Publican Party defeated in Scottish elections

The Publican Party (PP) is blaming a fatal shortage of cash for its crushing defeat in the chaotic and controversial May 3 Scottish Parliament election.

The party founded to fight the Scottish smoking ban contested five regional seats, but scraped just over 5,905 votes across the whole of Scotland.

Chairman Kit Fraser said lack of support from trade associations - "and not a penny from the brewers" - had made it impossible to get over the PP message to sufficient voters.

The polarisation of votes towards Labour or the SNP also drove fringe parties to the margins.

The election saw the Scottish National Party emerge the winner by a single seat after a photo-finish Labour-SNP contest. No party has a working majority, and talks on possible coalition deals were ongoing this week.

This temporarily puts on hold some future policy options on drinks issues: for example if the SNP are able to exercise power they've pledged to "ban" deep discounted drink deals in the off trade.

The Publican Party's typical constituency percentage of the vote was just 0.5 per cent to one per cent, although Mr Fraser won what he called a "respectable" 1,500 votes.

He said: "We have taken a hammering and to a great extent it's because we could not afford to reach the electorate with our message.

"With even modest resources we could have achieved much more - we didn't even manage the standard mailshot to households."

"Now we'll have to have a period of reflection while considering the next move."

He predicted the English trade would suffer from a smoking ban "at least as badly" as Scottish pubs, estimated down 11 per cent in a recent industry study, and said only a properly-funded political campaign could win the concessions needed to stave off losses and pub closures.

"English publicans have to take on board what has happened in Scotland and wake up," he said.