Super Thursday 2021, part 2: The Scottish Parliament and the Senedd

Scottish Parliament:

The Scottish Parliament election, Senedd (fka Welsh Assembly) election and London Assembly delivered some rather unexpected results, even with the overall results broadly the same as predicted.

The fallout between First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and former First Minister Alex Salmond in Scotland, the latter of whom formed his own Alba Party, made headlines in Scotland for weeks especially as it came just months after Mr Salmond was acquitted of 14 sex offences. A majority of MSPs then affirmed that Ms Sturgeon had "misled" the enquiry surrounding the allegations against Mr Salmond, which consequently resulted in the Alba Party's formation and the defection of two SNP MPs, Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey, along with ex-MPs Corri Wilson and Tasmina Akhmed-Sheikh, and others.

The SNP, who were perceived as having controlled the coronavirus crisis relatively well in Scotland, in fact managed a gain of one seat although they did not gain the overall majority they hoped for. "Unionist" tactical voting in marginal seats the SNP were defending largely came to nothing, with key exceptions being Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie's defence of North East Fife and the Conservatives' defence of Aberdeenshire West. The SNP in fact gained three more constituencies, namely Ayr, East Lothian, and Edinburgh Central, which had been held by former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, soon to enter the House of Lords as Baroness Davidson, although this did mean that Emma Harper became their only list MSP, in South Scotland which is also the least SNP-friendly region in Scotland. Since Britain left the EU, Scottish independence has consistently remained high on the agenda, even amidst the coronavirus crisis, the climate emergency and the damaging effects of Brexit on Scotland. Alba, meanwhile, was comprehensively humiliated across Scotland, polling just 1.7% and not coming close to winning a list seat anywhere. Even in North East Scotland, where the SNP made their first real breakthrough in 1974, Alba polled only 2.3%. 

The Scottish Greens, by comparison, achieved their best ever result but it was however not as good as they hoped. On the back of a green wave that was rolling across the rest of Britain, they won 2 extra seats, winning seats in all regions except South Scotland, which is also the most ardently unionist region in Scotland. In the Highlands & Islands region, they kept their MSP but progress was stalled by Andy Wightman, who had resigned from the Scottish Greens last year over differing stances on gender-based rights, standing as an Independent. Mr Wightman's efforts proved fruitless, as he only managed to poll 1.4%, not even close to winning a list seat. 

The Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats found their efforts to oust Nicola Sturgeon stymied. The Conservatives were lucky not to make a net loss of seats, gaining two list seats to compensate for their losses of Ayr and Edinburgh Central, and the strong swings they made against the SNP in rural Aberdeenshire were ultimately for nothing, with a failure to secure a post-Brexit fishing deal having scuppered strong Conservative prospects here, and their much vaunted hopes in Perthshire South & Kinross-shire, where prominent SNP MSP Roseanna Cunningham was retiring, did not materialise and there was in fact a 0.25% swing to the SNP. Nevertheless they maintained their position as the largest unionist party in Scotland, and increased their list vote by 0.6%.

Labour continued their poor run in Scotland, holding on to only Dumbarton and Edinburgh Southern at constituency level and going down to 22 seats, although it is safe to say that barring a major split in the party they cannot get much lower than this record low unless Scotland declares independence. Their leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, spectacularly failed to gain Glasgow Southside from Ms Sturgeon, not that he had any realistic chance of doing so. They made no headway against the SNP and found themselves squeezed easily by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in marginals where Labour were third or fourth, and the SNP have once affirmed their mandate over the social-democratic and moderate vote in Scotland. Labour's support in Scotland now lies primarily in the public sector professional who for one reason or another opposes Scottish independence and Scottish nationalism, increasingly rare outside of Edinburgh. 

The Liberal Democrats likewise continued their poor run in Scotland, because for the first time they won no list seats whatsoever, and were reduced to their 4 constituency seats, namely Edinburgh Western, North East Fife, Orkney, and Shetland. Shetland also saw an impressive 18.8% swing to the SNP, and the Lib Dems only held it by 806 votes. Their attempts to regain former strongholds in the Highlands were decisively rebuffed. 

