No vindication here. Only survival.

"We had no concerns about the credibility and reliability of the witnesses, with one exception." A teller of "blatant" lies. "Unimpressive," his behaviour demonstrating "a lack of candour", "at best disingenuous, at worst evasive and self-serving" in his actions. These are not descriptions of a man vindicated. But the conclusion cannot be avoided: today is a good day for Alistair Carmichael. He survives. The thread which held the sword over his head since May's general election has finally snapped -- and he has dodged the falling blade. But only just. By a hair's breadth. 

At the outset of the case, many scoffed that the action was doomed, a baseless, tissue-paper thin witch hunt that the courts would junk at the first available opportunity. Many of these prophets will feel vindicated in their cynicism today, but they are mistaken. Against all prophecies to the contrary, the petitioners scored point after legal point, persuading Lord Matthews and Lady Paton that this wasn't a tenuous frolick - or a pop-eyed interpretation of the Representation of the People Act - but a serious, arguable challenge, well-founded in law.

They persuaded the court that the penalties of election law should not only strike those who blacken the characters of others, but in principle, can be used to hold politicians to account for whitewashing their past behaviour. They successfully rebutted, too, Carmichael's argument that section 106 couldn't apply to lies candidates might be tempted to tell about their own "personal character and conduct." 

Rejecting Carmichael's evidence as lacking credibility and reliability, the judges also concluded that the northern isles' MP's lies were motivated by his tough election in Orkney and Shetland. Lady Paton writes: "the inescapable inference, in our opinion, is that if the SNP became a less attractive prospect, the first respondent’s chances of a comfortable majority in what had become a “two-horse race” in Orkney and Shetland would be enhanced," holding that she was "satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the false statement of fact was made for the purpose of affecting (positively) the return of the first respondent as a Liberal Democrat in the constituency of Orkney and Shetland." A strange kind of vindication to be trumpeting from the lawns of Parliament Square, you might well think. 

But the petitioners' case stumbled on the question of proof. Was it proved to the criminal standard, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Carmichael's lies had "related to his personal character or conduct"? The key paragraphs are [57] to [59] of the determination:

[57] If a candidate, in the course of an election campaign, made a false statement to the effect that he had “never been convicted of forgery/bribery/extortion” (when in fact he had been so convicted), it is likely that we would be persuaded that the words amounted to a false statement “in relation to [his] personal character or conduct”. Again, if a candidate made a false statement that he “would never be involved in any type of fraudulent or dishonest financial dealing” (when in fact he had), it is likely that we would be similarly persuaded. 

Bringing matters closer to the present case, if a candidate made a false statement that he “would never leak an internal confidential memo, no matter how helpful that might be to his party, as he regarded the practice of leaking confidential information as dishonest and morally reprehensible (all the more so if the information was inaccurate), and he personally would not stoop to such tactics”, when in fact that candidate had leaked an internal confidential memo containing material which was inaccurate and highly damaging to an opponent, we would be likely to conclude that the candidate had given a false statement “in relation to [his] personal character or conduct”, because he would be falsely holding himself out as being of such a standard of honesty, honour, trustworthiness and integrity that, in contrast with what others in Westminster might do, he would never be involved in such a leaking exercise. 

[58] In the present case, when speaking to the Channel 4 interviewer, the first respondent did not make such an express statement about his personal character or conduct. He did not, for example, describe himself as a trustworthy, straightforward, and honourable individual who would not be involved in any leak, far less an inaccurate leak. His constituents might, as a result of their own experience of him as their MP over the past 14 years, have formed their own view about his character and conduct, and might have thought that he was indeed of such character that his code of conduct would not permit him to be involved in such a leak. 

They would, of course, be entitled to that view. But on 5 April 2015 in the Channel 4 interview, the first respondent did not expressly make a false statement to the effect that his personal character and conduct was such that he would never be involved in a leaking exercise. What he said was a blatant but simple lie about his lack of awareness of one particular leak. We accept that the lie was intended to imply his non-involvement in that leak. What is less clear, however, is whether his lie can be construed as proof beyond reasonable doubt that he was making a false statement about himself to the effect that he was someone who was upright, honourable, trustworthy, and straightforward, and therefore would not be involved in the leak. 

[59] On this matter, we are left with a reasonable doubt. That doubt is whether the false statement was a general one in relation to his personal character or conduct, or whether it was more specific and limited to a false statement that he was not involved in that particular leak. Put another way, insofar as this issue is a legal one, or rather a question of mixed fact and law, we are not persuaded that the false statement proved to have been made was in relation to anything other than the first respondent’s awareness (or lack of awareness) of a political machination. Accordingly we are not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the words used by the first respondent amounted to a “false statement of fact in relation to [his] personal character or conduct.”

The Court's most critical observations on the former Secretary of State's conduct are reserved for how he comported himself during the Cabinet Office leak enquiry. 

[69] In evidence, the first respondent gave the impression that the timing of his admission was purely as a result of the rate of progress of the Cabinet Office inquiry. In our opinion however, the first respondent’s approach to the inquiry was at best disingenuous, at worst evasive and self-serving. We consider that he could and should have been straightforward and candid in his response to the inquiry. 

That would have been likely to reveal his involvement in the leak at some time prior to the election, so that his constituents, when voting, would have been “in full possession of the facts during the election” (in the third petitioner’s words, transcript 9 November 2015 page 20). It is our opinion that his failure to be straightforward and candid with the inquiry resulted from his hope that he would not be identified as being involved in the leak – preferably not identified at all, but at least not identified until after the election on 7 May 2015, as otherwise his chances of electoral success might be prejudicially affected. 

[70] On the evidence, the subsequent revelation of what could be seen as a deliberate “cover-up” by the first respondent very much enhanced the shock, outrage and upset felt by his constituents when the inquiry published its results on 22 May 2015, a fortnight after the election. We refer to the comments of the third petitioner and the Independent Highlands and Islands MSP, quoted in paragraphs [37] and [38] above. 

Ultimately however the first respondent’s unimpressive response to the inquiry, although showing him in a bad light, and resulting in his constituents being initially misled and then justifiably shocked and dismayed on discovering that they had been so misled, cannot alter our conclusion that section 106 does not, on a proper application of the law to the facts proved, apply in this case.

A victory for Carmichael, then, and uncertain times for the four petitioners who now face the prospect of a very substantial legal bill. But no vindication here. Only survival.

Do we really understand English politics?

One of my favourite, counterintuitive political facts is that Oxford has fewer Tory councillors than Glasgow.  The Edwardian stone, the tweedy dons, the unselfconscious wearing of straw boaters - in the Scottish public imagination, you might expect the educational centre of the British establishment to be true blue, all the way. Not so. Oxford wards return precisely no Conservative representatives, while Pollokshields yields up Glasgow's solitary Tory. 

In fairness, the city is a speck of red in the surrounding blue: Banbury, Henley, Witney. Labour are entrenched in east Oxford. The Tories snatched Oxford North and Abingdon in 2010 and held it comfortably after the Liberal Democratic collapse of 2015. But when I first learned this small statistic, it made me wonder: did I really understand English politics as well as I thought? Was I projecting onto, rather than really appreciating, the complexity and ambivalence of the political ideas and identities of the folk who lived around me? 

