'...But It Was Fun Trying'

Particularly in Rannoch, it was for me a time of rediscovering shapes and sounds and textures and even smells that give new dimensions to nostalgia. I owe thanks to so many for their friendship, their stimulation and their grace.
So why wasn’t I elected? I started out not expecting to be. This is Nat country, and it used to be a Tory fiefdom. Why should anyone else get a look in, particularly if they turn up late, and lumbered with an outside address, whatever their history. As it happens, the two SNP candidates got very much the vote that I would have expected, but the Tory got a couple of hundred more, and I got a couple of hundred less than I had built myself up for as the weeks rolled by. In short, I had hoped to give the Tory candidate a better run for his money.
I hold the view that, across rural Scotland, the SNP and the LibDems are competing for the same voters, and they are armed with broadly similar policy packages. It is a function of organisation and perceived success at different points over the past 30 years which of the two parties dominates the other in a particular area. (One of the senses in which this particular election, at Holyrood level, may represent a sea change in Scottish politics is that the SNP made substantial inroads into the LibDem vote in traditionally core LibDem areas.)
Within this general environment, Highland Perthshire has developed SNP rather than LibDem loyalties. In 1983, when North Tayside was a new piece of electoral geography with the consequence that people had no underlying knowledge basis on which to resort to tactical voting, I personally got a ‘Liberal Alliance’ vote of over 7000. The fact that this has now halved is less a matter of LibDem incompetence than the fact that this was only good enough for third place, and the second placed SNP were able to project themselves as “the way to beat the Tories”.
Within this SNP-dominated Highland Perthshire environment of the new century, the hard core LibDem vote is possibly as low as 300, and certainly not more than 400. Quite simply, not enough of a platform.

Independent?
Would the things that I was trying to say have been more effectively said as an “Independent”? Possibly, but I doubt it. It might have been more possible for people carrying other Parliamentary loyalties to jump across with support if that did not imply endorsing a party label to which they were not attracted. Specifically, people who voted for John Swinney might have found disloyalty to the SNP in their local vote to be more palatable.
The key point in the Highland Perthshire context about the Independent versus Party debate is the sheer scale of the electoral geography. I could possibly have carried a majority of the 1500 or so voters in my old Rannoch and Atholl ward on an Independent basis, but the situation would have been weaker on the mean streets of Pitlochry and Aberfeldy, particularly without long and hard-working preparation. Who is this guy? What does he stand for? Why bother? Never mind that even the weak LibDem label carried with it a little money and a few helpers. Whatever “we” do in future is going to have to allow for an organised identity (therefore ‘party’), which gives the public a clear perception of what the candidacy is about.
As to “issues” at this recent local election, most of the time spent talking about politics was involved with aspects of decentralisation. Why could Highland Perthshire issues not be better dealt with more locally? There was very positive reaction to, for instance, the notion that planning decisions should be devolved within P&K for formal decision locally, rather as they are in Highland. There was a discernible anger about the perceived arrogance of Perth officialdom, exemplified above all in the cycle event fiasco – although, importantly, this feeling had little or no echo in Pitlochry. Some of the resentment expressed itself in feelings about the existing councillors.

Tory Vote
A few words are probably in order about the Tory vote. The strength of the Tory local election vote is a function of three things :

• A traditional core vote is still there. It is not that long since Bill Walker was a shoe-in as the local MP, and there is still a traditional “we’re not political, we’re Conservative” ballast vote across the whole area. It was interesting how little when canvassing one came across a positively and ideologically expressed Tory opinion, but there is still resilience in the underlying loyalties and values. Those values could, by the way, be faintly nauseating when it came to views on immigration, on “scroungers”, or on the evils of thinking of using the taxation system to redistribute wealth and opportunity.

• Genuine hostility to the SNP, to independence, and to Alex Salmond in particular. In the days leading up to the election, a national win for the SNP became more likely. I am sure that this led to a hardening of the available Tory vote, which had been quite soft. Annabel Goldie had what the press describe as a “good campaign”, and projected her commitment to unionism clearly and firmly. Those against or frightened by an independence agenda had an obvious place to which to turn. Whatever the spineless unionism of Nicol Stephen and his colleagues, a LibDem vote was not seen by any committed unionist as a defence against Salmond’s project.

• Pitlochry. It is difficult to convey to someone who hasn’t slogged the streets electorally just how distinct Pitlochry is from all other corners of Highland Perthshire. And in our environment, it is the big smoke – more than a third of the electorate. Here, uniquely in the area, you run into whole streets of people without a local point of reference and with no views on strictly local issues. You could be canvassing a suburb anywhere, and very possibly in England. Most of those that I am caricaturing are, in their national politics, Tories. If they were going to the Parliamentary poll anyway, the Tory candidate was going to be the beneficiary in the local poll.

(By the way, good luck to anybody who tries to get some service out of their new Tory councillor, Mr Campbell. I was not impressed. Murdo Fraser, on the other hand, will - in spite of his trimming of his attitudes to suit particular audiences - do what he can for you – if only out of inordinate ambition.)

Too Little, Too Late
The specific reasons for failure are then straightforward. It was all too little, too late, without adequate organisation, with a problematic label, and with a less-than-ideal candidate.
The consequences are that Highland Perthshire is lumbered with rather less than it deserves. Not to have distinctive representation of such a distinctive locality might not matter, if the representation was blessed with just a little imagination. Sorry to be judgemental, but - Fat Chance.
And so minds must be turned to how to improve the position the next time....