Scotland Dealing Begins
The Sunday Age
Sunday May 9, 1999
LONDON, SATURDAY
Labour and the Liberal Democrats will begin bartering this weekend over the terms of agreement for establishing a coalition government to rule Scotland for the next four years.
The party leaders, Mr Donald Dewar and Mr Jim Wallace, insisted they would first sleep on the results of the Scottish Parliament election and then consult their parties over the weekend.
But informally, officials from the two camps made the first crucial overtures behind the scenes yesterday morning. Further counting in Britain's history-making ``devolution" elections confirmed Labour as frontrunner in both Scotland and Wales but it had fallen short of overall majorities.
In Scotland, Labour was shy of an outright majority having picked up 56 of the 129 seats in Scotland's first Parliament for almost 300 years.
The Alex Salmond-led Scottish Nationalists, which had enjoyed a recent surge in popularity after a late campaign pledge to hold a referendum on the issue of independence by the end of the year, ahead of the elections, failed to capitalise, picking up just 35 seats. The Conservatives followed with 18 seats; then came the Liberal-Democrats (17) and independent, Greens and Scottish Socialists candidates.
In Wales, the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, led by Dafydd Wigley, stole much of the limelight with a better-than-expected showing that included poll wins in a number of traditional Labour strongholds.
At the close of counting, the party had secured 17 of the 60 seats in the new assembly after Labour's 28. The Conservative Party had won nine seats and the Liberal-Democrats six.
The coalition partners face a difficult few days. Political commentators said the Liberal-Democrats would expect one or two cabinet positions within any alliance. The party is also expected to demand that the Blair Government's proposed 1000 ($A2445) university tuition tax be axed in Scotland.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said that voters had ``rejected the separatists" and the result had underpinned the health of the United Kingdom. ``I believe and I hope that out of the elections the union of the United Kingdom will have been strengthened rather than weakened."
The Conservative Party, which was decimated in the general elections two years ago, failing to win a seat in Scotland, produced its best result in local government elections across Britain. The party picked up more than 1100 seats, which party leader Mr William Hague hailed as the beginning of a Tory electoral comeback.
OPINION Page 24
© 1999 The Sunday Age