Losing an Election is not as simple as A,B,C

 In May I stood for re-election to the City of Edinburgh Council. I didn't make the cut for the fourth seat in the multi-member Leith Walk ward. These are my thoughts on that result and how it came about.

Elections are complex events with none more so than Scottish Council elections using single transferable vote to elect 3 or 4 councillors per ward.

As a recent unsuccessful candidate, I perhaps have more to complain about. I ran in a 4 member ward as one of two SNP candidates. It was a ward where the SNP had successfully achieved the goal of electing two councillors at the previous elections in 2017. There is strong SNP support in the ward that would indicate that two SNP candidates could be elected. We also had two active and responsive incumbent councillors standing for re-election. It should have been a forgone conclusion, but it wasn’t.

I missed out at the final stage when a wave of transfers from the unsuccessful Conservative candidate swept the LibDem candidate to success, winning the fourth seat.

What were the reasons for my loss? The easy answer would be to just blame the alphabet. I’ve featured in two newspaper articles that have followed that line. The second article included quotes from me which backed up the hypothesis that the alphabet was to blame. Taking that line makes me sound a bitter loser and downgrades the quality of my running mate Amy McNeese-Mechan who thoroughly deserves her seat on the Council based on the work she has done for the Leith Walk ward since her election in 2017. I did outline to the journalist the other factors that came into play but his starting point was the alphabet and I guess the other significant factors were seen as peripheral and therefore unimportant. 

So what were the other factors that affected the outcome?

The SNP have recently taken the highest share of first preference votes in the Leith Walk ward with the Greens not too far behind making those two parties the dominant players in the ward elections. They are most likely to get their candidates successfully elected. The Greens got their candidate Susan Rae elected comfortably at the first stage and I benefitted from transfers. Amy McNeese-Mechan was also elected at the first stage and again I benefitted from transfers. These transfers put me back into play pushing me into fourth place. I remained there until the wave of Conservative transfers secured the fourth seat for the LibDem candidate.

While any comparison of the 2022 result with the 2017 result does show that the alphabet bias was more pronounced this time around the reasons are likely to be a complex mix of factors.

If it wasn’t entirely down to the alphabet, then what were the other factors? The messaging of the campaign is important – did our campaign get the ‘how to vote for an SNP team’ message out clearly to our supporters and those inclined to vote SNP? How strong was the appeal for second preferences? Did we have right mix of leaflets and letters to communicate that message effectively? Did we get the ward split wrong for this election? A different ratio or split may have worked better. Did our vote share hold up? There was a drop of 5.37% in the SNP share in Leith Walk this time which could be as a result of the quality of our campaign, weariness of voters especially with a major infrastructure project Edinburgh Trams running through the heart of the ward, even the number of candidates standing - there were 12 the second highest in the city. The drop in vote share will have deflated the votes for both of our candidates and is significant as the lower the overall vote share the less likely getting two candidates elected becomes. The drop in vote share may well have been the key factor as had the SNP vote share maintained 2017 levels it is possible that my first preference total may have been above the LibDem candidate  and my running mate would have had more transfers to share with me. Could the sequence of candidates being elected or excluded have changed to result? Maybe, certainly the Conservative transfers to LibDem proved decisive.  A higher turnout may (there was a 3.1% drop in turnout in the ward in 2022)  have given more helpful transfers from Green and SNP voters that would have pushed me across the line. In the end STV multi-member elections come down to percentages and shares of percentages. You can follow the result here (thanks to Indylive and Democracy Club).

In the end I was just not successful in my bid to be re-elected. There is risk in every election, and it is a risk every candidate must bear. I accept the outcome. I wish all of the successfully elected councillors for Leith Walk the very best for the next five years representing a varied and busy ward.

2022 full results https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/download/15127/ward-12-leith-walk-2022-election-results

Ballot Box Scotland published their breakdown here https://ballotbox.scot/le22/edinburgh#ward12

The Day they Shrunk the Town Hall

I nearly spluttered over my porridge when I saw the headline on 'Scotland on Sunday' proclaiming 'Scottish Local Authorities Face the Axe'. Was this the latest wheeze of Johann Lamont's Cuts Commission? No there was a picture of Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill and quotes from a Q&A at the International Policing Conference which was held in Edinburgh last week.