There is a tendency among Scottish political obsessives - and I count myself among them - to imagine that we understand English politics because we keep abreast of what happens at Westminster. But just as what goes on on the green benches is a poor guide to the constituencies we live in, so too, the Commons feels a million miles away from the sleepy back streets of Oxfordshire, or the noisy conurbations of the midlands and the north. Logical consequences follow. You'll have heard the old gag about the United States and Great Britain being "two countries separated by a common language." The shared language in which American politics is transacted creates an illusion of accessibility. But as we listen to Clinton drone on, or try to follow Trump's latest quackery, you gradually realise that we really miss and misunderstand as much as we appreciate. 

When I moved to the south of England, I also came to realise - a bit guiltily - that was I interpreting the politics of my English colleagues and neighbours using a series of very crude, roughcast ideas. And often as not, my stock characters proved dead wrong. They were false friends. There was the medieval historian - a picture of crusty reaction - who radiated social snobbery but who was a Labour man to his fingertips. His politics recalled the establishment of the old Labour Right: Healy, Wilson, Smith.  A conservative figure - make no mistake - but with only scorn for David Cameron's Conservative government. 

Then there was the bluff College porter who was a dyed in the wool Tory. Not a Scullion, but a tough-minded and conclusive kind of character, satisfied with his lot. Even stranger was the delightful, kind-hearted and subversive old dame who seemed to support little in the party manifesto but who had also voted Tory all her days. Still more perplexing were the floating voters who had ping-ponged unselfconsciously between Labour and the Tories for decades.

It seemed to me like Beowulf voting for Grendel's mother, and vice versa. I struggled even to begin to compute the idea of politics which made these choices seem reasonable and understandable. James Meek did a power of work for UKIP in the same vein in the London Review of Books -- but somehow the idea of a Labour-Tory voter remains elusive. The only two I can think of are Alex Massie and Chris Deerin -- hardly a representative sample of what is a commonplace character in English constituencies. We struggle to take off our Scottish political goggles, and too often, they distort our vision and our understanding.

The political passions of others you met were more obvious. The bumptious former city trader with army affectations might have come from central casting or Tory central office. The young, highly-educated precariat, preoccupied by questions of social liberalism, who once voted Liberal Democrat, but now cast ballots for Labour without much enthusiasm, or tacked Green. The North Oxford Liberal Democrats - wealthy, worthy, perjink - who couldn't vote Labour out of social snobbery, and declined to support what they saw as the vulgar, worldly Conservatives for much the same reason. This mortgaged, property-owning tribe were entirely unmoved by the 2010 coalition and continued to return local Liberal representatatives with thumping votes. Theirs was a liberalism of the polite centre.  

But having spent a number of years living south of the border in growing suspicion -- more and more, I find my own prejudices a poor guide to English politics. Perhaps they always were. But the political conversation north of the border has now diverged so significantly from the experience south of it, I now acutely mistrust my own impressions. In Labour politics, the importance of these issues and judgements are now acute.

If Jeremy Corbyn wins the UK Labour leadership, can he carry the country in 2020? Will England warm to him, disappointing his many detractors who cry him "unelectable"? Or is Liz Kendall right - that only tough medicine will do and that Labour must make further concessions to Osborne's vision of Britain to win again? Judging this correctly is critical for Labour's future. A couple of weeks back, SNP spinner Erik Geddes posted this fascinating table on Twitter. Based on research by YouGov, it asked what folk thought were the most important reasons for Labour's defeat in 2015.

The divergence between the explanations giving in Scottish and English samples are revealing.  The preoccupations which drove Labour's disastrous showing in May north and south of the border are fundamentally different. They are seen differently. Andy Burham is, I think, dead wrong to argue that Labour's route back to power runs through Glasgow. 2015 did not represent a temporary blip, but a generational shift in political allegiances north of the border. It wasn't a sudden change, but the logical consequence of decades of Labour decline. It only completed the process which has been chipping away at the party's electoral performance for years.

To put it at its harshest, if UK Labour's route to victory runs through Glasgow, then Labour is going to continue to lose to their Conservative opponents for the foreseeable future. Finding a winning strategy for England is essential. I have no idea which of the four candidates - if any - is best placed to do so. However, in striving to identify that winning strategy, they'd be well-advised to ignore the advice of their Scottish comrades, critics and fellow-travellers. We just don't get it.

23:59

That Scottish Labour slogan in short: "Vote for us to avoid an illegal referendum which nobody is proposing which we would shoot down immediately." #WinningHere.

Work for you?

On Andrew Neil's Sunday Politics sofa, senior Labour MP and shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Chris Leslie, just told the BBC that his party would block any further independence referendum in the next parliament. Neil suggested to him that #indyrefs remain "reserved matters" under the Scotland Act. "Absolutely," Leslie responded, "there is not a way that we would want to see a repetitious repeating of something that has been decided for a generation." 

A couple of days ago, I asked Scottish Labour leader a fairly simple question: does he or does he not believe that Holyrood has the legal authority to hold another independence referendum? Answer came there none. But Leslie's comments this morning confirm what Mr Murphy would not: the UK Labour Party clearly still believe and maintain that the Scottish Parliament currently does not have the power to hold a second referendum, that Westminster consent is necessary, and that Westminster consent would not be forthcoming in the next five years. No minority Labour government, no majority Labour government, no Tory and no coalition government would currently be prepared to put its name to another section 30 order, along the lines of the text adopted after the Edinburgh Agreement, paving the way for a second poll.

But here's big Jim, still galloping around the country, giving it his "24 hours to save the Union" routine.  “You only have 24 hours to stop a second referendum. The clock is ticking,” a leaked leaflet yelped. "Only Labour can STOP ANOTHER REFERENDUM." Caps lock is,  clearly, cruise control for TERROR.

As his helpful colleague just made clear to Andrew Neil, however, Murphy's threats are all empty. And he knows they are empty. His colleagues south of the border know they are empty. The wisp, the spectre, he hopes to frighten the electorate with has no substance. None of this ought to be news. It echoes Miliband's earlier statements that he would not accept another referendum any time soon.  But if there is zero prospect of a second referendum in this Westminster parliament, how the devil can you make that the central plank of your campaign against the SNP in the last two weeks of the campaign? If you maintain that the Scotland Act - here since 1998 - blocks an independence poll, why on earth do we need Scottish Labour MPs to "stop" it?

Several consequences logically flow from Leslie's comments, none of which seem particularly helpful for the Labour Party.  If you dp want a second referendum at some point in the future, I doubt you'll much appreciate this high-handed talk of "blocking" and permission refused. But then again, January's big plan to "reach out to" those who disagreed with the Labour leadership on the referendum seems to have gone the way of all things already. Instead, democratic socialists are despatching epistles to Tories in their constituencies, while Jim "I have never been a unionist" Murphy hopes to survive in East Renfrewhshire by attracting unionist votes. 

Alternatively, if you are swithering about voting for the Nats because of concerns that a second referendum might result - despite Nicola's repeated denials - you can heed these comments and rest easy. Whether or not you vote for the Labour Party, the Tories, the Liberals or for the SNP, no second referendum will result in this parliament. An SNP vote is risk-free on that score. Even if you disbelieve the First Minister, and sense that plots for a second plebiscite are brewing - Leslie reassures you - the unionist majority in Westminster can and doubtless will ensure that the question cannot be put.  The Union doesn't need the People's Party to save it once again. Constitutional law as already done the trick. Spectre, exorcised. 

