The polls open UK wide in one week. But the most interesting part of the election is happening in Scotland.
Here's a map of Scotland in 2010 along with the most recent Polling projections for Scotland:
Click to Enlarge. Based on latest Ipsos/Mori poll. Map created at May2015.com/seats
The SNP is the Scottish National Party. Their leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is the Elizabeth Warren of the UK. She is the most popular politician, UK wide. She and her party just suffered a crushing defeat in the independence referendum. But today, every single poll shows the trendlines moving in the SNP's direction. They have now eclipsed the Liberal Democrats as the third largest party in the UK, and if current trends continue, they could eclipse the conservatives, and become the UK's second largest party by registered voters/dues paying party members.
My own projections show the SNP taking between 30 seats and 53 seats. I don't think they'll get quite the sweep seen here. This year will be a recalibration for pollsters because of the large number of new voters who registered to take part in IndyRef. I actually expect the Tories to pick up one or two seats, as ideological unionists flee the Labour party like rats from a sinking ship.
But I do expect the withered husk that is the Labour party in Scotland to largely be swept away by an oncoming progressive, anti-colonial wave.
So how the hell did it come to this? How did a party see an absolute rejection of it's core policy only to become the largest party in Scotland?
Read more below.
Yes banners hang defiantly in Edinburgh just after the Referendum defeat.
Last September, I was sitting in my friend Rosie's apartment in Edinburgh. I'd just been part of Referendum.TV's election night broadcast. It was grueling. And we'd lost.
In a moment of grief, she exploded out of her seat. "I can't go back to being powerless again, Will. I just can't!" Later, as we walked through Edinburgh, and I snapped the photo above, she asked "What are we supposed to do now?" I didn't have any answers for her.
I later sat down with some members of National Collective at a pub on castle hill. I poured out some whisky, and we talked about the future, and the long, depressing road ahead.
We didn't know it then, but having been offered the opportunity to dream about the kind of country they wanted to live in, Scots were totally unwilling to go back to the way things had once been. For a month, they grieved for the death of a nation that had not yet been reborn. They met in public, they rallied, they expressed their sorrow. And then they realized something extremely important.
There were 1.5 million of them.
The twitter campaigners began calling themselves the 45%, a tongue and cheek allusion to the final Jacobite rebellion. They and so many others began to organize.
Robin MacAlpine, Convener of Commonweal, had said before the election "If we do lose, and if we lose it will be close, I will spend the next five years doing everything I can to make Scotland ungovernable."
He wasn't lying.
Commonspace in Scotland set up by MacAlpine and his Commonweal movement is becoming the Scottish DailyKos. Stephen Paton is setting up Left Scotland as an independent broadcaster. I've personally had the privilege to write for iScot Magazine, which is one of the new media outlets participating in a renaissance of Scottish media right now. They're focusing on print right now, so I can't yet link to those posts here at DailyKos.
British Corporate and State Media are viewed with extreme distrust in Scotland due to their behavior in the Referendum. Despite the support of Artists, Academics, and pretty much the majority of the Scottish Intelligentsia, the Media portrayed the Yes Campaign as economically backward, and factually baseless. Of Scotlands thirty or so major newspapers, only one Sunday-only newspaper came out for independence. The BBC, too, was caught up in problematic reporting. Accused several times by academics for extremely negative reporting on the referendum, their behavior as State Media rather than public media was enough to spark protests.
One reporter, Nick Robinson, was very helpful in showing just how Biased the BBC was. After asking Alex Salmond about the Royal Bank of Scotland, Robinson claimed that Alex Salmond had refused to answer his question. There was just one problem, not only had Alex Salmond answered Robinson's question, but his answer was so succinct and powerful that it had begun to go viral. 300,000 Scots had already watched Alex Salmond's answer by the time Nick Robinson broadcast that Alex Salmond gave no answer. Here's a video showing the difference for those interested:
Twitter went mental, and a few thousand Scots rallied outside of BBC's Scottish Headquarters at Pacific Quay the next day. You can view a full album of images from that protest here. But there's one image which expresses exactly how the people of Scotland currently view the BBC:
The Media is now relentlessly negative about the SNP, and to their shock, it's having very little effect. In a recent broadcast of the poll numbers above,
BBC Co-Host of Daily Politics, Jo Coburg reacted with absolute horror that even after everything the media has thrown at the SNP, support for the SNP is still growing, only a week before election day.
Upon being read the numbers, she appeared to swallow against bile rising in her throat, and an angry look fell over her face.
"So it's gone up!" She said with exasperation.
"Yes," said her co-host.
"I think it's going the wrong way!" She exclaimed. "... from the Labour Party's perspective," she hastily added.
