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Vol. 71/No. 21      May 28, 2007

 
Scottish National Party narrowly wins elections
 
BY CAROLINE BELLAMY  
EDINBURGH, Scotland, May 13—The Scottish National Party (SNP) won a razor-thin majority over the incumbent Labour Party in the May 3 elections for Scottish parliament. It was the first time ever the SNP won parliamentary elections here.

The SNP, which favors independence for Scotland, won 47 seats to Labour's 46. The Liberal Democrats won 16, Conservatives 17, and Greens 2. Not since 1955 has Labour been beaten into second place in Scotland.

Ten days after the vote, the SNP has been unable to form a majority coalition and a minority government is likely. Liberal Democrats have refused to enter talks, citing SNP insistence on holding a referendum on Scottish independence.

Labour leaders campaigned hard on the threat to the unity of the United Kingdom an SNP victory could usher, but big business sees little danger in the result, as parties favoring the UK union still hold 60 percent of seats. The Sunday Times even backed the Scottish National Party, saying an SNP-led coalition would mean increased fiscal powers for the Scottish parliament and an incentive to cut funding for the public sector, which accounts for 25 percent of jobs, and boost business profits. The bourgeois-nationalist SNP campaigned for cutting corporate and other taxes.

Illusions among parties of the middle-class left that they could build on their electoral gains in 2003, when the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) won six seats and the Greens five, were left in tatters. The SSP won no seats and the Greens two.

Labour lost across Britain. It no longer holds an absolute majority in the Welsh parliament, where Plaid Cymru, the Welsh bourgeois nationalist party, came second. In England 165 out of 312 local councils outside of London are now held by the Conservatives, which won 40 percent of the ballots cast to Labour’s 27 percent. Labour got most of its votes in working-class areas. The party retains the affiliation and financial backing of many trade unions.

“The fragmented result reflects a vacuum in ruling-class politics," said Peter Clifford, Communist League candidate for Leith Walk ward in Edinburgh. "In face of the continued decline of British imperialism, no capitalist party—including the nationalists—has an alternative to chipping away at the social wage, intensifying the exploitation of workers, and pursuing imperialist wars abroad. But none of them are strong enough to tackle the working class head-on, which they will have to do to restore profit rates.”  
 
 
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