If you didn't know better, you'd think that the left hand of the Labour party doesn't know what the right hand us up to. (Or, as one reader just suggested, that left and right hands are busy, fighting each other...)

Harnessing the 55%

While toddling through Shawlands this week, I chanced across the Labour's Glasgow South candidate, Tom Harris, campaigning outside the local Co-op. Having politely explained that I wasn't with him in this election, I took the opportunity to ask him about a letter which has been circulating in the constituency, inviting folk who voted No on the 18th of September 2014 to save his bacon on the 7th of May. 

"I thought Jim had said that Scottish Labour isn't a unionist party?" I enquired. "But I'm a unionist," he said. In his affably bluff way, Tom explained that he needed every vote going, and if that involved putting the fear of god up the Tories of Newlands, he'd make no apology for doing so.  "And I suppose you're pretty right-wing too, so - " I quipped, for villainy - "I suppose I am," he responded, with unexpected candour. I sidled on. Good luck to him. He'll need it.  

But the encounter made me think a wee bit about the assumptions lying behind Tom's letter, and being pushed nationally by Liberal Democrats in tight spots, that the Better Together alliance can be cobbled back together to save their skins."55% of people voted no, back me to stop the Nationalist juggernaut." John Curtice has been pouring buckets of icy water over the idea that tactical voting represents an effective anti-Nationalist strategy over most of the country, arguing that the sums just don't add up. As Professor Curtice points out, there aren't enough Labour, Tories or Liberal Democrat voters in the overwhelming majority of seats to make a decisive difference, even if folk were inclined to lend their vote to a Better Together ally. 

But the thinking behind this isn't just numerically problematic - it also flies in the face of what the referendum taught us about the reasons and attitudes lying behind the No vote. Tom and the Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten who the 55% are, and why they voted against independence last September. The recent findings of the Scottish Election Study suggest that the No lead did not come down to British identities, or optimism about the Union, nor widespread pessimism about independence, but fear, risk and uncertainty. 

The study concludes that identities - Scottish and British - provided core support for both Yes and No campaigns, the outcome was decided by perceptions of economic risk. The most recent tranche of survey data from the study suggested that feelings of Britishness or attachment to the Union account for just 29.5% of the No vote. To put a more concrete number on that, just 590,568 of the 2,001,926 votes attracted by the No campaign seem to have hinged to any significant extent on British identities. 

This chimes with my own experiences. If this referendum has revealed one thing, it is that Scots allegiance to the British state is - perhaps disturbingly - provisional. A popular, winning, organic unionism has not emerged. If anything, the Conservative and Unionist Party seems hell-bent on salting the earth across the border, to ensure no sprouts grow. 

For some folk, a sense of Britishness is essential, a part of their identity, the object of passionate attachment. Some of the best pieces from pro-union writers during the dying days of the campaign spoke of these themes in a way that the cynical, anxiety-generating apparatus of the official campaign never even attempted. But like the identity ultras on the Yes side, these are minority enthusiasms. The Better Together parties looked deep into the eyes of the Scottish people, and found dealer's eyes peering back at them, unsentimental, commercial, counting the pennies, weighing the odds -- and won the game on that basis.  

A gulf of feeling separates this dicing of the economic odds from the anti-Nat ardency which this new Better Together alliance hopes to ignite. And if you voted against independence on the basis of these cool calculations, what the devil are you to make of the plaintive efforts of candidates like Christine Jardine and Tom Harris, addressing you like a union fundamentalist, a loyalist, re-running September's poll? 

This stands at odds, not just with the numbers, but what we know about the key motive forces of the No vote. It may peel off ultra montane No voters, for whom the national question has acquired new and critical salience, but seems likely to strike a dud note for those opposed to independence who do not share these intense attachments. It is a case of pro-union political leaderships, projecting their own antipathies onto a more ambivalent, less ferociously negative, public. Scotland is not a land of Effie Deans. 

It is a phenomenon which surprised SNP canvassers are experiencing on the doorstep. Over the weekend, I was having a blether with one of the SNP candidates in the city about what, if you read the media, you probably regard as an improbable phenomenon - the No voting SNP supporter. Why? For some, it is buyer's remorse. But for many more, they voted no on a more conditional basis: "not yet", "not ready", "not convinced by the arguments" - but none of this is proving decisive in determining which party they believe will best represent them in this parliament in Westminster.

For electors of this kind - the overwhelming majority of the 55% - the #indyref cannot be comprehensively "weaponised" in the way Liberal Democratic, Tory and Labour campaigners in East Dumbartonshire, Glasgow South and Gordon - increasingly desperately - hope, believe and pray. 

The Vow+?

This morning, the Labour Party launches its 2015 manifesto in Manchester. It pledges to hold a UK wide "people-led" constitutional convention and commits any new Labour government to additional Scottish devolution. The key paragraph reads as follows:

"In September 2014, people across Scotland voted overwhelmingly for change. Labour will keep its vow and implement the Smith Agreement in full. And we will go further, with a Home Rule Bill to give extra powers to Scotland over tax, welfare and jobs. Rates of income tax will be set in Scotland. Billions of pounds of social security spending will be devolved, including benefits that support disabled people. The Work Programme will also be devolved along with a greater ability to invest in capital projects.

The new devolution settlement will recognise the strength and security offered by being part of the United Kingdom. We will maintain the Barnett formula, and Scotland will continue to benefit from pooling and sharing resources across the UK."

For all of its superficial conclusiveness, this paragraph leaves urgent questions about the contents of the "vow plus", advanced by Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy, unanswered.  Labour pledge to "go further" than Smith, but go on to list only policies which the Smith Commission agreed to devolve, and which we already find in the draft clauses of the Scotland Bill published by the Scotland Office.

There is nothing here which the Tory and Liberal Democratic coalition have not proposed. So what more are Labour proposing? What precise elaboration on the Smith heads of terms are they planning? Smith came to the conclusion that housing benefit could not be disentangled from the universal credit. No mention of housing benefit here. So what is the scheme, Jim? Ed?

Nothing in today's manifesto affords even a speck of illumination. We are left where we started with Labour: no minimum wage, no pensions, no employment law, no Equality Act, no national insurance, no housing benefit, no universal credit, no broadcasting, no corporation tax, no inheritance tax, no capital gains, no renewable energies, no oil.

The draft clauses of the Scotland Bill were clearly Treasury work: grudging, minimalist and controlling. There are a number of different ways in which the broad, airy proposals of the Smith Commission might be realised, some bolder, others more cautious and limited. The devil is, proverbially, in the legal detail. And in drafting that detail for Alastair Carmichael, UK civil servants adopted the most restrictive alternative at every turn. In the light of today's manifesto, I increasingly wonder if the Murphy/Brown "vow plus" rhetoric really amounts only to this -- a commitment to give effect to the Smith Commission in a very slightly more ambitious way than the outgoing coalition has proposed. Haud me back...

Notes on "Defcon F*****d"

Believe it or not, in Inverness Nairn Badenoch and Strathspey in the general election of 2010, Danny Alexander's primary challenger was the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrat secured just shy of 41% of the vote in the Highland seat (19,172) while his Labour challenger Mike Robb took 10,407 to John Finnie's (SNP) 8,803. This time out, Alexander faces Drew Hendry for the Nats, while Labour have given Mike Robb a second crack at the seat.  

