Famous Double Acts

Alan Cochrane and his better half Jenny Hjul seem to be operating as a political 'tag team' again with separate articles in The Telegraph and Herald newspapers which argue the case for tactical voting against the SNP in the May general election.

I think The Herald should have saved itself some money by asking Alan if they could just re-publish his piece.

Party bigwigs may say 'don't vote tactically', but something's stirring

Grassroots supporters of the Union won't be dissuaded from taking a tactical approach to the general election



By Alan Cochrane - The Telegraph

Everyone who was anyone at the Scottish Conservative conference the weekend before last said much the same: Prime Minister David Cameron, Scottish leader Ruth Davidson, Minister of State David Mundell, chairman Richard Keen and senior MSP Murdo Fraser all echoed one another.

Their message was a simple one: Vote Tory, don’t vote tactically.

Strangely, Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, and Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, say something similar: Vote Labour, don’t vote tactically.

However, something is stirring in the Scottish political undergrowth and the big parties will have to come up with something better to say to the voters that answers their biggest fear, namely that if they don’t vote tactically against the SNP, then they’ll be faced by a avalanche of nationalist MPs.

I said at the time that perhaps the Tories were protesting too much in their opposition to tactical voting. But it is clear that there is a real fear amongst the Tory hierarchy that many of their supporters are poised to desert them on May 7 and vote for candidates from other parties who have a better chance of defeating the SNP candidate in their constituency. In the majority of cases that could see them voting Labour to stop the Nats.

But as my colleague Simon Johnson relates today, in at least one constituency – Perth and North Perthshire, a well-organised campaign is under way that aims to help the Tories win the seat. It is seeking to encourage Labour and Liberal Democrats to back the Tory candidate, who is seen as the best option for defeating Pete Wishart, the sitting SNP MP.

So far as I can tell its literature doesn’t actually contain the words: Vote Tory, but in highlighting the relative strengths of all of the main parties its message is pretty clear. Similarly, in next-door Ochil and South Perthshire, where Labour’s Gordon Banks is fighting to see off a strong Nat challenge there is no overt instruction to Vote Labour, but only the blind could fail to see what’s recommended.

However, and without exaggerating the scale of support for a tactical voting campaign against the Nats, the Perth action is just one manifestation of a widespread view that there needs to be concerted all-party action to stop the SNP.

This week in Edinburgh a group opposed to breaking up Britain– Scotland in Union – will meet to launch its campaign against the separatists and will issue a list of constituencies where tactical voting can be used to beat the nationalists.Its supporters say they are aware of interest in tactical voting in Perthshire, Aberdeenshire, the Borders and the West of Scotland.

One of the greatest myths of the referendum campaign was that only the losing SNP dominated Yes campaign energised the electorate. Scottish Tory supporters, some of whom hadn’t voted for years, turned out in droves and formed the bedrock of the No effort and combined enthusiastically with Liberal Democrats and Labour voters to see off the separatists.

These staunch Unionists were rewarded with a significant victory over the well-oiled and extremely well-funded Nat operation but there has been huge disappointment, and anger, that the Unionist parties have since gone their separate ways. The result, they say, has been to further encourage the already rampant nationalists and the granting of ever-more generous concessions of extra powers for the Scottish Parliament – all of which have been met with rejection by the SNP.

And they are even more disappointed at what they see is the Tory and Labour parties giving preference to their own partisan objectives –basically in beating each other - than in seeing off the SNP and helping to maintain the UK. One former Tory donor I spoke to yesterday summed it up: “ The only thing I care about is beating the Nats.”

In trying to re-kindle the grassroots spirit of the Better Together campaign what these supporters of the Union are not prepared to do –certainly not the many people I’ve met – is take instructions from Tory and Labour big-wigs about sticking to their party when what they most want to do is prevent the break-up of Britain.

They see the best way of doing that is by attacking the Nats through voting tactically. And as of now, they won’t be talked out of it.


Embracing a united front to defeat the SNP
By Jenny Hjul - The Herald

For the past few elections, general and Scottish, I have voted Labour.

I am not a paid up member of that party - far from it, although I like both our local Labour MP and MSP and think they do a good job.

The reason I vote for them is because in my part of Scotland, Labour has the best chance of beating the Nationalists. I would happily vote for a LibDem or a Conservative candidate if I thought they were the only way of stopping the SNP, though I'd draw the line at someone on the outer edges, say from the Greens or Ukip.

It is not uncommon to vote tactically. In fact, there were many people (some of them Tories) who voted the Nationalists into power for the first time in the 2007 Scottish election simply to get rid of the tired Labour/LibDem coalition, and again in 2011.