Former Respect MP George Galloway's attempts at a left-wing pro-unionist list, All for Unity, primarily for the purpose of relaunching his political career in Scotland, failed spectacularly; even in South Scotland they managed 2.0% and they polled 0.9% overall. Most voters in Scotland who could be considered "left-wing" are pro-independence and already have the SNP and Greens to vote for. This was however far better than the other main "far left" parties in Scotland, the Communist Party of Britain and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Both at least managed to beat UKIP, and on some lists Reform UK, who both completely flopped failing to poll even 1000 votes apiece in any region. Abolish the Scottish Parliament, inspired by the Abolish the Welsh Assembly party, also endured a spectacular failure, failing to poll more than 0.3% anywhere; clearly the Scottish Parliament is a useful bulwark against Westminster centralism. The wooden spoon of this Scottish Parliament election went to the Vanguard Party, the only party to poll fewer than 100 votes, managing just 92 in South Scotland. This is nevertheless twice as many as Britain First's Jayda Fransen managed in Glasgow Southside as an independent, her pathetic result bringing much laughter to the audience watching. 

The current arrangement of an SNP government with the Scottish Greens providing confidence and supply will undoubtedly continue, and stronger than before.

Senedd:

Against all expectations, Labour managed their best ever result in the Senedd, coming up one seat short of a majority, although with the Presiding Officer being Elin Jones of Plaid Cymru Labour will be able to run the Senedd without the need for even confidence and supply from other parties.

Labour won 30 seats, one more than in 2016, which represents an endorsement of Mark Drakeford's handling of the coronavirus crisis and of Welsh devolution, and of the marginal seats they were defending only the Vale of Clwyd was lost to the Conservatives; their majority actually increased in the Vale of Glamorgan and none of the other seats in Clwyd which they lost at Westminster came even close to being gained by the Conservatives. Labour also easily defended Bridgend, where former First Minister Carwyn Jones was retiring. They also spectacularly unseated former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood in Rhondda on a swing of 19%, almost as much as the swing that unseated Leighton Andrews by in 2016, and thwarted Helen Mary Jones' attempt to recapture Llanelli spectacularly. Although the lockdown in Wales was arguably stricter than either that of England or Scotland, it proved to be no impediment to Labour, and they actually increased their vote share by 5% overall (taking into account constituency and regional votes). 

A poor performance by Andrew RT Davies in the Senedd leaders' debate made no real difference, as the Conservatives under his tenure in Wales gained 5 seats, mostly due to the collapse of UKIP, and managed to reclaim second place, in addition to defending the highly marginal seat of Aberconwy, inter alia. Apart from gaining the Vale of Clwyd their only notable inroad against Labour was in the safe seat of Newport East, and most of their target seats actually swung to Labour. It is already clear that the "Red Wall" rhetoric serving the Conservatives well in northern England and the Midlands will not prove as helpful to them in Wales as initially believed.

Plaid Cymru under Adam Price suffered the real disappointment of this Senedd election, however. They only made a net gain of one seat and far from making headway in South Wales actually lost votes to Labour there, although in all fairness Mr Price appeals more to the traditional Plaid Cymru vote than Leanne Wood does (she appeals more to Glamorgan and Gwent). This did however serve them well in Ceredigion, putting the Liberal Democrats out of the picture there for the foreseeable future, and in Gwynedd. Unlike in Scotland Welsh independence is clearly not around the corner.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, were lucky to avoid ejection from the Senedd altogether. They lost Brecon & Radnorshire on a 19.5% swing, partly because of the loss of the incumbency vote of Kirsty Williams and because of the decline of the traditional liberal vote in Powys. Their vote collapsed in Cardiff Central and Ceredigion as well, and in Montgomeryshire suffered the humiliation of being pushed into third place by Plaid Cymru, in a constituency with only a modest proportion of Welsh speakers. The Liberal Democrats have essentially become an irrelevance in most of Wales, and only held on to representation in the Senedd via Jane Dodds winning a list seat. Even then their vote share in Mid & West Wales dropped to 6.8%, and furthermore they only saved six deposits at constituency level, all but two of those were in constituencies they had held before at either Senedd or Westminster level, or both. In the 13 constituencies where there was a Wales Green Party candidate and a Liberal Democrat candidate, the Greens finished ahead in all but Brecon & Radnorshire and Ceredigion.

