We must stop the Tories becoming the main oposition in Holyrood

The result of tomorrow's Scottish General Election is pretty much beyond doubt, with the SNP almost certain to grab around 70 out of the 129 seats in Holyrood. That's fine by me, but what isn't fine is if the Tories manage to get more seats than Labour.

The SNP are currently triangulating like mad to the centre and right, and I suspect that they would be only too happy to have the Tories as the main opposition party. They could then triangulate still further to the right by claiming that they have to do that to prevent the Tories from gaining ground. The fact that the Tory vote has not moved for several years, and remains stuck on just under 20 percent is neither here nor there. If the Labour vote continues to fall then the Tories will become the main opposition just by virtue of the Labour collapse, and that is something that should worry the rest of us a lot.

We need a strong, leftist party as the main opposition to wrench the SNP back to the centre and left, and force them to abandon their current position. If the SNP thinks that its main threat in the future comes from the left, then that should be enough to encourage this populist outfit to change some of its newly minted taxation policies and readopt the ones that they held a few months ago.

Neither of the two Trot grouplets who are taking up space on the ballot papers for the list can do that as no poll puts them above two percent nationwide, and that is on a good day. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens are both running at about eight percent, but the former has a long way to go to persuade people that the party is anything other than a Tory stooge outfit. For its part, the Greens have a voting core that is made up of the young who are experts at explaining why they neglect to vote, and lousy at actually doing it.

That leaves us with a vote for Labour, on the list at least. The party is now opposed to the renewal of Trident, which is a gesture, since Trident is a reserved matter, but it demonstrates that Labour is now autonomous and no longer under London's thumb. Not only that, but Scottish Labour is now an agnostic party as far as independence is concerned, and will leave its members to side whichever way they choose in any future debate on Scottish independence. Finally, Labour is the party that wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. So do the Greens, let's be honest, but unlike the Greens, Labour is the party that will get over double the Green vote, even in its currently battered state.

We have to vote Labour on the list to ensure that the scummy Tories do not become the main opposition party in Holyrood.