Against the backdrop of the creation of a single Scottish Police Force and a question on whether with that in mind it was right to have 32 councils Mr MacAskill had said “The status quo is not tenable. It was not tenable in the police and it’s not going to be tenable in other forms of public life,” he did go on to say that "not everything has to be a single service." 

To be fair others have raised this issue - most recently Reform Scotland proposed cutting the number of Councils to 19. However Kenny MacAskill is a senior Scottish Cabinet figure and therefore the statement carries more weight. Could this be the direction of travel of the Scottish Government? Would this be the SNP vision of local democracy in an Independent Scotland?

You could say calm down it was only an off the cuff answer made in front of police officers. On the other hand it could be interpreted as laying down a marker to local government across Scotland to reform or die. In the current climate of budget squeeze its much more likely to be the latter.

As I expected when I read the story there was a quick response from the Scottish Government saying it has "no plans to merge local authorities" however it was in favour of "closer service integration". That last bit is about shared services where progress has been glacial.

Local government had its last structural reform in the mid 1990s when Regional Councils where merged with District Councils to form the current unitary system. Many councils are only just emerging from the aftermath of that re-organisation so it is not something that there is generally a huge appetite for. It may also, to some extent, explain the lack of progress on sharing of services between councils. No one wants to give up overall control, power and budget. However there is also the elephant in the room - budget cuts. There are more deep cuts to come as local government budgets shrink while demands and costs grow.

Then there is the conundrum of the low turnout at local government elections. In some ways its a paradox - the level of government that actually delivers many of the services that we use in our daily life attracts paltry interest from voters when it comes to the ballot box.

Merging councils would undoubtedly make councils more remote from those they serve so it would seem unlikely that such a reconfiguration would solve the public engagement issue. The likelihood is that it would make matters worse. A bigger council would be much more likely to make decisions on a strategic level rather than a local level thereby lessening the ability of locals including local councillors to influence decisions in favour of localities.

So does it have to happen? Well, remember there are no plans. But its there and there should be room for debate on the issue. What does Scotland need in terms of local governance under a devolved Parliament? And what would it need in an Independent Scotland?

My friend Councillor Dave Berry put forward his ideas on his blog. Essentially a two tier structure of regions or city regions with lean burgh councils beneath. Not a bad stab at a thorny issue. The Jimmy Reid Foundation produced a report earlier this year which made a strong case that Scotland is operating the least democratic system of local governance in Europe. Commentator Lesley Riddoch has already responded to Kenny MacAskill's comments here. It is also timely that Mackay Hannah are holding a conference in April entitled 'Re-imagining Scottish Local Government: Councils and the Future of Scotland'.

I said in a post earlier this year that a debate should be had and I maintain that position. However that does not mean I'm in favour of centralising local power in larger councils. The debate I want to see is how do we democratise what we have? Do we need to make any changes to the current structure? How do we make the services provided more accountable to local people and how do we give local communities a stronger say in delivery of services and on the budget priorities in their area? 

As a quick example take Edinburgh where I was a councillor for twelve years. Would I want to see that council made bigger? Answer - no. Would I want to see decisions being taken with more involvement of the communities of Edinburgh? Answer - yes. Edinburgh already has the structure in the Neighbourhood Partnerships but these are advisory and with relatively little budget to decide locally. However that could be changed giving the partnerships more clout and as the local community councils are involved as partners perhaps invigorating them (in all those years as a Leith councillor not one of the Leith Community Councils has had an election as they haven't had enough nominations to trigger one) by giving them a strong say in how budgets are spent in the local area. Leith Neighbourhood Partnership has already used participative methods to decide Community Grant spending.  Edinburgh has also taken the recent step of opening out the Council's budget process though it is too early to tell how that will be received. These are small but significant steps in opening up the closed circuit of council processes to the public they serve. Could it go further and have something like Leith or Portobello burgh councils sitting beneath the overarching City Council with the former delivering the local services and the latter the strategic priorities of the City?

I think some debate on devolution of power and budget might deliver something that is responsive to communities and might just work. Perhaps its a spanner that local government needs and not the axe.