If Labour actually believe their own propaganda, can they explain how Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister after the 1923 election?

This was the result of the 1923 general election...

Conservatives 258
Labour 191
Liberals 158
Independents 4
NI Nationalists 3
Scottish Prohibition 1

OUTCOME : Labour minority government.

If Labour or their sycophantic chums in the press actually believe one word of the lies they've been churning out about so-called "British constitutional rules" over the last 48 hours, they'll have a murderously hard job explaining how the above outcome was even theoretically possible, let alone how it happened so easily in reality.  Labour were miles behind the Tories, more so than was even the case in 2010, and yet they were able to form a government without entering into coalition with the Liberals, and without even a formal deal with the Liberals.  Why?  Because the real constitutional convention is that the monarch must appoint a Prime Minister who commands a majority in the House of Commons.  The Liberals held the balance of power, and they were absolutely opposed to the continuation of Tory rule, just as the SNP are now.  That made any form of Tory-led government a complete non-starter, irrespective of the fact that the Tories were the largest single party.

Nor, Torcuil Crichton, was it the case that the Tories' status as the incumbent government got them off the hook in 1923.  The only special privilege that the incumbent Prime Minister has in the event of a hung parliament is the option to hold on until the reconvening of parliament, and to see if he or she can command a majority in the House on the Queen's Speech (or King's Speech) vote.  If that vote is lost, the Leader of the Opposition will immediately be invited to form a government instead.

Incontestably contradictory

I'm slightly bemused by the insufferable Daniel Hannan's list of twelve "incontestable" reasons for voting No in the AV referendum, not least because two of them directly contradict each other. Observe...

"4. AV IS ‘EVEN LESS PROPORTIONAL’ THAN THE CURRENT SYSTEM: So concluded the independent Royal Commission chaired by the senior Liberal Democrat Roy Jenkins in 1998.

11. AV WILL MAKE POLITICIANS’ PROMISES EVEN MORE MEANINGLESS: AV is a system which will deliver more hung parliaments and therefore necessitate more coalitions. Coalitions mean political leaders picking and choosing which parts of their manifesto they seek to implement after you’ve voted for it, meaning you cannot have confidence that they will stick by any of the promises they have made if they enter government."

Simple question, Mr Hannan - how precisely will AV make hung parliaments more likely if it is EVEN LESS PROPORTIONAL than the current system? More pertinenently, if the (laudable) premise of question 4 is that too little proportionality is an inherently bad thing, how can the (bogus) prospect of greater proportionality under AV become an inherently bad thing by question 11?

The most nonsensical of all the reasons, though, are numbers 2 and 3 -

"2. AV IS UNFAIR: Supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted five or six times – and potentially decide the outcome of the election – while people who backed the mainstream candidates only get one vote.

3. AV IS UNEQUAL: AV treats someone’s fifth or sixth choice as having the same importance as someone’s else’s first preference – but there is a big difference between positively wanting one candidate to win and being able to ‘put up with’ another."

Memo to Dan : many people are voting for a candidate to 'put up with' as it is. It's not as if we get to choose the shortlist, is it? In each count of an AV ballot, everyone's vote counts just ONCE - exactly as present. Indeed, votes for the 'mainstream' parties remain more meaningful, as they are successfully preventing those parties from being eliminated in the early counts. But what does change is that in the later stages, everyone has an equal chance to choose between the two leading candidates. That's not a fifth or a sixth choice - it's a first choice between the candidates remaining in contention at that point, and is therefore indistinguishable from the routine process of plumping for the best (or least worst) candidate that happens to be on offer in any election. FPTP votes are not weighted according to the enthusiasm of each elector for their choice, but if they were you'd find variations every bit as stark as anything you'd encounter under AV.

And what is Hannan's alternative? Most FPTP contests are de facto two-horse races, just like the final count of an AV ballot - the only difference being that a huge chunk of the electorate are effectively excluded from having their say on the outcome. So Hannan favours a continuation of the current tyranny of forcing supporters of smaller parties to choose between voting in the 'real election' that consists of the top two candidates, and voting honestly but disenfranching themselves in the process. The fact that the likes of Hannan and David Blunkett evidently regard that disenfranchisement as a thoroughly desirable thing is really quite startling.

