BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
Page 78
damn close-run thing. In fact the No es were ahead all night, until the final
county to report – Carmarthen, a Welsh-speaking rural area – swung it
for Yes. The data are in table 22.2.
The Scottish result proved that devolution was, as Smith had claimed,
‘the settled will of the Scottish people’. The Welsh result proved that it
was anything but the settled will of the Welsh people. However, devolution is path-dependent. Once it has arrived, it stays. The Conservatives,
who opposed it, have adapted to it in both countries. Their PR systems
give the Conservatives seats that they cannot win at Westminster (table
22.1). All the lobby groups on domestic policy now split their operations
among London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. The Scottish Parliament and
the National Assembly for Wales, constituted by the Scotland Act and
the Government of Wales Act 1998, came into existence in 1999. They
were to have fixed terms of four years. Table 22.3 gives the details of each
16 J. Penman, ‘Real Power Will Stay with MPs in England, Blair Tells Scotland’, The Scotsman,
4 April 1997.
assembly. Details for 2007 are the latest available, as this chapter went to
press in mid-May, two weeks after the elections.
The rapid turnover of First Ministers has many causes, but only one is
relevant to this chapter.7 Tony Blair disapproved of Rhodri Morgan, who
would have succeeded Davies in 1997 or 1998 if individual Labour Party
members in Wales had had their way. Instead, Blair used the party’s
machinery and trade union block votes to impose Alun Michael as First
Minister. However, Michael resigned in 2000 ahead of a vote of confidence in the National Assembly which Labour lost, to be replaced by
Morgan. Tony Blair admitted, ‘I got that judgment wrong. Essentially
you have got to let go of it with devolution.’8 It took him three years to
realise that.
Scotland and Wales in 2007
By May 2007, Scotland and Wales had had three national elections each
(tables 22.1 and 22.3). In Scotland, Labour governed jointly with the
Liberal Democrats in the first two parliaments. In 2007, the SNP gained a
one-seat plurality over Labour and formed a minority administration
with Green support. The two parties together hold only 49 of the 129
seats, and there is one nationalist-leaning independent. In Wales, Labour
has always governed, usually in a minority or with Liberal Democrat
support (for part of the first Assembly).
So the first thing to evaluate is the effect of the electoral system. Tony
Blair is no friend of proportional representation (and nor is Gordon
Brown, at least for the House of Commons). And yet he was content to
have PR embedded in the Scotland and Wales Acts (as it is, for quite
different reasons, in Northern Ireland: see chapter 23).
As already noted, PR for Scotland was a product of Donald Dewar’s
statecraft. It has blocked the possibility of the SNP declaring a victory for
17 For narratives of the progress of devolution in Scotland and Wales, see Iain McLean, ‘The
National Question’, in A. Seldon (ed.), The Blair Effect: The Blair Government 1997–2001
(London: Little, Brown, 2001), pp. 429–47, and ‘The National Question’, in A. Seldon and
D. Kavanagh (eds.), The Blair Effect 2001–5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), pp. 339–61; and A. Trench (ed.), Has Devolution Made a Difference? The State of the
Nations 2004 (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004). The Trench volume summarises the
quarterly monitoring reports from the Constitution Unit, University College, London,
since 2001. For the latest available see www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/devolution/devo-monitoring-programme.html.
18 The Observer, 9 April 2000, as quoted by Lewis Baston, ‘The Party System’, in Seldon, Blair
Effect, p. 166.
ote
1.77
0.85
0.35
0.09
0.00
1.75
0.36
0.70
0.00
0.00
Seat/V
e
mmons 2001
har
6.9
1.4
0.0
mmons 2001
5.0
0.0
0.0
o
Seat
S
77.8
13.9
85.0
10.0
100.0
o
100.0
C
C
eats
5
1
0
2
4
0
0
S
56
10
72
34
40
ouse of
ouse of
H
e
H
ote
har
4.0
2.3
V
S
43.9
16.4
20.1
15.6
48.6
13.8
14.3
21.0
100.0
100.0
ote
1.20
0.99
0.97
0.90
0.33
1.28
0.77
0.96
0.93
0.00
Seat/V
e
har
2.3
0.0
Seat
S
43.4
13.2
27.1
14.0
46.7
10.0
28.3
15.0
100.0
ssembly 1999
100.0
arliament 1999
3
6
9
0
eats
56
17
35
18
28
17
60
129
ottish P
S
ational A
Sc
e
N
ote
har
7.0
4.8
V
S
36.2
13.3
28.0
15.5
36.6
13.0
29.5
16.2
100.0
100.0
ales, 1997–2007
ote
1.71
1.07
0.38
0.00
0.00
1.55
0.40
1.01
0.00
0.00
Seat/V
e
otland and W
8.3
0.0
0.0
5.0
0.0
0.0
mmons 1997
har
77.8
13.9
mmons 1997
85.0
10.0
o
Seat
S
100.0
o
100.0
C
C
6
0
0
2
4
0
0
56
10
72
34
40
Seats
ouse of
ouse of
H
e
H
te
har
1.8
9.9
3.4
45.6
13.0
22.1
17.5
54.7
12.4
19.6
tes and seats in Sc
Vo
S
100.0
100.0
o
ve
ve
vati
ymru
vati
ble 22.1. V
otland
nser
ales
nser
Ta
Sc
Labour
Lib Dem
SNP
Co
Other
W
Labour
Lib Dem
Plaid C
Co
Other
e
ote
ad
te for
1.16
0.90
1.14
0.86
0.28
1.40
0.75
1.15
0.91
0.14
o
Seat/V
