scotland; awash with political parties

t'other day a rich man decided to set up his own political party called scottish voice which will be pro-business and a little to the right of the political spectrum. most commentators seem to think this will hurt the scottish conservatives the most. the campaign didn't post on it as i was too busy getting pished and couldn't be bothered, but chameleon's on bicycles made a post arguing the gnats will be hurt the most. simply put, i disagree.

the chameleon's rely on 1950's election data which is simply too long ago to matter, indeed, the 1990's election data is probably too far away. the chameleon's also talk about perth being a former conservative seat currently controlled by the gnats as further evidence. simply put, they don't understand the situation in scotland.

perth is indeed snp controlled, but their incumbent roseanna cunninghame is only 1,000 or so votes in front of the conservative contender liz smith. if votes move away from the gnats to a third party then the small swing will still not be overcome by the conservatives, if scottish voice takes centre to centre right votes in perth then a very winnable seat will be lost!

small parties will be the bane of the scottish conservatives in may's elections. take alex ferguson msp over in dumfries and galloway there, he's conservative and won last time round by 99 votes only. thanx to this summer's entertaining implosion by the socialist's it's a real possibility that the ssp will not stand there in may and instead concentrate on shoring up their core support along in the clyde. the ssp took around 280 votes in d&g. that's 280 or so votes going back to labour are maybe even the gnats. either way they wont be heading to the conservatives. alex fergusson thus starts his re-election campaign in second place!

so thanx to small parties the scottish conservatives are realistically two seats down on what they might reasonably expect to obtain, and that's just the start of it.