"RICH COUNTRY WITH POOR SOCIETY"

For the first time in the past 50 years the Nationalists, who promise conducting a referendum on secession from the UK by 2010, have won the elections to the Scottish parliament. 

The Scottish National Party (SNP) will take 47 (20 more than after the previous elections) of the 129 seats in the Scottish parliament; the ruling Labour Party will take 46 seats (4 less than before); the Conservatives received 17, the Liberal Democrats 16 and the Greens 2 seats. 

Is there any cause for celebration? 

"Scotland has changed for ever and for good," the leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond, said commenting on the results. The countdown of votes in Scotland took longer than expected because of the unprecedented number of spoilt ballots, at around 100,000. At several polling stations the number of ballots which were deemed invalid was running into thousands. This never happened before. Experts explain this by the simultaneous conduct of the elections to the Scottish parliament and to the local government bodies, which created some problems for many voters who had to fill in several ballots at once. 

Alex Salmond said in this regard that the Labour Party has lost the moral authority to govern and promised a "comprehensive legal investigation" into the "fiasco" with the vote-counting if he becomes the head of the Scottish government. However, it may turn out that the SNP will itself lose its one-vote majority. This will happen if its main opponent, the Labour Party, proves that they were on the receiving end of the "electoral chaos": a candidate from the Labour Party, Alan Wilson, lost just 48 votes to SNP member Kenneth Gibson in Cunninghame, considers going to court over this and is currently discussing this possibility with the party lawyers.  However, to all appearances it will be extremely difficult for parties and contenders to prove that electoral problems affected their chances more than the chances of their opponents.

The historical triumph of the SNP was largely due to its popular agenda which included independent foreign policy for Scotland, conducting a referendum on secession from the United Kingdom and the refusal to transfer to London tax revenue from the oil produced in the North Sea. However, it is becoming obvious now that this agenda may become a barrier on the path of the SNP to forming a ruling coalition.

The Liberal Democrats and the Greens were generally viewed as their coalition partners as together they would have 65 votes, enough to form a majority. But the problem is that not all potential allies share the ultimate objective of the SNP - the referendum on Scotland's secession from the UK. While the Greens do not rule this out at this stage, the Liberal Democrats have already spoken out against an alliance with the SNP exactly because of this issue. Their leader, Nicol Stephen, said that his party will never support a referendum. "We do not support independence and we only want the powers of the Scottish parliament to be expanded," he said in an interview. Another representative of the Liberal Democrat Party, Tavish Scott, put it bluntly that the SNP has to "ditch the referendum idea". Hence, even with the support of the Scottish Green Party the SNP will not have the majority in the Scottish parliament. In other words, the triumph may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

Labour's positions weakening

After the local council elections in England (according to the ballots counted in 299 out of the 312 constituencies), Labour lost 468 seats and ceded control over eight local councils. The Conservatives gained 870 seats and are now in control of 38 councils. As a result, the Conservative Party now has 40 per cent of the seats in councils, Labour has 27 per cent and the Liberal Democrats have 26 per cent. Experts have already calculated that the Tories have achieved their best result since 1978 at the council elections.

Commenting on the elections, Tony Blair said that he does not regard the bad performance of Labour as a tragedy. He said that this is a common phenomenon when the popularity of the ruling party declines half-way through the expiration of its mandate. "Some thought that this would be a crashing defeat, but this did not happen," the prime minister said, "A blow is always taken between the general elections, but these results provide a good launchpad for us." As for the position of Labour on the main issue on the agenda, the referendum, while recognizing the victory of the SNP, Blair believes that the majority voted against the region's independence. "We recognize our responsibility before the Scottish and those who voted for our party. This election demonstrated that the people of Scotland do not want the secession idea to become Scotland's national priority," said that statement passed by Labour MPs in Glasgow.

Labour performed even worse in the 2004 elections, but Blair's party still managed to win the parliamentary elections and form the government. Nevertheless, experts believe that the Tories with their young leader David Cameron at the helm are much more active and successful than they were under their three previous leaders. "We are the national party which has the right to speak on behalf of all of Britain," Cameron said, "I believe that we can go forward on the basis of this. The Conservative Party has achieved the results it deserves at the moment and this makes me very happy."  

The next parliamentary elections in the UK are to take place before May 2010. Tony Blair has been the most successful leader in this history of the Labour Party, which has won three elections in a row with him at the helm. However, the government's popularity has fallen sharply in recent years because of Britain's involvement in the Iraqi war and the series of scandals around members of the Cabinet. The most probable successor of Blair as head of government is Chancellor Gordon Brown whose popularity is trailing that of David Cameron. On the results of the local elections Brown made a statement in which he pledged to listen to the British voters and to learn from mistakes.