tion Mlu
e
o
har
2.3
1.7
Seat
S
35.7
12.4
36.4
13.2
ssembly 2007
43.3
10.0
25.0
20.0
te and list v
arliament 2007
100.0
100.0
o
as Dev
3
6
1
eats
46
16
47
17
26
15
12
60
129
ottish P
S
ational A
Sc
N
e
nstituency v
ote
har
8.3
co
V
S
30.7
13.8
32.0
15.3
30.9
13.3
21.7
21.9
12.3
100.0
100.0
rench (ed.), ‘H
age of
ote
ver
nit; A. T
1.76
0.82
0.57
0.11
0.00
1.70
0.54
0.60
0.35
0.51
ed a
Seat/V
ht
tion U
. 4.7
e
weig
1.7
0.0
7.5
7.5
2.5
nstitu
mmons 2005
har
69.5
18.6
10.2
mmons 2005
72.5
10.0
un
o
o
Seat
S
100.0
o
100.0
C
C
ales:
6
1
0
4
3
3
1
eats
41
11
59
29
40
S
ouse of
ouse of
cademic, 2004), Fig
H
e
H
mmission; Co
ote
har
4.4
4.9
int A
V
S
39.5
22.6
17.7
15.8
42.7
18.4
12.6
21.4
100.0
100.0
ssembly for W
ral C
pr
o
m
ote
eter: I
1.21
0.97
0.94
0.87
0.82
1.31
0.75
0.98
0.94
0.20
ational A
Seat/V
(Ex
e
har
1.7
Seat
S
38.8
13.2
20.9
14.0
13.2
50.0
10.0
20.0
18.3
100.0
ssembly 2003
100.0
arliament 2003
ations 2004’
arliament and N
6
1
es 2001, 2005, 2007; Elect
50
17
27
18
17
30
12
11
60
ottish P
Seats
129
tional A
the N
Sc
Na
e
ottish P
e of
te
har
8.3
Vo
S
32.0
13.6
22.4
16.1
16.1
38.3
13.4
20.5
19.6
100.0
100.0
e in Sc
ve
ve
shar
e? The Stat
te
ty
vati
ymru
vati
BBC Election websit
Vo
enc
ces:
otland
nser
ales
nser
tes:
Sc
Labour
Lib Dem
SNP
Co
Other
W
Labour
Lib Dem
Plaid C
Co
Other
No
each par
Sour
a Differ
Table 22.2. Scotland and Wales: referendum results, 1997
Yes to
No to
Yes to tax No to tax
Turnout
parliament
parliament
powers
powers
Scotland 11.09.97
74.3
25.7
63.5
36.5
60.4
Wales 18.09.97
50.3
49.7
n/a
n/a
50.1
Table 22.3. The Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales
since 1999
Dates
Governing party
First Minister
Scottish Parliament
Labour–LD coalition
(1) Donald Dewar
1999–2003
(1) (Lab.)
&nbs
p; (2) Henry McLeish
(1) (Lab.)
(3) Jack McConnell
(1) (Lab.)
Scottish Parliament 2003–7
Labour–LD coalition
Jack McConnell
(1) (Lab.)
Scottish Parliament 2007–11 SNP minority administration Alex Salmond
with Green support
(1) (SNP)
National Assembly for Wales Lab minority administration, (1) Ron Davies
1999–2003
later Lab–LD coalition
(1) (Lab.)
(2) Alun Michael
(1) (Lab.)
(3) Rhodri Morgan
(1) (Lab.)
National Assembly for Wales Labour (in minority by end
Rhodri Morgan
2003–7
of parliament)
(1) (Lab.)
National Assembly for Wales Lab minority administration
Rhodri Morgan
2007–11
(1) (Lab.)
Notes: For seat totals controlled by each party, see table 22.1. LD ϭ Liberal
Democrats.
independence after winning a majority of seats. The SNP is very like the
Bloc and Parti Québecois, the separatist parties in Canada. Its popularity
rises and falls as that of the locally dominant party falls and rises. But
support for sovereign independence always runs behind support for the
party.9 In the 1992 Westminster election it campaigned for ‘Scotland Free
in Ninety-Three’ and gained no seats. (It increased its share of the vote,
but in the wrong places, and lost a by-election gain.) Alex Salmond, who
first became leader in 1990, then downplayed independence (but kept out
of the Constitutional Convention) and urged voters to support devolution in the 1997 referendum. The SNP’s promise to hold a referendum on
independence proved a sticking point in the 2007 coalition negotiations.
A deal with the Liberal Democrats broke down on this point. There is
nothing like a majority in the 2007 Scottish Parliament for an independence referendum, let alone for independence.
Plaid Cymru has never posed a comparable threat to the Union, being
a cultural party which dominates the Welsh-speaking areas of Wales
but has trouble elsewhere. Why then was PR imposed on Wales too?
Principally for consistency and, as usual, as a bit of an afterthought. There
was no blueprint for Welsh devolution in 1997. Everybody expected
Labour to win more than half of the votes in Wales. In fact it never has
done at a National Assembly election (table 22.1).
The electoral system is actually not fully proportional in either
country. Figures 22.1 and 22.2 show the ratio of votes to seats for each
party in each election since 1997. In a perfectly proportional system, the
ratio would always approach 1.0, except for groups that were too small to
win a seat at all.
Labour still wins from the AMS system. In both countries it has always
won a higher share of seats than of votes, so its ratio is always above 1.0.
The nationalist parties never fully benefited from AMS until 2007, when
both rose above 1.0 for the first time. So the system promoted Labour
(although not as much as first-past-the-post would have done) and failed
to help the nationalists until 2007. Most importantly, it has fostered coalition government, either formally or informally. Minority governments
(as in 2007) cannot enact the whole of their manifesto and must deal with
other parties.
To a political scientist, the most important point about coalition
government is that it reduces the win set of the status quo.10 The win set
is the set of points that can beat the status quo. At Westminster, that