Lesley Riddoch: There’s nothing ‘local’ about it at all

Almost all parties claimed to be winners in the council elections, but democracy continues to be the loser, writes Lesley Riddoch

Everybody won. Somehow they always do. After each election – national, UK or local – politicians read the runes and discern victory in the final verdict of the electorate. Or at least an “opportunity to learn”. Last week’s Scottish council elections have been no different.

Apart from the Lib Dems, each party’s been able to claim its own unique measure of “success”.

The SNP had most first preferences and most councillors elected. Labour is the largest group in most councils and will (probably) control most big cities, including the threatened citadel of Glasgow. The Tories have snatched third place from the Lib Dems in the municipal pecking order – their best showing since 1992. The Greens have a humble 14 councillors but that’s still a record – and in Glasgow they pipped the Tories and Lib Dems for third place. The Lib Dems simply got whupped.

The victor’s rostrum is crowded. But that should come as no surprise to Scots. Any nation whose football supporters can claim world champion status after beating a team which won the World Cup has a nuanced understanding of “victory”.

Having been denied the sweet taste of unambiguous winning for so long, Scots are now skilled in the art of equivalence. So there are many versions of electoral success on display this weekend. So far, so Scottish and so predictable.

But this time the politicians could just be right. (Almost) everyone has indeed won – thanks to PR.

Even though Scottish council elections have used the single transferable vote and multi-member constituencies since 2007, the penny has still to drop. Westminster-style outright majorities are now unlikely. Coalitions are now the norm, not the exception. Pacts considered unthinkable at national level – SNP and Labour for example – are now being calmly discussed in council chambers across the land. The genuine diversity of Scots stands revealed. There is no single “result.” In truth, there never was.

The Labour default of Scotland’s biggest city isn’t matched by its M8 rival, Edinburgh. East coast neighbours Dundee and Aberdeen are now as different as Nationalist chalk and Labour cheese. And no-one can force a party political template on the “independent” Highlands, Northern or Western Isles.

And yet despite the evident electoral diversity on display, one question is being asked over and over again: who really won?

It’s a first-past-the-post question in a proportionally representative world. Understandable, but largely irrelevant.

This insistence on finding non-existent “outright winners” in proportional voting systems may explain the atrocious record of Scottish pundits in predicting Scottish elections. Every poll since 2007 has produced a “surprise result” – any other profession with as little success would long since have been shown the door.

How power is shared in a PR system is almost as important as how it is won. And yet, as soon as it can find no single outcome from the election results, no undisputed “winner”, no conveniently simple update to the complex, unfolding story of Scottish democracy, the press pack moves on.

There is, of course, an unprecedented referendum vote just around the corner. So naturally every opportunity to sample electoral opinion will be seized and results minutely examined for evidence of a “settled will” towards our constitutional future.

Yet, last week’s elections prove next to nothing about the Scots’ current appetite for independence.

They do prove the Big Two parties are jostling for the heart and soul of urban Scotland with varying degrees of success in each city. They demonstrate that most parties are politically indistinguishable at local level. They suggest most people vote along Westminster lines when there is prevailing TV coverage of UK issues (like the recession and benefit cuts). They state bluntly that most Scots simply don’t vote.

If there is one meaningful outcome from last week’s elections, it is the uniformly dismal voter turnout of just 38 per cent, the lowest since devolution.

In the desperate rush to claim victory, that inconvenient truth has been over-looked. And yet – in the wake of last week’s Jimmy Reid Foundation report, The Silent Crisis – it could be read as a vital indicator of Scotland’s constitutional health.

Across Europe, voting turnout levels reach 70-85 per cent when real power is in the hands of community-sized councils with familiar names as candidates.

By contrast, Scotland’s “local” government is based on the largest council units in Europe – physically and socially remote from the places we lead our lives. So folk in St Andrews can’t run day-to-day affairs in the Home of Golf, whichever party controls Fife Council. The descendants of Andrew Carnegie and Adam Smith can’t mount a commemorative plaque to their famous forebears without permission from a distant council, however they vote. My mother’s home town of Wick is three hours’ drive from its “local” council headquarters – and that doesn’t get a centimetre shorter, whether Highland Council is Lib Dem, SNP or Independent-led. Inverness itself lacks a council to concentrate exclusively on its own urban needs, and that’s true whoever sits in the council leader’s chair.

Meanwhile community councils are impotent – and deliberately so. What’s the average budget of a community council in Scotland? It’s £400. That’s says almost everything you need to know about the perceived importance of local empowerment.

Of course, money can’t buy you democracy any more than it buys you love. But the near-zero budget for Scotland’s “community tier” of governance matches its near-zero powers and near-zero number of contested elections. This is not local democracy, and neither elected mayors nor compulsory voting will fix this underlying democratic deficit.

So well done to those who won seats after (generally) herculean efforts last week. Mammoth challenges await new councillors as they walk a delicate line between the reform of service delivery and electoral wipe-out.

But if a 38 per cent turnout is not seen as a mandate to transform local government, what is it except a huge, howling roar of dissatisfaction from two-thirds of Scots?

Local governance in Scotland is wrong-sized. Debate in the next two years looks set to be dominated exclusively by the “national” issue of Scottish independence, and yet local and national sentiment are clearly related. It’s hard to see how people deemed incapable of running their own towns and villages – uniquely in Europe – can be confident enough to run their own country.

Does any party have the courage to tackle this enduring paradox?