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Now that the dust has settled, it is clear that the Left's analyses of the recent British state general election have, practically without exception, completely missed the essential point of what happened. A typical view taken is to say that across the British state — in England, Scotland and Wales — the Socialist Alliances, and the Scottish Socialist Party made a modest but significant inroad into disillusioned Labour voters, building a platform for the future. All the constituent parts of the project stand happy with the result. And then there are those who, taking the contrary position, point out that, however pitiful Labour's vote may have been, that of the Socialist Alliances and the Scottish Socialist Party taken together are dwarfed by comparison. Yet to argue the issue in these terms is to completely misunderstand the new stage of divergence within British state politics that the election highlights. In order to appreciate what is going on, it is necessary to look at the results not on a British state level, but first to examine what happened in each of the national constituent parts of the British state (and excluded from what follows, for obvious reasons, will be the north of Ireland).

First, how are we to judge the performance of the Socialist Alliance campaign in England? While it is indeed bizarre that Labour's landslide at Westminster was founded on only around a quarter of the electorate, I think it is difficult to go on from this to argue that there is anything in the figures that vindicates the decision to run the Socialist Alliance campaign. Outside three constituencies in which special factors came into play, the overall average percentage poll of under two per cent (in an election in which the turnout was staggeringly low anyway) hardly indicates the emergence of anything like a significant layer within the workers' movement breaking from labourism to the extent that they are prepared to vote against it. These kinds of numbers are what are often called a 'BT vote' — i.e. 'family and friends'. So while the degree of co-operation among the groups of the far left may be gratifying, the actual content of this joint work rather seems far less so.

But this in England. In Scotland, on the other hand, the 72,000 votes won by the SSP does seem to have passed some kind of threshold. (And it is again necessary to point out that there was no formal link between the SSP and the Socialist Alliances.) In Scotland it really does look like there is a different process underway — reflected this time round by the vote for the SSP, but building on patterns already evident in the way in which the old Scottish Militant and, to a lesser extent, the SWP in Scotland have evolved. Not for nothing did Militant call their exit from the Labour Party the 'Scottish Turn'; but by the same token the different outcomes north and south of the border are plain to see. Politics in Scotland seems to have been moving at a different rhythm than in England for some time now, a significant fact that socialists in Britain have to be able to understand and work with.

And what of Wales? Here the situation appears different again. Commonplace in analyses of the election is the fact that Plaid 'did a lot worse than expected', or some such.¹ One is tempted to ask 'expected' by whom? By some within Plaid I expect, but when did a small party in a bourgeois democratic election ever do as well as it publicly expected? The very same point could be made about the Alliance. In fact, by any standards, Plaid did in fact remarkably well indeed, if a comparison is made with the last British state general elections in 1997. Looking at the total votes cast for the main parties in both elections, we can see that not only was Plaid the only party to increase its vote in Wales, but that it increased its vote by a whopping twenty-one per cent.

Why was this so? Who were these new Plaid voters? Looking at the figures, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are former Labour voters fed up with the current direction of the Party, especially when it is born in mind that the biggest swings from Labour to Plaid (again calculated using actual numbers of votes cast) tend to be clustered in the traditional Labour bastions of the south Wales coalfield. That this is so can be largely explained by the fact that Plaid's policies are in general not only to the left of Labour's, but also appear to be more in line with the aspirations of the latter's own traditional supporters. This is not to say that Plaid, whose political space these days appears a version of social democracy seen through Welsh nationalist spectacles, has changed in nay fundamental way its nature (at least not yet). But the critical point is that for a good swathe of traditional Labour voters, it seems, a vote for Plaid is seen as a vote in defence of the welfare state and public services: Plaid's appeal to Labour voters would seem to lie in the popular perception that Plaid are better defenders of traditional 'labourist' interests - are, in fact, better 'Labourists' - than New Labour itself. As Daniel Morrissey perceptively put it in a pre-election issue of Socialist Outlook,

And, crucially, the pattern of voting in Wales in June — a significant swing from Labour to Plaid, especially in the south Wales coalfield, and a pathetic performance by the left of Labour formations — is of course exactly the same pattern of voting that we saw in the Welsh Assembly elections in 1999, save the fact that this time round it has been on a much smaller scale. The reasons for this last feature should be obvious: the Welsh working class is not stupid, and for the time being it is going to take the question of Westminster government seriously. But the pattern that we saw in 1999 is exactly the same, only this time with smaller numbers. There is a real process here, different to that in both England and in Scotland.

