British Politics Guide

[Raphael]

Afterthought: Does anyone else think that "Malcolm Ian Offord, Baron Offord of Garvel" sounds like the name of the heroic protagonist of a very poorly researched political thriller set in Scotland which was written by an American author with far-right political views and little knowledge of Scotland?

It's a British title (and a life peerage at that), not a Scottish title. The identity of surname and name of the barony would be unusual for a Scottish title, but is extremely common for a British title.

Thank you!

[alice]

Is there any serious risk of Reform making inroads in Scotland in the first place? Ok, having looked at the Wikipedia page for the next Holyrood election, I have my doubts that the Baron Offord of Garvel will have the voters throwing themselves at him, but what about the Westminster level?

There's a not insignificant chunk of the onionist electorate for whom either the Conservatives are not nasty enough or Labour is tainted by Keir Starmer, but it's rather smaller than in England. Enough for them to make a lot of noise about but nowhere near enough to be anything more than a noisy nuisance.

[Raphael]

What, there are people in Scotland whose political identity is centered on their love for an American satirical website?

[alice]

What, there are people in Scotland whose political identity is centered on their love for an American satirical website?

onionist, not Onionist (and definitely not TheOnionist).

[malloc]

What, there are people in Scotland whose political identity is centered on their love for an American satirical website?

Yeah, wondering about that as well. Perhaps she means "unionist".

[Ketsuban]

"Unionist" in Scotland means "in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom", while "nationalist" means "in favour of an independent Scotland". alice is using "onionist" as a subtle jab at what I assume is the position she disagrees with.

Nationalism has gained some degree of favour in Scotland post-Brexit due to the possibility of returning to EU membership after throwing off the London yoke, but it has the minor procedural issue that Westminster thinks that the issue was decided in 2014 and that calling another referendum is not within Holyrood's power.

[Lērisama]

but it has the minor procedural issue that Westminster thinks that the issue was decided in 2014 and that calling another referendum is not within Holyrood's power.

There was a court case over this; they definitely don't have the power ¹.

¹ I think this is wrong, but the Scotland Act is very clear on the subject.

[malloc]

Horrible news yesterday. Local elections have swept the far right into power across the country.

[bradrn]

Horrible news yesterday. Local elections have swept the far right into power across the country.

Don’t put the cart before the horse, as they say. There has been a tremendous increase in Reform councilors, it is true; but that doesn’t necessary translate to them being ‘in power’ if there are more councilors from other parties, as appears to be the case.

(Also, ‘across the country’ is false, at least for now. So far we only have results from England.)

[Lērisama]

Horrible news yesterday. Local elections have swept the far right into power across the country.

No. Reform currently have control of 2 English councils more than they did before, and the majority of councils are not under their control. We are still waiting for the parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales and for a lot of the English councils that don't count overnight. The interesting thing, and honestly the most worrying given Reform have performed a little below expectations if anything¹, will be whether the Tories understand the concept of a Cordon Sanitare in the inevitable coalition negotiations in country and town halls in the coming weeks.

¹ I my city they have performed I little below expectations, and worse than last year; I haven't checked nationally, and there's no point until more results come in, but they haven't won anything people have been surprised about – most of their gains have been from the Tories rather than Labour².

¹ A split left vote can lead to a seat going Labour → Reform, even if there were very few actual Lab/Ref switchers, given how badly the Tories are doing. The opposite dynamic does occur but is rarer, because we have more left wing parties. First Past the Post is fun.
² Which noöne seems

Edit: I forgot to mention, but turnout also looks to be around 10% better than is usual for local elections, where turnout is usually dismal. The same seems to apply in Scotland and Wales, although from a higher base (only slightly in Wales' case).


Arrgh! Footnote numbering mistake!

[bradrn]

Why do you have two footnotes numbered ⟨¹⟩?

[Ketsuban]

Gwynedd Maldwyn is the last Welsh constituency to return so we can now talk about the Senedd: no overall majority, but Plaid Cymru are the largest party. Given both Labour and the Conservatives took a beating it seems like the story is less malloc's nightmare fantasy of a wave of fascism and more people abandoning the orthodox "centre" in favour of parties more firmly and explicitly positioned on the left and right.

[Lērisama]

The BBC have now published their projected national voteshare for Great Britain¹². Note how the total voteshare for left wing parties sums to >53%³ and the right to 43%, but this isn't reflected well in seats because of Our Wonderful Voting System™⁴⁶.



¹ Extrapolation and votes-at-local-elections-don't-mecessarily-reflect-how-that-same-person-would-have-voted-in-a-general-election caveats apply, of course
² i.e. excluding Northern Ireland because they a) had no elections and b) have a completely different party system.
³ Because there'll be SNP & Plaid Cymru votes in ‘others.’
⁴ In England only now, and even there elected mayors are back to SV⁵ from next year, except some Welsh councils, I think. We're getting there. Slowly.
⁵ The supplementary vote, where you get one extra preference and do an instant runoff of the top two candidates where necessary, i.e. weak preferential voting. It was abolished in 2022 in the same act as required voter ID to vote in person, because it disadvantaged the Tories, who were doin badly then Boris Johnson said so.
⁶ Have I mentioned I really don't like FPTP?

[bradrn]

b) have a completely different party system.

Oh?

[Lērisama]

b) have a completely different party system.

Oh?

Oh, where do I start? Northern Irish politics is almost completely oriented around the sectarian/constitutional¹ axis. There are 5-and-a-bit main parties in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, it was a roughly two party system between the the UUP² (unionist, no violence), and the SDLP³ (nationalist, also no violence) and. Then after they started to compromise in order to stop the ongoing civil war, they were largely but not entirely replaced by the DUP⁴⁵ (more shouty, weird-kinds-of-Protestantism-influenced UUP) and (the Northern branch of) and Sinn Féin⁶ (now definitely against violence, would rather you don't ask about before the ceasefire thank you very much). There's also the Alliance party, which would like everyone to get along without sectarianism and have traditionally been the smallest of the five, but have recently overtaken the SDLP. On a left-right kind of scale, the SDLP have a complicated relationship with Labour, the UUP have an even more complicated one with the Tories that at various points has involved taking their whip⁷ and the Alliance and the Lib Dems have mutual vague warm feelings.

In smaller party news, you have more extreme versions of each side, some greens and some republican-but-not-officially-because-they-want-to-be-socialist-first people. The more extreme unionists even have a single seat in Stormont⁸ and an MP.

¹ Depending on how good a day it's having
² Ulster Unionist Party
³ Social Democratic and Labour Party
⁴ Democratic Unionist Party
⁵ This had started quite a bit earlier, but the UUP was still bigger until a little after the Good Friday Agreement.
⁶ Irish Gaelic, we ourselves, named after the original Sinn Féin of the independence movement.
⁷ I.e. voting as they are told to and the associated being part of the party privileges
⁸ I.e. the Northern Irish assembly. All the devolved bodies get metonyms as well as Westminster, because why not, although noöne actually uses Cardiff Bay for the Senedd because it's boring.