Postmortems and Death Rattles

I was pleased to have done my bit to elect two Green MSPs by putting up a Vote Green sign (and voting, of course). It was annoying to hear the BBC Radio 4 coverage of the election results in the days afterwards, though, which focussed on every party except the Greens. All they wanted to talk about was Reform, and to make it sound as if Labour voters switched to Reform, when it was obvious that Labour voters went Green or Lib Dem and almost all the Reform gains were at the expense of the Tories. A three-way split of progressive parties in England—and four-way in Scotland—is bad news at the next General Election when Reform so heavily outweigh the Tories, as it could lead to significant Reform gains under first-past-the-post. Anyone who still supports Labour had better be desperately trying to get proportional representation in place before then if they want to avoid Farage as PM. The Scottish Parliament, meanwhile, has three years to secure agreement from Westminster to hold another…