FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon has urged opposition parties to help increase turnout at next May’s Scottish Parliament election.
The First Minister also warned against a bitter and negative campaign. The debate over the next 10 months, she said, must, “make people more attracted to the political process, not less”.
Elections to the Scottish Parliament have never attracted more than 60 per cent of the electorate. Last month’s General Election had a turnout of 71 per cent.
Sturgeon said: “It is unlikely that any election will ever hit the heights of the 85 per cent turnout in the referendum, but we must aim high and never let things settle back to where they were before last September. As we saw in the General Election, turnout was some five per cent higher in Scotland than it was UK-wide, and that gives me confidence that we can keep moving in the right direction.
“My personal ambition is that turnout in next year’s Scottish Parliament election will be as high as it was in last month’s General Election, at over 70 per cent, and as a bare minimum I want it to be the highest Holyrood turnout so far, which has never even reached 60 per cent”.
The First Minister was speaking in Perth at a meeting of the SNP’s National Council, the party’s governing body. It was the first time the council had met since the referendum last September.
That referendum’s real legacy, said Sturgeon, would be higher turnout and increased participation in the democratic process. She said: “I issue a call to my political opponents that, whatever else we may disagree on, we should come together to back these realistic objectives. Everything we say and everything we do, and the manner in which we pursue our debates and campaigns, should make people more attracted to the political process, not less.
“And that ultimately is what will encourage democratic participation – the real legacy of the referendum, and the most precious thing of all.”
At the same time as Sturgeon was talking to delegates, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson was outlining her party’s strategy for next year’s election. The Tories would, she said, surprise people in Scotland.
Davidson said: “I think that we’re going to surprise a few people in May of next year.
"We’re putting together a comprehensive manifesto that talks to people of this country about the responsibilities that this Parliament is about to have – how we can use that, how we can stand up for people, get a good deal from their taxes, increase choice within education.
“In Scotland right now we’ve got an education system where there are a number of teachers doing excellent work but the results of our pupils are falling. We’ve got standards that are stalling. We’ve got a government here who have presided over more than 200 weeks of missed A&E targets because they’re not concentrating on health.”
Although taken from a relatively small sample, a recent ICM poll suggested that the Tories were only five points behind Labour, and could conceivably knock them into second place next March.
Davidson said her party would campaign as the party of the Union. “The SNP have had an easy ride on their record," she said. "Not any longer. I will be focusing very clearly on what we can do as a country to have an aspirational future for our children, realise that there are opportunities out there for them and those opportunities are increased for being part of a United Kingdom, part of a G7 nation that is one of the world leaders.”
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