Monday 13 October 2014

MSP defection strengthens Greens but does SNP little harm.


On 28 August 2014, Conservative MP for Clacton Douglas Carswell resigned his seat  after  his defection to UKIP on the eve of the Tory party conference  and leading to a by-election in his Clacton constituency, he stood for and won as UKIP, leading to the first UKIP Member of Parliament.
Just a month after the defection of Carswell, a second Conservative MP - the MP for Rochester and Strood Mark Reckless - announced his defection to the party at UKIP's annual conference in Doncaster
Interestingly  that : the Highlands and Islands of the largest geographical region of UKplc to be precise, an MSP  Joun Finniewho left the SNP back in 2011 when they signalled a policy u-turn and declared their commitment to staying in NATO if Scotland were to choose independence, throws his lot in with the Scottish Greens at the start of their annual conference. has hardly produced a ripple
JFjoinsSGP
John Finnie and Jean Urquhar defected from the party over the SNP’s change to a more pro-NATO policy. and have been sitting as Independents forming a Bloc with the Greens.
In September  MSP John Wilson quit the party whip in the Scottish Parliament, reducing the SNP's majority to one.
Mr Wilson was critical over the party's decision to endorse Scotland's membership of Nato, in the event of independence.
He said he would have quit earlier but did not want to damage the YES campaign Following the referendum "No" vote, the Central Scotland list MSP 
And Yet this has hardly produced a ripple.in the media who are dying to find negative SNP stories.
Maybe its because it has not damaged the SNP one Iota

Electoral  Calculus  latest prediction points to the SNP possibly being the Third Largest Party in the House of Commons in 2015
Party2010 Votes2010 SeatsPred VotesPred Seats
CON16.75%120.00%4
LAB42.00%4131.00%30
LIB18.88%116.00%2
UKIP0.70%04.00%0
NAT19.93%633.00%23
MIN1.75%06.00%0



Unfortunately do not give accurate figures for Wales relying on the previous Plaid vote.yo make predictions.

It is quite extraordinary that both the SNP and Scottish Greens have benefited from these defections .

Whilst the two Tory MPs have honourably chosen to resign their seats and fight a Byelection the choice is not opent to the three SNP members.

As regional MSP if they were to resign then there would be no Byelection the seat would pass to the SNP.

It shows the ridiculous nature of the additional member system. ON 8 December 2009, Mohammad Asghar became the first AM to cross the floor, defecting from Plaid Cymru to the Conservative Party. He claimed that he felt "out of tune" with Plaid policies, described himself as a royalist and unionist,and stated that he felt like "a little parrot in a jungle".

So Plaid effectively lost a seat even though it was theirs if Asghar had resigned or died and the same seems to apply in Scotland.
Mind you whilst the three MSP might have fought a byelection  I soubt Asghar would have chosen to.


Except of course the SNP can probably still rely on the support of two of the defectors.and as i have said have not been damaged by them.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

agree entirely with your sentiments for a 'progressive left' future for wales, but how do we bring it about?