Scotland doing its own election thing – get used to it

There’s a lot of talk about Scotland being the critical element of the UK general election 2015, things along the lines of a long analytical piece in today’s Guardian.

Scotland’s election result is the single factor most likely to shape the next government. No combination of parties would have the required numbers without the votes of the SNP

Yeah, maybe, but that sort of misses the point, if you ask me.

You didn’t of course, but here goes nevertheless, my comment in response to the piece.

It’s a good start but nowhere near enough – the way we are governed in 2015 goes way beyond Holyrood versus Westminster to encompass Brussels, Frankfurt (the ECB as a default arm of government, even for non-euro zone countries), the City (non-regulation of banks and financial markets, runaway tax havens and tax avoidance), Geneva (the WTO’s non regulation of corporatised trade rules), Washington (US globalised terror and non-regulation of biggest baddest multi-nationals that are major US corporations), New York (failed UN and non-regulation of Wall Street, as per the City for the latter).

So go SNP, if you can keep yourself above the near-inevitable traps of political incumbency, which I highly doubt. What excites me more is the multitude of experiments worldwide that together could lead to some broader vision of post representative democracy at all levels, local to global.

That would mean more day-to-day accountability of our governors to citizens and a clawing back of political authority from all these other agencies.

Maybe a bit ambitious for a Friday night, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

What do you think?