THE next Scottish Parliament must focus on jobs, campaigners have demanded as votes continue to be counted from the Holyrood election.
Voters went to the ballot box yesterday to elect Scotland’s next government, with the SNP expected to retain power and reinstall Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister.
The PCS union said it hoped the public had voted with unions, colleagues and workplaces “in mind,” while the STUC called for incoming MSPs to back calls for a People’s Recovery from Covid-19 and action on jobs.
Results from the vote will begin emerging today, with full results not expected until Saturday evening.
In the Scottish election, 65 is the magic number for an overall majority at Holyrood.
The only question is whether they can win big enough to secure an overall majority.
One caveat to this is turnout.
Scottish elections have a record of poor turnout. With us emerging from a pandemic and poor weather on the forecast, a lot of this projection could change if voters just don’t turn up.
How do the SNP think they ve done as polls closed?
However, the number of confirmed voters registered for Holyrood 2021 is 4,280,785 - a record high for Scottish Parliamentary elections.
It s close to the number who registered for the independence referendum in 2014 which suggests voters are motivated.
Scottish independence
The SNP manifesto states that an independence referendum should be held once the immediate Covid crisis has passed. However, how the crisis is defined – and how to judge when it is over – is not explicitly spelled out.
The party’s intention is for a referendum to be held within the first half of the next parliament, meaning by late 2023. Although the process of negotiating the terms of independence would likely take years, the SNP claims that its preferred timeframe would equip our parliament with the full powers it needs to drive out long-term recovery from Covid and build a better, fairer nation .