At last - a Tory with a Target

I know from some exchanges I've had myself that it's startlingly difficult to pin down supposedly 'bullish', 'confident' Scottish Tories on what their realistic target for the general election actually is. Cynics might think that may just have something to do with the overwhelming and consistent polling evidence that any progress the party makes north of the border is likely to be disproportionately limited (to put it mildly) compared to just about everywhere else in the UK. However, to be fair, Scotland on Sunday is today reporting that David McLetchie has nailed his colours to the mast by expressing confidence that the Tories can outperform the SNP.

As thoroughly misplaced as that optimism seems, one distant memory is preventing me from dismissing the idea totally out of hand. In the run-up to the 1992 election, the SNP were generally polling ahead of the Tories, and the projections from the BBC exit poll on election night itself suggested the SNP would end up with eight seats to the Tories' three. But, when the real results came in, the Tories had beaten the Nationalists in the popular vote by 26% to 22%, and by eleven seats to three. As the coming general election may be the first won at UK-level by the Tories since 1992, there's at least a case to be made that the outcome in Scotland may resemble 1992 more than it does any of the intervening elections.

However, for my money the opposite may well happen. This could be one of those key elections, following on from 1959, 1979 and 1987, that shows Scotland completely bucking the UK trend in its response to the Conservative Party's pitch for votes. The Euro elections last June were a pretty strong clue - the Tories secured first place in all but one English region and even in Wales, but in Scotland were left languishing in third place on a dismal 17%.

The reason? Well, it's getting harder to make the rhetoric of a two-horse Labour-Tory race stick, when the SNP have not just consistently been finishing in the top two in Scottish elections, but actually winning elections outright. Not to mention, of course, the credibility that comes from having formed the Scottish government, which takes us into completely uncharted territory at a Westminster election. Whereas in the 1980s under Thatcher the Scottish Tories were hated, nowadays they're to a very large extent simply ignored. It's striking that it's the latter that actually seems set to produce the worse result - for how many people truly think the party will even equal Mrs Thatcher's low point of 24% of the vote in Scotland?

Iain Dale's ropey prediction

It's just as well Iain Dale qualified his prediction of the general election in Scotland by noting that "my knowledge of Scottish seats is not the same as my knowledge of English seats", because two aspects of it look distinctly difficult to justify - the suggestion that the SNP will lose two seats to the Conservatives (presumably Angus and Perth & North Perthshire) and, perhaps even more so, that the Liberal Democrats will reach a new high watermark of fifteen seats. There's nothing complicated in explaining why these predictions are, in Sir Humphrey terms, somewhat "courageous". Firstly, to lose seats to the Conservative party, the SNP would have be to suffering a net swing to the Tories. I have the slight suspicion that Iain is making the schoolboy error of thinking that because the majority in those seats is small, and because he expects the Tory vote to rise, it therefore follows that those seats will fall. But the snag is that all the expectations are that the SNP vote will rise as well, by at least as much - and, let's be frank, probably a good deal more - than the Tories. That would suggest a net swing from the Tories to the SNP, which could even mean increased majorities for the Nationalists in those two marginal seats. The one remaining hope for the Tories in such circumstances is that the nature of the two-horse fight in those constituencies could help them buck the nationwide trend - but is there any reason to suppose it would? My suspicion is that the opposite may happen - that any suggestion of potential Tory gains will cause Labour and Liberal Democrat voters to switch tactically to the SNP.

But for all that I've just said, at least Dale could make a case, however dubious, for that part of the prediction. However, on the Liberal Democrats winning fifteen seats point, words fail me. The Liberal Democrats won 11 seats last time round on the basis of 23% of the vote - they will be extraordinarily fortunate to reach even a 16% or 17% share at the forthcoming election. OK, first-past-the-post sometimes produces quirks, but it would require tactical voting on an industrial scale to get the Lib Dems anywhere close to fifteen seats in these circumstances.

Iain also asks where Alex Salmond thinks his target of 20 seats is going to come from. Again, there's nothing complicated about this - the SNP need to be leading or close to leading in the popular vote to have a chance of attaining that goal. It's of course perfectly legitimate for critics to question whether they can do so, but what is rather silly is to imply as Iain seems to be that Salmond is suggesting that the target can be achieved on a more modest swing, which he plainly isn't. Moreover, there's no mystery as to which 20 seats these would be - Iain could just have pumped the relevant figures into a UNS swing predictor to have gained a rough idea.

Would a Brown departure assist the SNP?

