Ever since the Treaty of Union in 1707 that marked the forming of the first United Kingdom between England and Scotland, Scottish parties have been excluded from UK Government.

For most of Westminster’s history power was shared between Tory/Conservative and Liberal/Whigs. More recently Labour has been taking its turn.

Whilst the Scotland Act saw the Scottish Parliament no longer suspended, and restored to Holyrood, there has been no change.

This is because the Westminster Parliament is formed using First Past The Post (FPTP) voting. Today the only Western democracies to still use FPTP are the USA – and the UK.

FPTP means only the votes of the winning party count. All others are discarded. Only very rarely are coalitions needed, and usually a single party is able to take power with a minority of votes. This heavily favours the large parties like Labour and the Tories, and completely excludes smaller parties like The SNP.

The result of using FPTP for Westminster elections is that voters in England always decide which party (Labour of the Tories) gets to govern the whole of the UK. It also means that both Labour and the Tories can govern whilst completely ignoring the wishes of Scottish parties – and they do, as we have seen with Brexit, Immigration and funding of the NHS – to name just a few examples.