Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) national convenor Colin Fox responded to the SSP's general election results saying that they were disappointing but not unexpected.
Colin said; "We were the only party who said from the outset that we had no chance of winning a seat in this election and the Westminster elections are always going to be an away game for us."
"As former Manchester United manager Tommy Docherty said;
"We got beat four nil and were lucky to get the nil."
Colin continued; "This month we contested 58 out of 59 Scottish Westminster seats, distributing over 3 million election addresses and increasing our membership by ten per cent."
Taking up the question of the voting system Colin said;
"The biggest obstacle for smaller parties contesting the Westminster elections is the first past the post system that gives just three establishment parties a monopoly on media coverage and means that not a single Scottish vote for radical minority parties can have any result whatsoever."
The left of centre Sunday Herald, for example, devoted not one single sentence to the politics of the SSP during this campaign, yet on the final Sunday before polling published an ill-informed, and uncharacteristically vicious diatribe against the SSP written by respected humourist and columnist, Tom Shields, who has in the past has treated the party fairly.
Since the creation of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, it has become clear that Westminster elections are increasingly hostile territory for parties that operate only in
This was masked to some extent in the last general election where Labour's landslide was never in doubt.
This time, Labour was much more able to whip of fears of a return to the bad old days of the Tories.
Many told SSP campaigners, even in safe Labour seats, that they would vote for them for: * Holyrood but now were determined to keep Howard out. People perceived voting for the Lib Dems as the most effective way to give Blair a bloody nose.
The Scottish National Party, despite appearing delighted to have won two new seats to add to their existing four, suffered a fall of 2.5 per cent in their vote.
This is despite the fact that support for independence currently stands at 29 percent -four points higher than during the last general election.
The SSP will be gearing itself up for the challenges ahead. In 2007 they will face not only new elections at Holyrood, but the first council elections in Scotland on an STV basis.
They are also central to the mobilisations against the G8 in July. Colin Fox pledged:
"We will mobilise tens of thousands against the criminal policies of G8 leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair.
"In doing that we will link up with all those whe used their vote to protest in these elections and explore with them the future of all forces in favour of a collective solution to the future of our planet." This sentiment is clearly a progressive one, even though the record and programme of the party is much less so.
Many of these voters did not take into account the fact that the Lib Dems supported the war once troops went in and participated in the antiwar movement very much at arms length.
They were on the key demonstrations in the run up to the war long enough to be photographed by the media -but they did nothing to build the movement.
And while they may well have responded favourably to the Lib Dems adoption of many apparently "old Labour" policies, not so many radicalised over the war in Iraq would know the record of the Lib Dems in previous imperialist adventures - such as the war in Bosnia where David Owen was one of the