Now, there are moves afoot to use the ploy in May's general election to stop the separatist surge, with a cross-party campaign being launched this week. Set up by former No activists, business figures and academics, the Scotland in Union group will identify constituencies where tactical voting could help defeat the SNP.

The group says it won't tell people how to vote but will offer advice in seats where traditional Conservatives backing Labour, or vice versa, could ensure a pro-Union victory.

Naturally, no major political party will endorse such a movement; the Westminster ballot is not supposed to be a re-run of the independence referendum, when the Unionist parties forgot their differences to curb a common foe.

David Cameron, and the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, said Scots must vote Conservative to keep Ed Miliband out of Downing Street. And Ed Balls was in Scotland last week telling people if they didn't vote Labour they'd get the Tories.

But supporters of the main parties can do what they want, and what many of them seem to want most of all is to see off the SNP. Scotland in Union says it has anecdotal evidence of voters throughout the country considering voting tactically to stop the Nationalist bandwagon.

And what a bandwagon it is. The most recent opinion poll, for TNS last week, put the SNP on 46 per cent of the vote, up five points since last month, with Labour down one point to 30 per cent.

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP leader and First Minister, said the Westminster parties are "spooked" by the Nationalist threat, which could see her party with as many as 40 seats, a big improvement on their current six.

And she said if the Westminster establishment is worried about the headline polls, it should be equally concerned by the SNP's private polling, which tells "exactly the same story".

But we should remember the Yes campaign's private polling last year predicted a sure win for independence, and that, as we now know, was wide of the mark.

The fact the Nationalists don't accept the referendum result, and won't acknowledge the clear will of the majority, is the impetus behind the new campaign for the Union.

The independence battle took a lot out of Scotland. It went on for years - is still going on - and brought bitter divisions to the country. And it disrupted the business of government to the extent that there has been no progress in the delivery of public services. Important reforms in education and health have had to take a back seat while ministers and their civil servants obsess over the constitution.

Scotland had enough last September and voted to stay in the Union. The thought of another referendum - which, whatever Ms Sturgeon says, is the only reason the Nationalists are angling for influence in Westminster - is too ghastly to contemplate.

Anything that puts paid to secessionist ambition is to be encouraged, even if that means handing Mr Miliband, possibly the most unsuitable prime minister material since Michael Foot, the keys to Number Ten.

For many of us in Scotland, saving the Union is more important than the success of any party. Once this might have felt unprincipled but, despite Mr Miliband's courting of the Left, the policy differences between the main parties are not so great - or not as great as the chasm between the Nationalists and everyone else.

For Unionists, loyalty to a particular party must come second to loyalty to Britain, the preservation of which has been catapulted to the top of the political agenda in Scotland in the years since the last general election in 2010.

Scotland in Union admits tactical voting is not for everyone but there is one constituency where perhaps it should be: Gordon.

"A lot of people are looking at Gordon as, not a bell weather, but a totemic struggle," said the man behind the new Unionist group, Alastair Cameron, a former captain in the Highlanders.

Gordon is the north east seat being contested by Alex Salmond, who hopes to dislodge the LibDems. He will have to overturn their majority of almost 7,000 but it is widely expected, not least by him, that he will prevail.

The LibDems have an unseasoned candidate, replacing the Commons veteran Sir Malcolm Bruce, and the opposition to Mr Salmond is split.

Yet this was very much No territory in the referendum - with voters there rejecting independence almost two to one - and there is little doubt that if the Unionist parties could agree to a tactical voting strategy they could humiliate the former SNP leader (so confident of winning that he has been offering himself as a deputy prime minister to the highest bidder).

There are other key seats, targeted by the Nationalists, where the combined force of the pro-Union parties could be effective. During the referendum, it wasn't only the Yes camp who teased out a reluctant electorate.

No activists, too, managed to appeal to people who, disillusioned by partisan politics, hadn't voted for years. Faced with Britain's break-up, they suddenly found a cause close to their hearts.

That cause remains central to the election in Scotland and if the same canvassers descended on the same wards, with much the same message, they might succeed in bringing more people to the ballot boxes than the Tories or Labour or the LibDems by themselves.

The SNP has been quick to pour scorn on the anti-independence alliance, with the party's Westminster leader Angus Robertson saying it would prove disastrous for Labour if it was seen to be joined at the hip with the Tories again.

But for whom would it be most disastrous? The Scottish Conservatives, who have just one Westminster seat, are not realistically hoping to gain much more. If there is widespread tactical voting, it is largely their traditional voters who will be holding their noses as they mark their ballot papers for Labour candidates.

It is a price many think is worth paying. The vote on September 18 should have been final but was treated as a dummy run by the Nationalists.

Their assault on the British parliament they seek to destroy may be cynical in the extreme, but they have become the party to beat in Scotland. If that takes a united front, let's unite.