From business as usual to the elephant in the room, political commentator Andy Maciver gives the inside track on post-election politics
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The configuration of parties and seats is slightly different, but the headline outcome of the Scottish Parliament election is 'business as usual'.
At the time of writing, we know that John Swinney's intention is to run the government as he has run it over the past two years – as a minority government relying on the help of another party to pass Budgets and legislation. That party is highly likely to be the Liberal Democrats rather than the Greens, for the principal reason that the hard economic choices ahead are more likely to be acceptable to the former than the latter.
There's an elephant in the room, of course, independence. Ahead of the election, Mr Swinney made it clear that the pre-requisite for a second independence referendum was an SNP majority. With this unachieved but the SNP and Greens MSPs adding up to a clear pro-independence majority, various SNP figures including the First Minister himself immediately shifted the goalposts. This is inevitable: the SNP exists to deliver independence. Privately, though, the leadership knows there will be no referendum, and once the performative constitutional politics are out of the way they will get on with the job of running government.
That is where the really interesting question arrives: will Mr Swinney's priority be holding the SNP tightly together or fixing the creaking foundations of the country? It is unlikely he can do both; this is a party whose membership remains dominated by those with a high-tax and high-spend perspective, but the country's economic reality demands a move away from that. Mr Swinney's personal focus is on economic growth, good business relations, public service reform, and getting people from welfare into work.
For people, families, and businesses, the logical conclusion to draw from this is that while Westminster and the traditional Conservative and Labour opposition at the Scottish Parliament are in a state of flux, the Scottish Government is relatively stable.
In the final analysis, this election brings continuity rather than change.
Andy Maciver | Director and Co-founder, Message Matters
Andy Maciver has over 20 years' experience in politics and public affairs. As well as being a co-founder and director of Message Matters, and a regular commentator on the BBC and STV, he is co-host of Holyrood Sources, the most listened to Scottish politics podcast. He's been an adviser to Lindsays for a number of years, and here gives us a ringside view of what lies ahead in Scottish politics.
