The 2021 Scottish Parliamentary elections took place on 6 May amidst a hastened lifting of Covid restrictions. As predicted, the Scottish National Party (SNP) retained its position as the ruling party in Scotland, with tactical voting by unionists denying it an overall majority by just one seat. With the Scottish electorate turning out in large numbers to support the call for a second independence referendum, the stage is set for another constitutional showdown with Brexit now at the centre of the debate. Whenever it takes place and whatever the outcome, it is clear that the working class have enemies to confront on both sides.
The final results, declared on 8 May gave the SNP 64 MSPs (+1), the Conservative and Unionist Party 31 MSPs (no change), Labour and Co-operative Party 22 MSPs (-2), Scottish Green Party eight MSPs (+2) and the Liberal Democrats four MSPs (-1). Alex Salmond’s independence-supporting ALBA party and George Galloway’s unionist All for Unity party failed to gain any seats.
There was a 63% turnout – the highest recorded for Scottish Parliamentary elections since devolution in 1999. In marginal areas like Dumbarton, where unionist parties were under threat of losing their seat to the SNP, Tory supporters voted Labour and vice versa, underscoring the importance of the constitutional question to voters. For the first time voting rights were given to some prisoners, those serving a sentence of less than 12 months, and foreign nationals. 16- and 17-year-olds have been allowed to vote in all Scottish elections since 2014.
Aside from the SNP and Greens, who campaigned on a platform of a second independence referendum by the end of 2023 if ‘the COVID crisis has passed’, and for an independent Scotland re-entering the European Union, all the other parties elected are unionist, committed to seeing through Brexit and campaigned in opposition to the holding of a second independence referendum.
SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cited the increased pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament as reflecting ‘the will of the Scottish people’, a democratic mandate for the holding of a second independence referendum and stated that there is ‘no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else seeking to block the right of the people of Scotland to choose our future.’ British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly asserted that he will not grant the Section 30 order required for holding another legally binding referendum. With Sturgeon, a former lawyer, threatening to take the British government to the UK Supreme Court, it could be years before the question is resolved.
While the politicians play politics, the working class are expected to continue to tolerate preventable deaths in the thousands. As of 9 May, National Records of Scotland (NRS) show 10,104 deaths registered in Scotland where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate; almost a third occurred in care homes. The SNP election manifesto promised a new National Care Service but specified that this ‘will not mean that all care homes will be owned or run by the Scottish government’. Derek Feeley, the author of the Independent Review of Adult Social Care, on which the National Care Service is to be based, is a known advocate for privatised care. Even the SNP’s promise of more accountability and scrutiny of the private sector in the care industry, which accounts for over half of all care homes in Scotland, rings hollow: the ‘independent’ Care Inspectorate has refused to release a breakdown of Covid-19 outbreaks and deaths in care homes, stating there is no ‘statutory obligation’ to do so and that such information could have a ‘significant impact’ on the commercial prospects of the operators (BBC, April 2021).
Sturgeon says ‘mistakes were made’ and that the Scottish government took their ‘eye off the ball’ but that is a dishonest gloss on events. At the height of last year’s pandemic, coronavirus positive hospital patients were knowingly being transferred back into care homes. Care home staff, agency workers in particular, were abandoned, without adequate PPE, testing or the financial support to quarantine. Non-essential overseas travel, and quarantining upon return, was left to the discretion of the individual, with scientists linking ‘Summer holidays and other travel abroad taken at a time when disease was under control in Scotland’ to the second wave. While drug-related deaths were rising year on year and charities and campaigners called on the Scottish government and local councils to declare public health emergencies, £40m worth of cuts to addiction services were made (Glasgow Times, 31 January 2020). This is more than just taking your eye of the ball: this is social murder, placing the profit motive and capitalist budgets before the interests of the people.
2021 is the SNP’s fourth consecutive Scottish election victory since taking power from the Labour-Lib Dem coalition government in 2007 and continues 14 years of SNP rule. The SNP’s only majority government, which was elected in 2011, introduced the controversial ‘Offensive Behaviour at Football Matches and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012’, which was repealed in 2018 after a campaign against criminalisation led by Celtic supporters. The SNP’s passing of pro-cuts budgets and support for the British monarchy, NATO membership and the pro-Zionist IHRA definition underlines its reactionary agenda. SNP talk of a ‘democratic deficit’ and Scotland’s democratic right to choose its own course has nothing to do with democracy for Scottish workers. It is a nod to those who see an independent Scotland in the EU as their only hope, now that Brexit has happened.
The struggle for social and global justice cannot wait. We must get organised and support people’s resistance to this rotten corrupt system confronting all those who defend it! Glasgow’s collective working class resistance to immigration raids shows the way.
Dominic Mulgrew
