Two Weeks Out - A Short Precis of the Scottish Parliamentary Elections

Say you're a straightforward Social Democrat with radical opinions about the role of the financial sector in the global economy. Well...? Go on and say it.

Good. Now that's out of the way, assume you're also eligible to vote in the Scottish election on May 5th. Chances are then you hold a political belief system equivalent to mine. Who do you vote for?

I've been arguing against the SNP with friends and relatives for months. I'm not comfortable with the notion of a Scottish National Party because it is not committed to any brand of politics besides identity politics. Their ideological framework seems to derive from Hume's common sense approach, which is fine except that it means that when circumstances require it, they can perform a complete u-turn at any point and on any issue except independence (and they can do little shuffles around in there too).

This argument against shrivels the moment you perceive that the same is true of any party on the ballot.

So - I would vote Labour because the Scottish party is grounded in the SD values that I share. Great! But the current Labour candidate sheet is seemingly made up of idiots, cowards and villains. Dammit!

Right, so I look at the Lib D... oh. Right.

Greens? Well... yeah, but they are smuggling a sheer Socialist agenda under the foliage and I'm not interested in that any more. There is an argument for saying that a regional list vote will exert a small gravitational pull which is probably worthwhile, but really we're talking tiny units of force.

So let's break it down to what I want from Holyrood. Firstly, the independence referendum: let's get this done and out of the way. Is it not time? The Nationalist movement dogged us throughout the last century and shows every sign of dragging us into fantasies of the paragon state for the next one. Let's get the decision made and go on with one reality.

Second: Renovation of education. From early secondary onwards, I was misled about what I was working towards. I think that we need to demarcate whether we are pursuing an academic, a technical or a physical form of education. They are different things and the fact that they have been merged into one catch-all stream, is damaging to the effectiveness of all of them.

Third... third?

There isn't much of a third policy-wise as the pressing policy issues of any given time period will always fall under the powers of the UK Government. Financial reform has to be carried out globally to mean anything. Foreign policy is reserved to the UK. So what I really want is simply for things to work.

On these grounds, it can only be the SNP that one votes for. They have proven over the last parliamentary term that they are orders of magnitude more competent than Labour. They are also willing to work with any part of the political consensus to achieve progress. In their approach (if not their stated philosophy) they are shown to be progressive.

So it's Flash Alex again. Close your eyes and think of England I suppose...