament election.
Now the main speculation about the result has been over whether the SNP will gain an overall majority alone despite polling only around 35% of the popular vote or whether they will to have to rely on The Greens to maintain (for whatever importance that matters) an "independence Majority" in the Parliament.
And I accept, based on polling, that's a reasonable focus.
But that's not my focus here. Rather it is what happens if no combination of two Parties together can get to the magic 65 seats needed to govern with a working majority? That's not entirely idle speculation for three reasons. Firstly because Labour is not in truth fighting 73 constituency seats, we are truly contesting in only 30 to 40 but we are working them hard. If we gain any of them they will all be at the expense of the SNP. Secondly, The Liberal Democrats are in a similar position except that they have only, by their own express admission, 10 target seats. But again, if they gain any of them it will be at the expense of the SNP. Thirdly, the Greens, with the exception of one constituency, are focused entirely on the lists. An even marginal decline in their vote there, far from seeing them improve their Parliamentary representation, might actually see it decline. The numbers are genuinely very tight by which, on a not particularly bad result, they could nonetheless return to the five they secured in 2016.
So, it is by no means impossible that the Green and Nats together end up with (say 62 or 63 seats between them. What happens then? And for that we have only one precedent. The election of 2007 which first brought the SNP to power.
The result then was SNP 47 seats; Labour 46; Tories 17; Liberal Democrats 16; Greens 2 and Independent (Margo) 1.
Now the first stroke of genius came in the aftermath of that result becoming clear. Alex Salmond emerged from a helicopter at Prestonfield House Hotel to declare that "While it might not yet be clear who has won this election, it is clear who has lost. "
Yet this was only partially true. Labour and the Liberal Democrats had gone into the election with a combined total of 67 seats and although they had lost five, still commanded a potential Parliamentary vote of 62, three short of an absolute majority but still far more than the Nationalists. But the Lib Dems didn't see it like this, They announced they would be leaving the coalition and going in to opposition. And there was no persuading them otherwise. Now Labour still retained another potential source of votes, the Tories. A formal coalition would have been out of the question but all that would have been required was to secure their votes to re-appoint Jack McConnell as First Minister. Yet the surviving Labour Group would not countenance that. So, in due course Alex Salmond beat Jack for the First Ministers post with the Liberal Democrats and Tories (and Margo) abstaining by 49 votes (his own 47 plus the 2 Greens) to 46. Salmond then proceeded to form a minority SNP administration.
Now, at this point I only pause to observe how different Scottish politics would have been had the Liberal Democrats acted differently. Their preference to embrace opposition remains inexplicable to this day, they equally declined a coalition approach from the SNP. Or even had the Tories been approached to vote differently. There was at least an assumption on the part of my own Party that an SNP Government would prove chaotic leading to, at worst, our comfortable return to power in 2011. Neither of these assumptions proved true. Indeed Mr Salmond governed comfortably and competently for four years despite commanding only just more than a third of the votes in the Holyrood chamber. And the rest is history.
Now what lessons can we draw from this? Just one. That in the aftermath of an inconclusive election what really matters is who becomes First Minister. Once you are in power the difficulty of gathering sufficient votes to remove you can't be overstated. Mr Salmond demonstrated that.
But that still leaves a second issue this time. To defeat Mr Swinney in the contest seeking his re-appointment as First Minister with only a minority of potential overall votes would require all of the opposition votes for Anas. Not just the Libs and Tories but also those of Reform UK. Now I accept these votes could never be solicited but they will still have to be cast (or abstained). So, if the polls tighten even slightly, then at some point, possibly even only after the ballot has closed, Malcolm Offord will need to be asked what he would then do.