Wales Green Party had their best ever result, beating the Liberal Democrats at list level for the first time ever. The Greens managed 4.4% and the Welsh Liberal Democrats only 4.3%. Wales Green Party failed to win any Senedd seats, even in South Wales Central, but they did save two deposits and only narrowly missed out on third place in Monmouth (Plaid Cymru were just 85 votes ahead; Monmouth is the weakest constituency for Plaid Cymru in all of Wales); they nearly saved their deposit in Brecon & Radnorshire and Cardiff North as well. It will not be long before they displace the Liberal Democrats in Wales although Wales Green Party will need to make more inroads in constituencies with high proportions of Welsh speakers, as evidenced by their small increase in Mid & West Wales compared to nearly doubling their 2016 vote in South East Wales. It is clear that they should have been given a full voice in the Senedd leaders' debate on 29 April and not Abolish the Welsh Assembly.

Abolish the Welsh Assembly found that Welsh devolution does in fact have a lot of support, because far from gaining any Senedd seats, they missed out on list seats by thousands and saw their vote share drop by 0.7%, and not just because they forgot to remove the words "Welsh Assembly" from their name. Their lack of any significant policies apart from abolishing the Senedd caused them to flop spectacularly, even in South Wales East which has always been the region least supportive of Welsh devolution. Only in Blaenau Gwent (a poor ex-mining constituency with a notable independent streak) did they save a deposit, and the MSs who had defected to them including Mark Reckless were soundly ejected from the Senedd. 

Neil McAvoy's splinter group, Propel, got nowhere for the most part. In fact in Cardiff West he ended up splitting the Plaid Cymru vote to allow the Conservatives to finish second, and Mr McAvoy came a poor fourth with 9.5%. The only other Propel candidate to save their deposit was Peter Read, partly due to the retirement of (Lord) Dafydd Elis-Thomas who can be regarded as a more traditional Plaid Cymru politician. Most Propel candidates could not even beat the Liberal Democrats or AWAP, and in every region except South Wales Central they did not manage even 1%. In fact even in South Wales Central they polled just 2.2%, and it is likely Propel will not contest another Senedd election. 

UKIP and Reform, meanwhile, found themselves lost now that Brexit has concluded in Britain, and Reform's anti-lockdown stance proved a moot point with all of Britain on the way out of lockdown. Neither UKIP nor Reform came close to saving a single deposit, and ironically Reform UK's best result came in Dwyfor Meirionydd via former Llais Gwynedd candidate Louise Hughes, who still finished behind her former party. Former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton managed a miserable 507 votes standing for UKIP in Islwyn. UKIP simply no longer has a reason to exist, and neither will Reform UK. As for other parties standing for the Senedd, Gwlad once again got nowhere and TUSC finished bottom of the poll in every single region except South Wales Central, where another George Galloway vanity project, the Workers' Party, polled even fewer votes, putting paid to their hopes of Corbyn supporters flocking to them with Sir Keir Starmer as Labour leader. The Communist Party of Britain fared little better.

Despite all the COVID-19 restrictions surrounding the election and the fact some people are still shielding at this time of writing, turnout in both the Scottish Parliament election and the Senedd election increased. In the Scottish Parliament it rose to 63%, the highest ever turnout in a Scottish Parliament election, reflecting how the divisive nature of the current Scottish Parliament brought out many disinterested unionist voters. The 46.5% turnout in the Senedd election is also the highest ever, although the campaigns were less inspiring than those in the Scottish Parliament election which is why the turnout increase was nowhere near as high (1.2% compared to a 7.8% increase in turnout for this year's Scottish Parliament election).