| First Minister elect Jack McConnell
spoke for himself today when he describes the voting for the Scottish Parliament which saw
significant gains for the smaller parties as "a right pain in the arse." "The
challenge" Mr McConnell said, "will be to recognise the fact that the elections
point to the diversity of opinion in modern day Scotland - and then work out ways of
ignoring it."
Commenting on the success enjoyed by the SSP and The Greens, "The success
of torn-faced Trots and tree hugging hippies indicate how healthy Scottish democracy is.
Doo-lally, but healthy."
Mr McConnell declared the voters’ verdict a victory for Scotland’s PR
voting system, with results making inroads into Labour’s hegemony. "We must
learn from this result" he told The JT, "and make sure that Labour responds
appropriately - mainly by |
making sure that moves to introduce
PR into council elections are stopped dead in their tracks." Mr
McConnell now enters a period of deal-making with de facto coalition partners the
Lib-Dems, "Over the next four years, it will be my job to ensure that any half decent
Lib Dem ideas are absorbed by the Executive, reconfigured and presented as if they were
Labour ideas all along."
Elsewhere on planet politics, new SSP MSP Rosie Kane has promised to introduce a
sense of "craziness" into the normally douce proceedings of the Scottish
Parliament.
Which will make for an interesting challenge since one does not normally find
the phrases "a good laugh" and "The SSP" happily conjoined in the same
sentence. |