And this is the really fundamental point. Since the 1970s, the unitary political system in the British state has been progressively breaking down, and the fruits of this process are what we can discern in the June results. The consequence today is that in England, especially in metropolitan England, there is no significant radicalisation occurring outside of the organisational or political confines of Labourism. In Scotland, following on from the particular nature of the poll tax movement and the specific features of the impact of the national question, there has appeared a genuine large-scale radical current that is beginning the break from the dominant current of British working class politics, Labourism. In Wales, a different process is underway, with a small but significant shift in political allegiance from Labour to Plaid.

Aside from all debate on the merits or otherwise of the performance of the Socialist Alliance, therefore, the real point is that a British political outlook which does not recognise that England is not Scotland and Wales is not England is not going to be able to address the real political developments taking place within the British state working class movement. What works in one part of the British state is increasingly unsuited for the others. We forget this at our peril

¹ See, for one example among many, Alan Thornett, 'New Labour: a government with no mandate', Socialist Outlook 46 (here), in which the only reference to Wales in a detailed analysis of the election results went like this: 'In Wales the SA scored lower than in England with an average in the six seats contested of 376. Plaid Cymru did a lot worse than expected.'

² Daniel Morrissey, 'Election: Why it's different in Wales', Socialist Outlook 45 (here).

A statistical comparison between the 2001 British State general election in Wales and the 1999 Welsh Assembly election.

1. Percentage change in the parties' votes: 1997-1999 and 1997-2001 compared

	1997	1999	2001	% change 97-99	% change 97-01
Lab	886 935	384 671	666 955	-57	-25
Cons	317 127	162 133	288 665	-49	- 9
Plaid	161 030	290 572	195 892	+81	+22
Lib	200 020	137 657	189 434	-31	- 5
Turnout	74.0	46.0	61.6

Method: The percentage change 1997-1999 in each party's vote is given by 100(V₉₉-V₉₇)/V₉₇ and the percentage change 1997-2001 by 100(V₀₁-V₉₇)/V₉₇, where V₉₇ = total votes cast in 1997, V₉₉ = total votes cast in 1999,and V₀₁ = total votes cast in 2001. For the 1997 value the first ballot figure has been used.

Sources: figures for 1997 from Ceri Evans and Ed George, Swings and Roundabouts (Cardiff, 1999) (here), figures for 2001 from the BBC's election results page (here).

2. Constituency swings from Labour to Plaid: 1997-1999 and 1997-2001 compared

Method: Swing calculated by the 'Butler' formula, only using as raw data not percentage share of votes cast but percentage share of the electorate. The formula is like this: swing = ([L₁ - L₂]+[P₂ - P₁])/2, where L₁ = the Labour vote expressed as a percentage of the electorate in the first election (1997 or 1999 depending), L₂ = the Labour vote expressed as a percentage of the electorate in the second election (2001), P₁ = the Plaid vote expressed as percentage of the electorate in the first election and P₂ = the 1997 Plaid vote expressed as a percentage of the electorate in the second election .

The numbers in bold to the right of the swings indicate the relative position of Plaid in 1997: 1 signifies that Plaid was the largest party, 2 the second largest party.

South Wales 'coalfield' and 'semi - coalfild' constituencies are in bold type. (By 'semi - coalfield' constituency, what is referred to is either a constituency immediately adjacent to the south Wales coalfield itself which incorporates a part of the coalfield within its territory (e.g. Gower), or a constituency immediately adjacent to the coalfield which is notably similar in socio-economic profile (e.g. Swansea East).)

Sources: figures for 1997 from David Boothroyd's site, here; figures for 2001 from the Daily Telegraph, here.