All over but not bar the shouting

This time the results are confusing. Just as I saw numbers of voters struggling with the very large peach ballot paper for the Scottish Parliament list, so pundits struggle to understand the meaning of a six-party system.

The Scottish Greens and the Scottish Socialists are now in Edinburgh in some numbers. Was this the electorate saying “a plague on the established parties”? Or was it a genuine desire to have government take account of what these parties stood for?

If the latter there might be some difficulty. The Socialists have said they are there to bring “mayhem and madness”.

Does that mean that they think we should suspend the business of government for four years? Does that mean that a proper debate of a serious topic must be interrupted by juvenile and spurious interventions designed for a newspaper headline rather than have a forensic analysis of the matter before Parliament?

The Greens would seem to want a serious engagement with Parliament and perhaps the electorate recognised that. They are the larger of the two new parties.

For us in the North-East it would seem that Green issues are the more important as we elected one Green but no Socialists.

My party did pretty well in our area. North of the Tay the SNP are now firmly established as the main party. We gained the largest vote in both North-East Scotland and in Highland and Islands areas.

And with gains in Dundee and Aberdeen, we have for the first time constituency seats in three of Scotland’s cities.

My own delight at being returned was tempered with disappointment at the loss of some Council seats. We have always believed in proportional representation. That would mean that each party would have a number of seats approximately the same as their share of the vote.

That creates a difficulty for “Independents”. But this campaign saw them combine and operate as a party. Paradoxically I suspect that will soon be seen to devalue their “offer” to the voter of being independent. Because all that any other party is, is a group of people operating for a shared purpose. And that is now what the “Independents” have become.

So on share of the vote at the Council elections, we moved slightly towards a fairer distribution of seats in reflection of the voters’ views.

In Parliament any Liberal-Labour coalition government will have a tough time. Depending on who gets elected as Presiding Officer on Wednesday afternoon, they would have only a two or three seat majority.

So one Minister away on business, a couple of members off sick with a cold, a lady member’s pregnancy and the government won’t be sure of winning their votes.

It should also mean that the Liberals can strike a hard bargain about proportional representation – widely known as “fair votes” – for the next local council elections. They compromised on that last time – and I might argue on much more besides – but many of their backbenchers won’t let them this time.

So my party can expect a further adjustment of members in 2006 or 2007 when Aberdeenshire next elects its Council.

I have one personal problem arising from the election – loss of weight! The month of the election is a month of frantic scurrying around. My waistline has shrunk – three notches on my belt – and I am going to have to drill another hole if I maintain my new slim figure.

There were innovations in this election. Local radio station Deveron FM – bravely I thought – gave each candidate five minutes air time in exchange for being pummelled with listeners’ questions. That seemed to work well. I certainly had surprisingly widespread comment from people “on the street” about my contribution.

Less happily, national papers concentrated – as a matter of policy – on national campaigns and ignored individual candidates except in “one-off” constituency profiles. That disconnected electors from “on the ground” campaigning and may have helped stiffen voters resolve to vote against the glitzy, polished politics that was all they saw on TV.

It will be back to “normal” work for MSPs shortly. And a vital need to reconnect by LOCAL campaigning focussing on voters real needs and interests.