Interesting developments this morning in Aberdeen Donside. SNP MSP Mark McDonald has announced this morning that he intends to seek the party's nomination for the constituency seat, vacated by the recent death of the SNP's Brian Adam, in the upcoming by-election. It remains to be seen whether party members will endorse McDonald's candidacy, but if they do, it throws up a few tricky and interesting legal implications under the Scotland Act, and the dual franchise of regional and constituency members of parliament it provides for.
In 2011, McDonald was elected as a regional member in the North East, ranked fifth of seven places down the SNP list. Not, you might think, the most promising situation for a young fellow with a family to feed and a political way to make after the next election, subject to the caprice and uncertainty of ranking by the party membership. Aberdeen Donside, by contrast, looks a far more comfortable berth. But there are risks. Section 9 of the Scotland Act governs how vacancies in Holyrood constituencies are to be filled. Subsection six makes plain that in any by-election to fill a constituency seat in the Scottish Parliament:
"A person may not be a candidate at such an election if he is a member of the Parliament or a candidate in another election to fill a vacancy."
The upshot? If he wants to stand in Donside, McDonald will have to resign first. If he does so, another vacancy will open up in the already almost-exhausted SNP list in the North East. Under the Scotland Act, regional vacancies are filled in a different way. No by-elections here. Instead, to find our replacement have to go back to the party list from the 2011. The parliamentary seat is allocated to next ranked person on the list. Where the party list is exhausted, the regional seat sits vacant until the next Holyrood election. The party cannot simply nominate a replacement. In this case, the beneficiary of McDonald's bravery would be the North East list's last candidate, Christian Allard, seen most lately in this parish as an unsuccessful candidate to be one of the SNP's six nominees to represent Scotland in the European Parliament.
For Mark, the game may be worth the candle. Brian Adam first won Donside in 2003, and held it with increased majorities in the two subsequent elections, topping off at more than 55% of the vote in 2011. The Labour Party would be his main competitors, and named their candidate this morning, picking Willie Young from amongst the ranks of their Aberdeen City councillors. Even with these starting advantages, the idea of resigning your seat and running for another can hardly be one anybody would approach without trepidation. In your enthusiasm to acquire a safer seat, you mean lose your political job altogether. If he is nominated to stand, McDonald will have to live by Alex Salmond's favourite motto, from the 1st Marquis of Montrose:
"He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all."
I know Christian from my involvement in Yes Aberdeen, and I reckon he'd provide a nice bit of Gallic flair in Holyrood! It's certainly handy having an EU national who can dismiss notions of other EU nationals having to flee Scotland if we vote for independence.
ReplyDeleteAs for Mark, I hope he wins the nomination and then the by-election, as he's one of my favourite MSPs. It'd be a shame to lose him from the parliament, and replacing him with Willie Young would be an absolute travesty. Labour have enough over-promoted councillors in their parliamentary pack as it is...
If nominated, you'd have thought Mark must stand a decent chance, given the level of the SNP vote in the constituency from 2003 onwards. But then, you never know. Queer old things, by-elections. I take it from your comment, however, that you're not a "Donsider" yourself? Never having once set foot in the Granite City myself, I've no real sense of what sort of area it is. As an Aberdeen man yourself, care to share any local knowledge on that front?
DeleteMontrose is rather a dubious authority to quote with regard to anything to do with Scotland and most especially Aberdeen - he let his troops sack the city in one of the bloodiest and nastiest passages of the civil war in Scotland -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/military/montrose-aberdeen.htm
'The burgh of Aberdeen was subjected to a three-day orgy of murder, pillage and rape which Montrose made no attempt to stop. He may have wanted to make an example of Aberdeen for resisting him, but the atrocities committed there greatly damaged his cause. On hearing that the Marquis of Argyll's pursuing army was advancing from Brechin, Montrose read the King's proclamation against the Covenant and withdrew towards the Highlands.'
The civil war was especially nasty in Scotland, and Montrose's despicable decision led to counter atrocities; James Robertson has an account in his fine novel The Fanatic of the coldblooded murder of Irish women and children at Linlithgow.
A fox's paw! Yet more evidence, if it were needed, that my historical education in secondary school wasn't up to snuff. Didn't get anything in the way of material from that period in Scottish history. It would have detracted from the really important work of teaching us all about the unification of Germany, Weimar Republic, the Rise of Hitler, and WWII...
DeleteOh sorry that was a rant! Montrose was a great poet and doubtless a great soldier but as a man not for me.
ReplyDeleteRe the selection process in Aberdeen I have not a scooby but I hope whoever wins is as well liked and respected by all as Mr Adam was.
It's a nice turn of phrase, certainly, but if history has taught us anything, it's that being poetically talented does not necessarily make a decent character of you.
DeleteWow!
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that any consequences of Mark McDonald standing elsewhere would have two outcomes.
First that his own, current seat, should not fall to an earlier result. Who knows what people think now? There should be an election.
Secondly that:
"He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all."
Any decent politician should be willing to do that.
Just saying.
Them's the rules, Douglas. Somewhat curious, I'd accept, but it is worth bearing in mind that regional seats are allocated on a proportional basis based on the number of constituencies already won in the region. Going back to the list at least preserves the integrity of that proportional allocation of seats. A region-wide by-election may well bugger up that entirely.
DeleteI like the list system - with the constituency vote it better reflects what seems to be the democratic will in Scotland, the classic example being the 15 Tory MSPs at Holyrood as opposed to the 1 MP their over 400.000 votes buys them at Westminster.
DeleteBut it has its oddities, eg the two SNP MSPs who resigned from the party over the NATO vote. They resigned on principle, fine, but in my view they should also have resigned their seats. Am all for independence (er of MSPs!) but no one actually voted for these two - the voters voted for their party - so the fair action should surely be to resign and let other loyalists take their place I would have thought.
Having typed that I realise I don't like that option much either, but it seems the most ethical course of action.
Constituency MSPs and Westminster MPs whose party connections have evaporated - two obvious examples come to mind - should in my view also resign, but a case could be made by them that their vote was a personal one. That argument is not there with list MSPs who flounce.
Edwin,
DeleteI tend to agree with your first point. The list system, though much maligned in some quarters, means that every one of us is represented in the parliament by a tolerably wide spread of political opinion. In Glasgow in the last parliament, for example, you had both Baillie Bill Aitken and Patrick Harvie in on the list.
Depending on the political issue you wanted to raise with a parliamentarian, you had the whole gamut of right to left representatives to make your case to. If you supported mandatory prison penalties for knife possession, for example, or if you regarded that policy as an abomination, you were able to find someone in the chamber willing to make the point, and argue the case either way. No bad thing, I should think.