Mini Budget

[vic mcclymont]

If they such a mandate why did they do a deal with greens?

[Jim R Christie]

If they such a mandate why did they do a deal with greens?

Perhaps you should take the time to learn about the Additional Member System, how it works and specifically why it was chosen by Donald Dewar for use in the Scottish Parliament.
If the Scottish Parliament was elected on a strictly first past the post basis as per Westminster then the results would have been starkly different.

[vic mcclymont]

The Scottish voting system was designed and proposed by an indendent commission 1999.

[Jim R Christie]

The Scottish voting system was designed and proposed by an indendent commission 1999.

No it wasn't.
AMS was in use in West Germany from the 1950s onwards. One of the reasons for it's popularity there was that the system is basically designed to prevent any one party from gaining an overall majority. Considering the politics of the time and their recent history, post war the Germans were rather keen to avoid any potentially extremist party from gaining power via majority.

Dewar - in concert with Malcolm Bruce of the Lib Dems - was acutely aware of the slow but steady increase in support of the SNP, mainly as a result of the previous 18 years of Tory rule. The Poll Tax experiment in particular highlighted the democratic deficit that existed.
They also knew that the existence of a Scottish Parliament would potentially increase that support, but even so - to their credit - their support for devolution as a democratic concept did not waver. Both men then worked on the Scotland Act of 1998 which is when they decided on AMS having studied the German example specifically to try and ensure the SNP could never have a Holyrood majority.

Malcolm Bruce made the following speech in the House of Commons shortly before his retirement when he reflected on his work with Dewar and the SNP majority gained in 2011:

“One of the most important events of my time here was the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. I was very pleased, having been the leader of my party in Scotland at the time, to work with the late Donald Dewar in setting up the framework for what became the Scotland Act 1998, which he and I helped to deliver.

“I had one disagreement with him, however, and I think that the outcome shows that I was right. It was about the voting system. I supported it, as did he in the end, but we had an argument about whether the additional members should be elected on the basis of a second vote or an adjustment of the first vote.

“My view was that we should adjust the first vote, and I think that I was right, because we would not have a Scottish National party majority if we had stuck with that system. Unfortunately, that tells us that we are going to have to address the issue in future.”

Proof - available via the Westminster Hansard records should you wish to read them - that there was an appetite to effectively rig the system right from the start.

So convinced was Labour that they'd solved a potential problem, that George Robertson was of course famously quoted as saying "devolution will kill nationalism stone dead".

[happy daze john in oz]

Bit like here in Oz with our preferential system.
No first past the post for us.
Preferences often determine who wins the seat.
Back in about 2009 we had an erection where Labor won the most seats but overall the Liberals had the most votes.
Then in the senate we had a situation where a senator received only 5% of the primary vote but got enough preferences to win the seat.
Labor hang heavily on Green preferences which in many cases gets them over the line.