But given the history of the constituency, its Holyrood voting behaviour, and the failure of the Scottish Labour Party to pitch beyond urban (and increasingly west-central) Scotland, few folk will be expecting Danny Alexander to be unseated by the representative of the People's Party. Robb will hope to run his opponents close, and to build on his solid 2010 performance to make it a three-way race, but Ashcroft's February poll suggests that he has already been pushed into a distant third.

Those of you watching even snippets of the STV and BBC Scotland debates these past two evenings will have been struck by the vehemence with which the old Better Together coalition representatives went hunting for Nicola. And no surprise. The SNP is the only political party which can really be said to be in contention in every single seat in Scotland. Aberdeenshire to the Borders, Dundee to west central Scotland, everyone up there with Sturgeon has something to lose. Everyone, everywhere, has colleagues and comrades, with a Nat potentially nipping at their heels. The same cannot really be said of Labour, defending their redoubts, or the Tories, trying to shore up Mundell and hoping to give the ailing Liberal Democrats a kicking in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. 

Whatever your view of the national question, Nicola was always going to have a big, beaming target on her back. And despite the rough handling and the multiple angles of fire, she held up well.

Deprived of the relative security of a proportional electoral system, first past the post ratchets up the stakes. It forces the candidates - as if they needed any encouragement - to fight like rats in a sack. The risks and rewards of failure are far greater. Think of it this way. If Holyrood had been elected in 2011 solely on the basis of who won in the Holyrood constituencies, the SNP would have won 53 of 73 seats (73%) on the basis of 45% of the votes. Labour would have been reduced to just 15 seats in the chamber (21%), despite attracting 32% of constituency votes. The Blair years tell a similar story. 

Other first past the post systems throw up parallel calamities and triumphs, as marginal winners win big, and marginal losers get decimated. The mild folk of Canada have been particularly ferocious in this respect. In the federal election of 2011, the Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff went into the poll with 77 MPs in the Canadian House of Commons, crashing to just 34. That was as nothing compared to the party's fate in 1984, when the Liberals lost 73% of their parliamentary delegation, falling from 147 to just 40 MPs. The Liberals paid their opponents back in kind in 1993, however, when the Progressive Conservatives conspired to lose 99% of their ridings, belly-flopping from the heights of 169 seats to just two. 

Even the disheartened Scottish Labour MP, complaining of "being set to Defcon f****d", must concede that their own predicament isn't quite so dire -- yet.  But first past the post can be like like Saturn: it devours its own children.    

Nae pals

Look at the numbers. By all means, the polls may be out. I remain unconvinced that the SNP will approach anything like 50-odd seats. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats will do slightly better in those parts of the Britain which remain authentically liberal - comfortable, too snobbish to vote Labour, with with too much - tepid - regard for the general welfare to embrace Toryism. But look at the overall totals, the trend, and the likely outcomes. 2015 is a general election of friends. Or at least of uneasy allies. 

Whoever wins a plurality of seats will have to rely on the support - or at least the acquiescence of near neighbours - to seize power, installing themselves in Downing Street and distributing the ministerial dodgems to their followers. There are 650 members of the House of Commons. If we eliminate Mr Speaker, and discount the five Sinn Fein members who do not take their seats, a working majority in the Commons is currently 323 seats. 

And standing there, isolated in the corner of the school-yard, nose snotters, eyes streaming, we find the Conservative Party: a petulant little Lord Fauntleroy figure - Spoilt Bastard for Viz readers - friendless and alone. UKIP's broad but shallow support may throw up a handful of MPs who could be persuaded to leave David Cameron's settee in No 10. The Unionist alliance in Northern Ireland will yield a few more - but the price for their support seems to be greater lucre for the Six Counties - and a state-slicing Tory administration must yield fewer opportunities for bungs and investments in exchange for confidence and supply. 

It remains to be seen how the shattered fragments of the Liberal Democrats will reassemble after voting day, or what ideological strain and analysis of their current predicament will prevail: the noble self-sacrificing patriots, or a Benedict Arnold leadership, foolishly deserting their base. Even then, the party looks almost certain to be deprived of its 2010 predicament and opportunity: the only viable coalition partner for the single largest party. It is a question of rainbow coalitions all round, formal and informal. 

Analysing last night's debate on STV, Adam Bienkov rightly underlines a point this blog has been making for some time:

"... as things stand, Labour are highly unlikely to win an overall majority at the election. According to most forecasts it is also likely that the Tories will be the largest party in a hung parliament. If this turns out to be the case then you might expect Ed Miliband to have no chance of becoming prime minister. You would be wrong. In a parliamentary system, it is not the party which has the largest number of seats, but the party which is most able to pass a majority in that parliament, which gets to govern. If current polls are correct, that party is Labour. The Conservatives know this, which is why they have spent the past few months trying to delegitimise the idea of any kind of post-election arrangement between Labour and the SNP."

This is the Tory cri de cœur. Demanding power without a mandate, claiming legitimacy without support, lashing out at the "undemocratic" outrage of the SNP refusing point-blank to re-install this unpopular and divisive minority party in power. But the bleak truth, my snivelling, lonesome, friend is this: this is a general election of friends, and save for Nigel's crackpot gang of three or four, you've nae pals.

Talking turkey

Much of the honest scheming is surely going on in smoke free back rooms, war-gaming possible scenarios, running the counterfactuals. Would any minority administration long survive? What if the Nationalists won enough seats to put Labour over the top, would England wear it, and would Miliband cut the deal? If the balance of power lay with Nigel Farage, would he go into coalition with Cameron's mob, and would the punters accept it?

Could the depleted rump of the Liberal Democrats be persuaded to prop up the Labour Party with a confidence and supply deal, a renewed Lib-Lab pact for the 21st century? These kinds of questions seem to be dominating the fizz of anticipation on the airwaves. But much of the public commentary about the Scottish dimension seems to me to miss the mark and to be neglecting obvious tensions and challenges thrown up by the 2015 general election.  

The Nationalist pitch in 2015 seems to fall into two or three key arguments. One. Dump the calculations and the tactics. Vote with your heart. Give Labour a kicking. Punish their hubris. You know it'll be fun. "Red Tories." "They're all the same." Better Together. Etcetera. 

This sits - somewhat uncomfortably - alongside proposition two: Labour can't be trusted to govern alone. With Ed sitting unsteady at the helm, they look like losers, despite the much more equivocal polling picture. Vote SNP to despatch a powerful phalanx of Nationalists to torment the Labour Party into virtue, on spending cuts, military hardware and enhanced devolution. It is equally important for the party to be coy about how precisely this might actually work. If the Nationalists ruled out a coalition, the case for including them in the fraught saga that is the leadership debates would be very materially weakened.  

This makes sense if we are anticipating a minority Labour "win", but in any other scenario, it is essentially a pitch for "our" feeble fifty to replace Labour's. A key plank of the argument for independence was that Scotland frequently doesn't get the government that the majority supported. We can despatch dozens of anti Tory parliamentarians to London: it makes no difference if the majority in the rest of the country votes true blue.  

