One day to go.

Since what’s going on in the UK is at the moment, hopelessly boring for our esteemed correspondents, I guess it’s up to me to stifle a yawn about one of the most important elections that Scotland has ever had. (Somewhere, somehow, a few hundred thousand English people are wondering how on Earth the SNP get mileage out of this “London-controlled, nobody cares about us” schtick, and get hit in the face with ten tons of irony. But I digress.)

Despite the Labour Party throwing everything possible at the SNP, in polls the SNP have continued to lead, now having around 8% lead in the constituency vote, and a 5% lead in the regional vote. This would, without doubt, make the SNP the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, and, more importantly, would probably rule out a Labour/Lib Dem majority coalition, thus allowing the Lib Dems to cave in on their principles, as usual, for power. Add to this the hundreds of seats Labour will lose in the council elections, which is not just to do with their unpopularity, but also the switch from First Past The Post council wards to Single Transferable Vote wards, which are more proportional, and it looks like a devastating body-blow to the Labour Party in Scotland.

But that’s by the by. Frankly, I like the slightly insane minor parties in every election, like the Scottish Jacobite Party, who want to extend Scotland as far south as Newcastle (take that, Geordies!), or my personal favourite, the 9% Growth Party, a bunch of insane classical liberals who maintain that they can achieve 9% economic growth in Scotland, because it was done in Ireland, forgetting, alas, that Ireland before the wonderous Celtic Tiger reared its’ handsome head lagged severely behind the other Western European economies and had a primarily agricultural economy, which meant it was growing from a low base-line, and catching up based upon various institutional and demographic advantages (such as a fairly good educational system). In contrast, Scotland is an advanced industrial economy and simply cannot achieve the growth rates of developing countries. Neither can America, Germany, France, or any other developed economy, and to believe that they can, especially just by cutting corporation taxes, is to ignore basic economic evidence to the contrary. Also, they don’t believe global warming exists. Oh, it’s a hoot.