Plan for SNP majority as mandate for independence won’t work

Our voting systems just don’t make it fair. We have to bring people round to independence, not have them feel it is being imposed on them by a voting system which essentially gives people two votes where those opposed to independence have their votes split across multiple parties.

Imagine at the last General Election Boris has taken a victory as a mandate to leave the EU with no deal. We’d have rightly been calling it unfair due to the voting system allowing him a majority with less than 50% of the vote. The SNP achieved a Holyrood majority in 2011 with 45% vote share. Do we honestly think, hand on heart that would be acceptable to all if we achieved that success this time and declared independence? And is your answer to that is yes, ask yourself again where the issue is one you don’t support?

I could perhaps get on board if there was a caveat that more than 50% of constituent votes went to Indy supporting parties, but given how difficult this will be, failure to achieve it will, as far as unionist concerned, be seen as defeat for another vote as well as an independence declaration. They won’t distinguish between the two.

As I say, I’m as frustrated as anyone, but we should be directing this frustration at the UK Government and exposing their anti-democratic stance, not moving the goalposts to suit our own objectives.

We need to stay objective and be fair to all of those with a vote or we risk alienating those we need to get onboard.

Maggie Rankin

Stirling

THE plan to maximise the number of independence supporting MSPs elected to the Scottish Parliament next year is not intended to split the SNP and Green vote (Letters, March 6). There is no good reason for the Green Party’s position to change. The SNP’s main raison d’être is to achieve independence for Scotland. In 6 out of 8 Regions, voting for the SNP on the Regional List resulted in no seats won. In Highlands and Islands only 1 seat was won. Only in South Scotland could it be claimed that the SNP, with three seats, achieved some success in the regional list vote and that was because they won relatively few constituency seats there. The vast majority of votes for the SNP on the regional list counted for nothing because the totals were divided (split, if you like) by factors ranging from five to 10 before being compared with the totals achieved by other parties. So, for most voters who vote SNP to achieve independence for Scotland, it makes no sense to waste their List vote in this way. The Alliance for Independence plan would, given current voting intentions, ensure a significant majority of independence supporting MSPs being elected in 2021.

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Of course, if SNP support were to increase to, say 65/70%, or to plummet, then a different calculation would need to be made, but, as things stand, the Independence Alliance plan certainly deserves serious consideration as advocated by Brian Kelly (Letters, March 5).

Julian Smith

Limekilns

A LETTER from S Fisk (Debate has revealed our confusion about electoral systems, Letters, March 2) has thankfully clarified two significant misconceptions as expressed in quite a number of recent letters.

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First, the Holyrood voting system, while there is an element of “proportionality”, it is absolutely NOT “preferential”. As in the constituency vote, it is First Past The Post for the list, just one cross in the correct box. We surely need this to change. The second is who it is that actually gets elected from the “list”. This is wholly dependent on the sum of the result of the individual constituencies in the specific regional groups. So we don’t have a “one size fits all” scenario. It will require astute analysis to achieve a really good result. I wonder about those who want to create a new entity to contest the “list” vote when the pro-independence Greens are already there? Have we different “heads of pins” to dance on? It would also be interesting to see his spreadsheet. My vision of a Scotland free from Westminster is one where subsidiarity really means that communities have a significant stake and role in their services, future and development. That genuine sustainability is at the heart of all aspect of economic activity. Further, decisions that have a long term impact on our future like major infrastructure and planning decisions, and ones that destroy the potential to access our past, are taken with due regard to their impact, not in the short term of five or ten years, but five and even seven GENERATIONS hence. I am not sure that we can achieve this with the hegemony of the present SNP regime. There is a further factor that I have referred to before. That is that is ensuring there is as near as damn it, we have 100% voter registration, for life, AND we get the vote out.

Willie Oswald

Blanefield