If the stars do not align, and an agreeable minority does not materialise, however, our fifty risk being doomed to being feeble too.  "A strong voice for Scotland" in Westminster, but one at risk of crying in the wilderness. The opposition given the government by the Nationalists may be more gratifyingly robust than the current Labour regime offers -- but it remains opposition, with very limited powers of action. Ask Jim Murphy. All he can do is mew and call for this and that issue to be considered and prioritised. With a strike of her pen, Nicola can make things like this happen. 

It is cold, thankless, frequently fruitless work outside those government offices. Redundancy is one thing, one political cul de sac, but worse, what if it works? What if the Nationalists are somehow able to throw their weight around at Westminster, frustrating Whitehall plans, and elbowing the centre of British politics leftward, playing the table cannily. Where then for the argument that only independence can secure for Scotland the politics that the majority seems to desire? Oops.

But when you get into it, into the detail, how is any SNP deal going to work, and what does it risk? And to whom would it be acceptable? There's quite a bit of sloppy, flip thinking doing the rounds at the moment about the implications of this for the Nationalists. A coalition of any sort seems decidedly difficult to envision, given the party rhetoric, local enemies, traditions, and party support.

The SNP must have seen enough junior coalition parters being cannibalised to learn caution. They must also know that the discreet, deniable informal arrangement between 2007 and 2011 when the Tories helped pass the minority government's budget cannot extend to any Westminster deal they are involved it. It will all be done in the glare of publicity, and in the context of a Scottish political discourse shot through with hard antipathies. Nobody wants to be 2015's Nick Clegg.

But if a full coalition, and voting in support of English legislation is too rich for your blood, you may be inclined to say, "ach well, we'll go for confidence and supply instead" - as if that represented a wafer-thin undertaking for any party to give to a governing minority. Applying yourself for a minute or two to the implications of this should reveal, however, that any deal of this kind has the same capacity for toxicity as full coalition. Sure, you may not be contributing ministers to be monstered in the press, but it means voting for the Labour budget. 

Imagine you are a new-minted Nationalist MP, sent to Westminster with your blood roiling, determined to challenge the state-shrinking, welfare-cutting orthodoxy which dominates the present coalition and Labour party thinking. Would you - could you - vote for that? Cast your mind back to your constituency, and the heated rhetoric of the campaign. Do you think your confidence and supply vote would survive its rigour? Would you satisfy your own critique of Liberal - and Labour - sell outs, turncoats and right-wing bastardy? Good luck with that one.

Governments do plenty of controversial things, but supporting a budget is more than a technical matter signing off the national accounts: it is to be implicated in basic economic and social decision-making of the governing regime. Unless a minority Labour Party could be persuaded radically to depart from Ed Balls' current spending plans, any coalition or confidence and supply deal between Labour and the SNP is fraught with peril. 

Even if the Labour party hand us the scalpel, we're under no obligation to draw it across our throats. Ad hoc unpredictability, issue by issue, may offer a safer haven. But eventually, it comes down to this: would you vote to sustain or to evict a government from office? If you are the sitting Prime Minister whose fate is being decided, this is a hair-raising situation to find yourself in. But the predicament engulfs all of the opposition too, particularly in a tight parliament. 

There is an important lesson here. Although I remain skeptical about he likelihood of the SNP achieving anything like the kind of breakthrough in Westminster current polling suggests is possible, being sent in triumph to a hung parliament with unpredictable bottom line numbers represents a great opportunity - and a real threat - to the party, if events are not handled with cold-eyed self-awareness, and the right calculations made. A good, but more modest result - twelve seats say - may deliver us from peril. But history is frequently cruel. And even victors are by victories undone.

Notes from the Rouge Morgue...

When did Scottish Labour become so inept at politics? 

This afternoon, Gary Gibbon of Channel 4 published this blog, reporting findings from his attempt to "take the temperature" of the party's Westminster delegation on the reported volte-face on devolving all of income tax to Holyrood. Gibbon found that the Labour tribunes were not happy little bunnies, not at all. 

"The temperature is at morgue chiller levels", he reports, alongside a series of damaging quotations from disgruntled parliamentarians, suggesting that tomorrow's Smith Commission proposals will be a calamity for the Union, a "complete disaster." Income tax devolution is not represented as the intrepid, visionary and generous act of a party comfortable in its own skin, emboldened by the referendum victory, and committed to "home rule" - but a grudgingly granted and much-resented concession. 

This is madness. If, as expected, the Smith Commission endorses these plans tomorrow, these leaky tribunes will have achieved nothing save to undermine (a) confidence that Labour will deliver on the Smith compact, if elected in 2015 and (b) strangle in the cradle the already frail delusion that Labour, in its current mood, is "the party of devolution", despite its historical boasts and pieties.  

Yesterday, I argued that the Smith Commission represents an opportunity for Labour and the Tories to redraft their constitutional storytelling, to restate the Union in bold, contemporary form and to re-articulate their own places within it in a more satisfactory way. The Smith Commission plans certainly contain the resources for a compelling shift in the constitutional debate.  A powerhouse parliament. Completing devolution's work. Expressing our faith in the capacity of the Scottish people to govern themselves. And for Labour - a critical opportunity to get back on the front foot and to knock the perfidious Nats helter-skelter.

And god knows, you'd think the People's Party would be glad of the life-raft. Bilious low expectations gnaw at Labour's credibility on devolution and its institutions. You'd think they'd have learned the lessons from reluctant devo-something offer, which saw them dawdling behind the Tories, mistrustful of Scottish self-government and apparently determined - above all - to protect the party interest. But today, on the cusp of their big opportunity to make the weather, they appear determined to appear stinting and huffy. Again. Madness. 

Bitching, publicly, about something almost certain to happen -- and instead of pitching it as a glorious triumph of a renewed, confident party, comfortable with devolution and at home with governing in the UK -- it is all soor faces and grief. Reluctant, crabbit, clenching, grudging. 

And there's more bad news. If the Labour MPs are girning on about income tax, it seems unlikely that Smith will recommend the devolution of substantial social security responsibilities -- that would drive them hopping mad and cultivate an altogether different temperature. My own view, for what is is worth, is that the failure to stump up significant powers over welfare will sign the Union's death warrant. Certainly not today, and probably not tomorrow -- but in the long run, the failure of nerve and failure of confidence will keep the underlying questions of social justice burning bright and hot. 

Labour look determined to lose the post-indyref peace. Their Unionist fellow travellers, anxious about the Union's continuing frailty and anxious that that peace is won and won well -- must have their heads in their hands.

Anticipating Smith ... on welfare

The coffee pail bubbles down to an acrid stew. The prawn sandwiches are curling. Night pulls the sun under the horizon. And the meeting, the interminable meeting, goes on. Civil servants clip in and out with scraps of paper. Hangdog faces dominate the table. Increasingly impolite apologies are offered, as the protagonists nip into the corridor to field hissing mobile phone calls, anxious not to be overheard. Nerves fray as weariness increases. Everything heads south. The final text is assembled, scrappily, bit by bit. Disagreements are finally squared, or not squared. Minds soon turn to the aftermath, to the lines to take, and the victories and the strategic retreats to be spun. 

This, give or take, must be the atmosphere in the Smith Commission as the last few grains of sand fleet through the hourglass, and Saint Andrew's Day approaches. The political representatives are due to announce their heads of agreement by the 30th of November: just days away. I'd expect this document to be simple, categorical - and leave several points of detail and practicality underdeveloped. It will not, I imagine, be a detained administrative blueprint, but a broad statement of principle and intent. How could it be otherwise, given the breakneck speed with which the report will have been assembled?

