The Scottish Elections: Comment
The Tories managed to gain seventeen seats out of a possible 139 in the new Scottish Parliament. Which is, in my humble opinion, quite a good showing for a party that, to be frank, enjoys pretty minimal support in Scotland when compared to the likes of Labour. Remember that the Tories won no seats in the whole of Scotland during the May 1997 general election. But there is a twist.
The more perceptive reader will have noticed that the Conservatives did not win any of their seats in the new Parliament under the first-past-the-post system, but instead won all 17 by the new Additional Member PR method. Thus, the same thing happened this time around, in effect, as happened in 1997. It's just that this time around, there was PR in place to give the Tories their rightful and proportionate representation in the new Parliament.
So why do the Tories still oppose introducing PR? Good question. It seems clear that PR would increase their representation, to the detriment of Labour; indeed, the Labour majority in the House of Commons would have been much less had PR been used instead of first-past-the-post. Perhaps tradition plays a part. But I think perhaps the main reason is the Continental model. Looking at Italy, the PR-elected government has always been very unstable, usually breaking down after about two years. (Witness Romano Prodi, or Silvio Berlusconi). Across Europe, there has been instability caused by PR-induced coalitions - the forging of which in themselves causes jitters and bad feeling, as witnessed by the LibDem-Labour hassles that took place before agreement was finally reached in Scotland. In the UK, first-past-the-post governments are generally stable. Which is, in my humble opinion, a good thing.