Sunday, May 06, 2007

Is Alex Salmond the new George W. Bush?

It may well look that way. The Scottish election had numerous problems and it now seems possible a legal challenge may be lodged. (BBC News: Labour may challenge Scots vote) In the constituency of Cunninghame North, Labour lost by just 48 votes, amidst numerous spoilt ballot papers. Defeated Labour MSP Allan Wilson may lodge a legal challenge.

I've just done the calculations (for those interested, the figures are at BBC News: Election Result: West of Scotland) and if the challenge is successful then it will totally reverse the numbers game in the Scottish Parliament. The top-up list seats in the West of Scotland region would remain the same - 4 SNP, 2 Conservatives, 1 Lib Dem (although the order of allocation would change slightly), so the effect would be to remove one seat from the overall SNP total and add it to the Labour total - giving Labour a one seat lead over the SNP (and also making some of the coalition numbers even tighter).

An SNP source ...described the potential action as "sour grapes".
On Thursday night the SNP were talking a lot about how damaging the voting problems had been. Now that those voting problems may have benefited them, they're labelling those who are seeking verification "sore losers". Why am I so reminded of Florida in 2000?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quite. And just like Bush Salmond's political ally Neil Kinnock was involved in supplying the dodgy equipment.

Oops. The analogy is falling apart already.

Tim Roll-Pickering said...

Do you honestly believe the Bush campaign only resisted challenges and calls for recounts because of who had run the election? And that they wouldn't have taken the opposite stance if the result was looking like it was going the other way! This point is irrelevant to the analogy.

Anonymous said...

I notice you haven't bothered publishing a retraction of any sorts about your silly comparison. Seems like it was just sour grapes after all eh?

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