The Commission hasn't exactly been leaky - but there have been a few noises off from the political parties participating in it, who must now have a fair idea about the nature of the proposals which the group is likely to endorse, and the key points of friction between them. One of the weekend's most interesting stories was the news that the Liberal Democrats have reverse ferreted to an undisclosed extent on welfare devolution. So much, so vague. The new commitment may be much less than it seems, and until Thursday, one for the Kremlinologists trying to work out which coalitions of interest have formed within the Commission - and the extent to which Labour or the SNP finds their respective maximalist and minimalist visions of autonomy isolated by the other participants. 

It now seems probable, for example, that income tax will be devolved in its entirety - but important questions remain outstanding about the autonomy Holyrood would enjoy in terms of setting the basic rate and the bands. Elections too, seem likely to be devolved, with some hints that the fixtures and fittings of the Scotland Act will also be liberalised, to allow the Scottish Parliament to bend and shape its structure to meet changing needs. 

Pensions, however, surely have a snowball's chance of finding their way onto Holyrood's balance sheet (and in the absence of significant revenue powers, this may well be a damn good thing too). I'd also expect to see heads of agreement on codifying the Sewel convention. I'd be surprised if the legality of any future independence referendums was clearly entrenched in the new Scotland Bill - but you never know. There will be other flotsam and jetsam too, of greater and lesser degrees of technicality and public interest. Minimum wage? Answer came there none. Abortion law? According to the Sunday papers, maybe.

But the political firecracker is social security. What precisely does "substantial new welfare powers" look like? What can it look like, in a historically unitary system where social security has been squeezed within the framework of a universal credit? I'm reasonably confident that the Commission will agree in principle to something along the lines of the additional general welfare competency or a top-up function which I commended to them in my submission earlier this month.  

The idea is doable, legally workable, good in principle, and in line with fundamental principles of devolved autonomy and "pooling and sharing" resources. We might gripe - not unreasonably - that such an authority would be a paper responsibility only, while public spending is in the vice. But in a small way, it would beef up the armoury of the Scottish Parliament. Would it represent a "substantial" new power? Well, yes and no. In the absence of new control over significant swathes core welfare spending, it would be a drop in the ocean. But not without utility or significance for all that. 

There will be a strong expectation, at least, that the much-mooted housing benefit and attendance allowance will be devolved. The bedroom tax has given the scheme a high political salience, and expectations have been raised. But we can't be too blithe about its devolution. It'll cost a fair whack to wheedle housing benefit out of the universal credit - who will bear the cost of those changes? And if the cost is prohibitively high, and would consume an unreasonably high percentage of the Scottish budget alone, would it be worth the bother? 

It is one of those unlucky conjunctions for the Union. Dissatisfaction with welfare reform has increased the political salience of social security policy, and demands for its devolution, while Iain Duncan Smith's consolidation of welfare spending into a universal credit has made the devolution of these powers considerable trickier and more costly. If only Calman had had a little more forward vision back in the late 2000s. In terms of core welfare spending, the Smith Commission is now in all or nothing territory, essentially. And that has implications for the tax base and tax powers too. There is no point investing Holyrood with responsibilities it can't afford on a sustainable basis. 

Given the Labour Party's case for the Union, its "pooling and sharing" patter, however, it is difficult to see how any devo deal which includes Iain Gray and Gregg McClymont can be particularly radical, falling closer to everything than nothing on key forms of social security for the unemployed and the disabled. If Smith can't cajole the UK parties into a bolder vision, welfare policy looks doomed to become the Union's running sore. If the Union remains fragile, a feeble Smith Commission offer will do little to staunch the flow. 

The structure I propose - a general grant of power to Holyrood combined with protecting the UK welfare enactments under Schedule 4 - also represents a constructive way of approaching other issues, such as equalities, empowering Holyrood while protecting core UK statutes. Equal opportunities are currently reserved in Schedule 5. A better way of proceeding would be to protect the Equality Act 2010 from modification or repeal by Holyrood, but to give the Scottish Parliament the green light to adopt regulations and prohibitions to promote its own conception of the demands of equality.  

As things stand, the Scottish Parliament is tied up in pointless prohibitions by the Scotland Act's Schedule 5 approach. The time has come to conceive of the relationships between Holyrood and Westminster more flexibly and imaginatively. It chimes with the home rule methodology that autonomy should be devolved, save where there are compelling reasons to reserve the power exclusively to Westminster. 

There are several areas of policy, in a Union, where compelling reasons can be found. Bones should not be made about that. The "devo-max" vision of devolving everything short of foreign affairs and defence was always over-egged. What about our common market, the heart of the 1707 union, and everything that comes with it? What about decision-making on currency? 

The radicalism of the Smith Commission deal will depend, to a very significant extent, on which side - the autonomy-promoting Nationalist contingent - or the reluctant devo-minusers of the Labour Party - the other Smith Commission participants coalesce around. The Nationalists can be expected to argue that the settlement - any settlement - falls short of the "master key" of independence. Quel surprise. You'd expect nothing less. 

But there are other propaganda wars which the Unionist parties must fight and win. For the Unionist spinners, the plans cannot be another badly-sold Scotland Act 2012 - finnicky, grudging, technical and forgotten. It must be crisp, easy to understand, its real-life relevance clear and categorical. It must be bullet-pointable. 

The proposals must be seen to honour the ambitions of "the Vow," however vague its commitments and mercurial its terminology. The bare terms of "home rule" and "federalism" - though much-quoted - don't really take us very far, compatible with a range of more and less powerful devolved institutions. Indeed, Holyrood already enjoys greater autonomy in some areas that many federal institutions in other states.

But politically, Labour, the Liberals and the Tories must be seen to be as good as their word. The SNP can be expected to slate the proposals as falling short of independence. The party would struggle, however, to make the broader and more significant indictment - that the Vow has been ratted on - if Smith's proposals are and appear to be substantial and bold. Smith seems likely to be the end of road for devolution: an event, not a process. Ruth Davidson's line in the sand, if you like. Thus far and no further. 

As the delegates sit down for their final meeting, slurping the cold coffee and labouring towards dawn, welfare autonomy perhaps represents Lord Smith's greatest challenge. Room for manoeuvre curtailed by the centralising force of the universal credit reforms, bounced by Labour's historic opposition to devolving key, highly visible benefits, it is increasingly difficult to see how the Commission's recommendations on Thursday can avoid falling short of the expectations raised.  

Cry last orders, ladies and gentlemen. The Commission is in for a long night on Wednesday.

Ca' canny...

As Massie says, the results of yesterday's Ipsos-MORI poll are remarkable, with Labour polling at a grisly 23% to the SNP's 52% going into the General Election. The Tories languish on 10%, and the Liberals, 6%. Grim tidings for the beleaguered Liberal Democrats, hoping to hold on to some of their eleven Scottish seats. Worse for Ed Miliband, who can ill afford to lose bastions on its northward front. 

The poll doubtless has some significance. The next General Election campaign certainly represents an opportunity for the Nationalists to make gains, particularly if we see a differential rise in activism and enthusiasm and turnout amongst the disappointed minority who voted Yes on the 18th of September. But if your attention is fixed on Holyrood, it is easy to forget just how badly the SNP has done in recent Westminster general elections. But here are a few sobering facts we shouldn't allow ourselves to forget in the current ferment. 

