Scottish politics thread

politecameraaction · 2024-04-22T22:21:39Z

There was some moaning when I mentioned a couple of developments in mainstream Scottish politics on the thread about Nicola Sturgeon and her husband being arrested, so it might be more useful to discuss them on some kind of general Scottish politics thread. – the Scottish government has binned its decarbonisation targets and adopted the pisspoor English and Welsh approach. – life expectancy in Scotland is the worst in Western Europe and the drugs death rate is 3 times higher than in England, despite child poverty being about ⅔ of that in England - alcohol deaths are about a third higher in Scotland than in the UK generally, and the number of people accessing alcohol treatment in Scotland has gone down by 40% in 10 years.The pisspoor health outcomes are particularly interesting (when the decarbonisation stuff is simply bad government). It's not as simple as saying "deprivation is the cause" when the data from across Europe shows that the highest drug-induced death rates are in Finland (very rich) and lowest in Romania (pretty poor).But equally, much as it might fit my anti-SNP bias, it's not enough to just blame the Scottish government for the much higher death rates. England has greater deprivation, and there is equally shambolic government across the other three government in the UK (NI didn't even have a government for some years!), and yet the death rates are significantly lower across all of them. What happens to the Green-SNP relationship? Is the Scottish electorate going to massacre the SNP at the general election as they previously massacred the Lib Dems, Labour, and Tories? Will Labour ever bother learning the lessons of the SNP's early years: that there is a desire for assertive, social democratic European style government in the UK electorate? Can the Scottish Tories ever do anything right?

stevenmenmuir

Posts: 6095

Full Member

I'll be similar to tj, I think Deform will only benefit from people that don't vote.

Posted : 03/04/2026 4:00 pm

easily

Posts: 2297

Free Member

Thanks for replies.
Maggie Chapman alone is enough to stop me voting Green.
Although I agree with the Greens on many - even most - issues there are a couple of their policies that mean I cannot vote for them.
Of the other parties I align with Labour most, but I agree they're a 'busted flush'.

Where I am I think that voting to keep out Reform would most likely mean voting Tory.

Posted : 03/04/2026 4:42 pm

tjagain

Posts: 44713

Full Member

This site has some detailed polling - including showing regional lists.

Apologies if I am stating the obvious but for an anti reform list vote you need to be voting for a party that is underrepresented in constituency seats compared to their vote but that is doing OK in the regional list

https://ballotbox.scot/scottish-parliament/polling-scottish-parliament/

Posted : 03/04/2026 5:15 pm

gordimhor

Posts: 5023

Full Member

If I was in your situation I might look at the candidates rather than their parties and try to see if one of them might be a better representative for the area than the others. Not very satisfactory I admit and full of risks but perhaps better than not voting and ending up with the worst of all possible choices

Posted : 03/04/2026 7:05 pm

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