That's the UK Media. This is extremely mild in comparison to the extreme Xenophobia coming from conservative media. The Daily Telegraph has engaged in outright anti-scottish racism, which includes calling the SNP Nazis, arguing that England must remember their Duty to Civilize, take up the White Man's Burden, and save Scotland from Itself. Because the Scots like the Irish are an uncivilized child race that needs the civilizing influence of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon master race. The same newspaper calling others Nazis is engaging in 19th century imperialistic nationalism.
And there lies the problem. The question of independence, whether it's full autonomy within the UK, or actual total independence from the UK, has become the primary driving force of Scottish Politics, and will remain so until the question is settled. As I wrote in iScot Magazine this month, the UK is unsustainable without federalism, and a written constitution.
Without Westminster agreeing to voluntarily cede most of its power to the regions of the UK, as well as ending the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty, which prevents any high court from questioning the leaders in London, the UK will ultimately end. More than two-thirds of Scots wish to see Westminster cede that power, democratically, to the various nations of the UK. They've decided that the SNP is the party most likely to argue for that, as they have always argued for more power for Scotland, even if it comes as gradual or unsatisfying half-measures, such as devolution.
But the clock is ticking. And Westminster Parties, most especially the Labour party, have been loathe to agree to further powers. What ultimately is killing the Labour party is their backtracking on what was called the Vow, the promise by the three main parties that they would provide home rule to Scotland in the aftermath of a No vote. The Tories and Lib Dems as well have both backtracked on their promises. Through the Smith commission, they delivered a few suggestions that fall well short of home rule, and are set to be voted on in the next parliament.
It's not surprising that the UK has gone back on it's deals. It's referred to as Perfidious Albion for a reason, and this isn't the first time they've broken their promises. In the Scottish Parliament referendum in 1979, Margaret Thatcher promised that a No vote wouldn't stop Scotland from having a Scottish Parliament. It would be twenty years before Scotland would finally see its parliament reconvened.
Having lost control of the Narrative in Scotland, Scottish independent media is ruining the narrative for the big media orgs in England. In the leaders debates leading up to the election Nicola Sturgeon was universally viewed as the winner. She is by every poll the most popular politician in the UK, and despite being the leader of a separatist party, there are a lot of people in the UK who want her to be Prime Minister, and are asking the SNP to stand candidates in England.
The three women in that debate were Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru, and Natalie Bennet of the Greens. The women asked voters to help build a better country. The men asked voters to help keep them in power.
For the Labour party UK wide, the Austerity delusion has been accepted. Indeed, it was the Labour Party under Tony Blair that began the process of privatizing the NHS with the creation of foundation hospitals. So the Labour Party, isn't a credible alternative to the Tories. They're essentially Tory Lite. They aren't going to stop austerity. Nor will they stop the selling off of public institutions to private interests, as this was a New Labour policy to begin with. All they intend to do is slow it down a bit so that people notice it less.
In the past few minutes Ed Miliband has said that he will refuse to cooperate with the SNP if he doesn't win a majority government. If he refuses to work with the most popular politician in Britain out of spite it will be deadly for the Labour Party in England.
If that is the case, it seems to mean that Ed Miliband would vote to put the conservatives back in power. That's kind of ridiculous. If Miliband wants to be prime minister, he'll have absolutely no choice in this matter.
(I corrected this section, as I'd forgotten that the Fixed Terms Parliament Act will still be in force no matter who wins. There will not be a snap election under any circumstances.)
Sometimes Democracy is messy. But I don't see how the SNP, a progressive party that stands to the left of the Labour Party, can do anything but help steer the UK back in the right direction.
This is ultimately in Scotland's interest. England, and the Rest of the UK, will be Scotland's biggest trading partner if, or should I say, when Scotland becomes independent. While the SNP are part of the Westminster system, they've promised to help progressive forces in England put the economy on stronger footing, and repair the damage done to public UK institutions by the forces of Austerity and Privatization which started with Thatcher, continued under New Labour, and were embraced by the current Tory/Dem coaltion.
And that's what the current polls are likely to give us. A Labour minority government, backed by the SNP.
"If you want a Labour Party that stands up for working people, a Labour Party with a Backbone," said Nicola Sturgeon this week, "Then vote for the SNP. We'll lend them ours."
1:27 PM PT: Falconer asked a great question, and something I failed to explain.
In the UK, the people able to form the government are the ones who have a majority of votes in parliament.
No single party is set to have an overall majority.
That means that the SNP will be the ones holding the balance of power. The Tories are so hated in Scotland that the SNP will do everything in their power to keep them out of government. Sturgeon has promised to keep a Tory government from getting off the ground.
That means that there's only one party which will have the votes to put the Tories in power after the upcoming referendum. That's the Labour party.
It's actually more likely that the Labour party would do this than the SNP, but still extremely unlikely. They'd face a massive internal revolt if the leadership tried this.