The SNP hit its high watermark in Westminster support in the October election of 1974, winning 11 seats. Since, it has never exceeded six MPs. In 2005 and 2010, the SNP were the third party in Scotland,  in terms of seats won, We pipped the Liberal Democrats in the popular vote in 1997, 2001 and 2010 but lagged behind in seats. God bless first past the post. But that was more than a decade ago. The two most recent UK polls put the Nationalists in the vice, squeezed between Labour, the Liberals and the Tories. 

Despite BBC documentaries, asking why Scotland didn't vote for the Tories, in 2010 the SNP polled just 78,500 more votes nationally than David Cameron's party. Labour members were returned to Westminster with thumping majorities, but so were many Liberal Democrats in their enclaves. Take a few big names. Michael Moore won Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk with 45.5% of the vote, some 5,675 ahead of his nearest, Conservative competitor. Wee Danny Alexander took Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey with over 19,000 votes.

But what should disturb the attentive Nationalist more is how we far down the pecking order we fall - even in areas in which we are in contention for, and even win, in Holyrood elections.  The Scottish and UK parliamentary orders do not nearly graft onto one another. The constituency boundaries have, in many cases, diverged. But a few examples from the Liberal Democratic periphery should hammer home the point. Take Danny Alexander, up in the Highlands. The Liberal Democrats may have won the day with 40% of the vote - but in 2010, his nearest competitor was not the SNP, but the Labour Party, who won 10,407 votes to the Nationalists' 8,803. The point is made even more brutally by considering the constituency in which I grew up: Argyll and Bute.

A Liberal seat throughout my childhood, represented by the late Ray Michie and now by the near-invisible Alan Reid, after a 1997 surge, the SNP actually came fourth in the constituency in 2001, 2005, and 2010, behind the Liberals, the Tories and Labour. Compare and contrast with the constituency's preferences in recent Holyrood elections. Lib Dem George Lyon was turfed out by the SNP's Jim Mather in 2007. Mike Russell held it in 2011 with over 50% of the vote. The divergence in voting behaviour is striking, and in general elections, not to our advantage. 

Are these challenges insuperable? Most certainly not. But they are formidable, and should be treated and understood as formidable. The Labour wipe-out promised by yesterday's poll is unlikely to appear. There are gains to be made, and constituencies to fight -- but matching or narrowly exceeding the party's all-time high of eleven seats in 1974 would be a great result. We shouldn't lose sight of that, and the low base - both in terms of votes and seats - from which we spring.

It is essential that the SNP begins to clamp down on the overrunning expectations of sweeping Labour from its Scottish constituencies and running the map after 2015. Take this morning's bad headlines for Ed Miliband, enjoy a partisan chortle, but don't believe the hype. There's a gathering risk here of mismanaging expectations to the extent that even a good result for the SNP in the general election looks like a failure, or worse, a public reckoning for Nationalist hubris.

That's not a story Nicola will want to foster at this early stage in her leadership. We should learn the lesson of the over-spun local election campaign in Glasgow in 2012. While the leadership was telling the press that Labour's grip on the city looked precarious, on the ground, Labour were working like mad - in the last ditch - and the Nationalist campaign never had the same level of resources, focus, or enthusiasm. The results speak for themselves. Labour retained its majority in the city chambers, and justly gloated about the over-inflated expectations which had been stoked up. "SNP juggernaut grinds to halt." Etcetera, etcetera. We saw similar missteps in managing expectations in the 2008 Glenrothes by-election. It is a temptation which must be resisted going into 2015 too. 

Keep the heid. Consider the data. Ca' canny.

Stewart Hosie: "Our New Scotland – The Next Step…"

Like many folk in the party, I remain undecided about which of the three candidates for Deputy Leader of the SNP I should support. How do their visions differ? What are they all about? Having a wee platform here, I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask all three to write me up to 1,000 words on the thinking behind their bids to replace Nicola Sturgeon. Newspapers only have so much space. On telly and on radio, one has next to no time to say anything at all. On blogs, we can afford to be a bit more leisurely and considered. On Monday, we heard from Transport Minister, Keith Brown MSP. Today, it is Dundee East MP, Stewart Hosie's turn, to make his pitch.

The Labour Party in Scotland is in meltdown.

That’s an unusual way to start an article, but as we approach the next challenge the SNP and the wider Independence movement faces - it is important - because that next challenge is the 2015 General Election.

This should not, in my view, be a re-run of the referendum. Instead it is the Scottish people’s opportunity to hold Westminster’s ‘feet to the fire’ and force them to fulfil their promises.

So remember what they told us. “We’re going to be, within a year or two, as close to a federal state as you can be.” (Gordon Brown, 14 August 2014). Which, sounds very similar to the pledge (or vow) made by the Prime Minister. “If we get a No vote …, that will trigger a major, unprecedented programme of devolution with additional powers for the Scottish Parliament.” (David Cameron, 15 September 2014)

But the proposals published so far by the UK parties neither meet the public demand for “devo-max” or the expectations raised during the referendum campaign. 

Their proposals would devolve barely 30% of Scotland’s revenue base, or to put that another way, less than half the funding requirements of the Scottish Parliament. These are not “extensive new powers”, that is not “federalism”. Rather those are extremely modest proposals and likely to disappoint not just the 1.6 million who voted Yes, but the large number of those who voted No in order to secure substantial new powers.

The only way to make unionism sit up and take heed – and to secure substantial new powers – is to elect the largest number of Independence supporting MPs to Westminster ever. While we may win seats from the Lib Dems, and they deserve to lose them, our primary opponents in most seats in Scotland are Labour. That is why their all too public collapse is important. That and the fact their devolution offering is even weaker than the Tories. So far, so self evident. The question is how do we win these seats?

In my view, it hinges on keeping the Yes Movement together to campaign for Independence supporting MPs and for more powers while at all times making the case for Independence. And in arguing for real maximum devolution (everything bar defence and foreign affairs), we would reach out not just to those who voted Yes, but 25% of those who voted No expecting substantial new powers for Scotland

I am certain that the best way to make sure Westminster delivers will be to return the largest ever number of Independence supporting MPs to Westminster. I’m equally certain that many of the wonderful, talented people who emerged through the Independence campaign will contest the next election. But The SNP will be the engine of the campaign and with over 80,000 members it will be a turbo charged one. However, the wider Independence movement can provide further fuel and momentum to that campaign. 

In practice that means looking at ways of working beyond party interests to maximise the participation of those who campaigned and voted for a better Scotland by offering them an opportunity to campaign and vote again for change at next year’s General Election. I have no doubt that the SNP can and will send the largest ever number of SNP MPs to Westminster at next year’s general election, but if we build a Yes Alliance, there is an opportunity to do even more than that.

What is clear is that whether we campaign on a joint platform of maximum powers for Scotland, or select candidates from the range of hugely talented people who emerged through the referendum campaign, the SNP should show the same willingness to work with individuals and organisations to make sure the largest number of Independence supporting MPs is delivered to Westminster next May. 

By turning the strong desire for change into votes for change next year the Scottish people can sweep aside the vested interests of the Westminster old guard. This will deliver the best chance of substantial new powers for Scotland.

It is for agreement as to how formal or informal such cooperation would be, but what a powerful alliance we could deliver to stand up for Scotland. Of course any broad campaign will require approval from not just the SNP but many of the other parties and organisations involved in Yes but it is important that we begin build that alliance now to deliver for Scotland.

2015 is just the next step for Scotland. There will be many, many miles to walk to Independence after that. But it is an important step in a very important year. I believe I have the skills and experience to help offer some leadership over this period, which is why I have put myself forward as a candidate for Depute Leader of the SNP.

All the hopes and dreams we have for a richer, fairer, greener, more socially just society need Scotland’s people to take the next step and demand more powers. Let’s make sure the Independence Movement is united and sure-footed as we campaign, together, to take this most important next step.

Stewart Hosie MP

Scottish Labour: in the beartrap?

A question of low, cynical politics: what happens to the Smith Commission on enhanced devolution if and when Labour drags its feet? What do the Liberals and the Tories do? In Westminster's recent debate on English votes for English laws - oh, and #devosomething for Scotland - William Hague told the Commons:

"The enactment of what we are all talking about on Scottish devolution is of course after the general election. Draft legislation in January, a bill to be introduced whoever wins the general election in May. So that is to be enacted at the beginning of the next parliament. I believe that we can, the country can reach a decision."

A guileless reading of this comment suggests that the UK government is committed to "constructive cross-party working" - which is really to say, getting Labour onside with whatever the Smith Commission comes up with. The Greens and the SNP can go hang. The critical question is: who might hold the keys to Downing Street? The possibility - even the likelihood - of a hung parliament being elected in 2015 significantly complicates this question. But it also opens up opportunities for political mischief - if the coalition parties prove sufficiently Machiavellian and are willing to play fast and loose and ruggedly political with the constitution. 

There was a certain sinister grace to the way in which, after the referendum result, Cameron drew a dagger on the Labour Party. Osborne's fingerprints were all over it. The quid pro quo for enhanced Scottish autonomy? English votes for English laws. By hook or by crook, Labour looked buggered. Which of these unpalatable choices would sir prefer? 

If Labour ratted on additional autonomy for Scotland to save its Westminster skin, Miliband's 35% strategy would be bust by ructions in his Scottish heartlands. If not, and the party endorsed the idea of constricting the voting rights of its Scottish MPs, there is a real possibility of Labour being in government but not in power when it comes to the English domestic agenda of health, education and so on. Alternatively, as recent weeks have seen, Labour could choose to box itself in on the issue, stammering out unconvincing accounts of why their representatives from Glasgow should be allowed to impose their preferences on tuition fees and models of health service delivery on the English people. Quite the predicament.

Hague's conciliatory comments might suggest that Cameron's unanticipated backstab was a rare lapse in the consensual tone which will predominate in the discussion of more devolution for Scotland. I'm not so sure. If we take Hague seriously, then the Smith Commission would have to settle on whatever lowest common denominator the reluctant representatives of the People's Party are willing to agree. But what if Hague's comments are not the innocent, good faith commitment they seem, but a canny bit of expectations management, anticipating another blow of the stiletto to an unsuspecting Labour's soft underbelly?

If Labour's willingness to endorse additional autonomy for Holyrood falls significantly short of the level the Liberal Democrats and the Tories are willing to accept, they are presented with a clear political opportunity to sideline the Labour Party, to sow discord internally, and to imperil the base strategy which seems Miliband's best hope of seizing back power. And with a general election pending, why not take it? Labour's submission to Lord Smith goes no further than their Devolution Commission. Complacent as ever, Labour's scheme seems to be to huddle behind the guarantee that the Commission is a cross-party process, sheltering the party from its own lack of ambition, secure in the belief that they must be kept on side, come what may. This may prove a serious political misjudgment.

If I was a Tory, pondering the general election, I'd have mischief on my mind. At present, I'd be quietly cultivating the idea that this cross-party coalition would deliver. You've got to keep your options open, after all. It might come off. Perhaps the Labour negotiators will be willing and able to advance from their pre-referendum position, only too happy to use the escape hatch of the Smith Commission process to flee from and forget their bungling past plans for enhanced autonomy. But if Labour lives down to expectations, participating in a grudging spirit of mendicancy and paucity of ambition, there's a political bear trap ready to be sprung, and few reasons for the Tories and the Liberals not to spring it.

If the outward show is anything to go by, the governing voices in Labour seem to think a lowest common denominator deal will cut it. But what if the Tories and the Liberals take a different tack? What if, instead of scurrying to whatever squishy middle Labour is willing to occupy, they sideline the People's Party entirely, collapsing the all-party Smith Commission and endorsing a newer, more radical vision of Scottish autonomy which excludes Labour and denounces them for a nest of  useless fearties?

If this was to work politically, they'd have to make the collapse of the Smith Commission look like Labour's fault, and justify it on the grounds that Labour lacked ambition for Scotland. A summary survey of the newspapers this morning suggests that this is a story which many folk would be only too willing to accept and believe. You can imagine David Cameron's speech, delivered in Edinburgh, more in sorrow than in anger, gleefully appropriating Labour's devolution vocabulary and giving them another dose of Osborne's dagger:

"We entered this process in good faith. As the record shows, we always hoped and believed that a common sense deal could be struck which would reflect the aspirations of the Scottish people, and which all of us, every UK political party, could endorse. I made a solemn vow. I promised the Scottish people that we'd get this done, and I will keep faith with them.  

It would be a dereliction of duty on my part, to allow the Labour Party's lack of ambition and vision to stand in the way of honouring our promises to the Scottish people.   

It is with some regret, therefore, that I today announce that it has not been possible to include the Labour Party in our radical plans for Scottish Home Rule. We want to see a powerhouse Scottish Parliament, responsible for what she earns, able to take big decisions about public services and welfare. Labour, by contrast, want a second-rate assembly with powers not fit for Scotland's place in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. That is not acceptable to us, and I believe, is not acceptable to Scotland. 

At every turn, Labour as blocked good ideas for Scotland, and good ideas for the United Kingdom. Because of their lack of vision, and their lack of faith in the Scottish people's capacity for greater self-government within the United Kingdom, we had to leave them behind. Scotland and Britain expect more than this discredited, clapped-out Labour Party is able or willing to offer them. 

But we are not disheartened. Our plans go further, are bolder. We are ambitious for Scotland, and for the United Kingdom. And if we are re-elected in 2015, we will give Scotland the powers she needs. Part of this country, but able to set her own priorities. Part of Britain, but with real home rule." 

Cue hilarious turmoil in Labour's back yard in Scotland, as the "party of devolution" is well and truly trolled. Do the Tories stand directly to benefit in terms of additional seats and MPs? Probably not. But Labour's campaign in Scotland in 2015 is already shaping up to face formidable difficulties. Things don't have to go calamitously badly for Ed Miliband in Scotland to put his position in Westminster at risk.

If Labour hopes to run the general election as a base strategy + alienated Liberal Democrats, anything the Tories can do to disrupt and imperil Labour's base of support looks worth doing. If they support the devolution schemes anyway, why not try to squeeze partisan political benefit from it and screw over your opponents at the same time? I know what I'd do.

If Labour prove reluctant and unambitious negotiators in the Smith process, there's obvious space for a counter-intuitive Tory strategy here, and a golden chance to fling a lit firecracker into the powder magazine of the Scottish Labour Party. Don't be shocked if they take it.