I once recall a journalist (no idea who it was, or in which paper) delivering the ultimate devastating dismissal of a politician's entire career - "I bet Geoff Hoon thinks he's a great communicator". Well, quite. We're not talking about a heavyweight here, and even with the assistance of (ahem) Patricia Hewitt, logic would seem to dictate that he's unlikely to succeed where James Purnell failed. However, one way or another we appear to finally be into the endgame of almost two years' worth of speculation about the Labour leadership, so it's at least worth pondering the impact Gordon Brown's abrupt departure would have on the outcome of the general election here in Scotland.

In one sense it seems obvious that having a Scottish leader has been a boon for Labour north of of the border, as it was for the Liberal Democrats under Charles Kennedy. Polling consistently shows that Scots hold Brown in a much higher regard than the rest of the UK. This must be having some kind of impact on voting intention figures, and thus, it might be supposed, suppressing the potential strength of the SNP, among others. There can be little doubt that Charles Kennedy's popularity caused particular harm to the SNP in the 2005 Westminster election.

But there's the rub - popularity. The fact that Brown is significantly more liked in Scotland than in England, where he's held in record-breaking low esteem, scarcely makes him "popular in Scotland". A much more impressive Labour leader could easily find themselves more popular than Brown in Scotland, even if they were less popular here than in England and Wales. So, paradoxically, it's theoretically possible that Scottish Labour could find themselves better off - and the SNP by extension worse off - with a change of leadership, especially if the new Prime Minister had momentum behind them that seemed to be taking them (and Labour) to what until recently would have seemed a highly improbable general election triumph.

Just one snag, though. Where is the Labour leader with the personal qualities to actually do that? Until a few weeks ago, I might have concurred with the general consensus that Alan Johnson was the one potential candidate with sufficient charisma, but his poor judgement over the Gary McKinnon extradition (and more to the point his angry defence of that poor judgement) destroyed that illusion once and for all. It, presumably, goes without saying that either Harriet Harman or Ed Balls would be an even greater disaster in Scotland than they would be across the UK as a whole. So who does that leave? David Miliband? Perhaps he's had enough time to recover from his 'Bananaman' moment, but on the whole I'm unconvinced.

So as things stand, my gut feeling is that a change of leadership would not help Labour's fortunes across the UK, and therefore the loss of the 'Scottish leader bonus' would be a blow to the party in Scotland. So, for my money, the SNP should be getting their prayer-mats out and hoping that this plot succeeds, although on past form I'm not holding my breath.

Is this a 'free hit' by-election for the SNP?

On the day back in May that it became clear the Glasgow North-east by-election was actually going to take place (yes, 'supremely confident' Labour have now been running from the constituency's voters for the same length of time there's left to go before the general election), I posted here to express my jitters. I was concerned at the past history of by-elections that had proved to be pivotal moments, and had changed the political weather. I was more than a touch uneasy that the SNP's fate at the next election might rest, as I put it, on a 'typical mad as a bucket of frogs by-election campaign'. But here we sit four days out from the Glasgow NE vote, and I can already say with confidence that is not the case. Why? Paradoxically, it's because of the prevailing narrative that this is going to be a routine Labour hold. I've no inside knowledge from the ground, so I don't know whether that's true or not, but the perception that it is true has one key effect - it's killed all interest in the contest, and there will therefore be very little interest in the result, unless there is a major surprise. Glasgow NE simply can't produce a momentum shift in public opinion without...well, a bit of publicity. This is not going to be another Glenrothes, with SNP activists having kittens on Thursday night pondering the consequences if they don't win. It's beginning to have the feel more of a Hamilton South-type contest, where a narrow defeat on a huge swing could potentially even produce a little momentum for the SNP. All thanks to the expectations game - one of the curious features of by-election campaigns. In the immortal words of Abba, you can feel like you win when you lose.

I saw a little of BBC2's 90-minute programme this evening to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which reminded us of how the crucial factor was weekly Monday demonstrations in Leipzig that grew bigger and bigger until eventually the authorities could not cope with them. I started wondering how Tom Harris reacted as he watched those demonstrators on TV twenty years ago. Doubtless he would have been busily making snide comments about how all those "students" needed to "grow up" and embrace "mature" politics. After all, nobody ever changed the world by taking to the streets, holding placards and chanting slogans - eh, Tom?

And one other thought, Tom - doesn't an irrational hatred of inconvenient political demonstrations constitute an "emotion"?

And-on. And-on. And-on. And-Brown-goes-on.

I was interested to read Mike Smithson's suggestion that Gordon Brown may have made a tactical blunder in the Record today by promising to serve a full term in office if Labour is re-elected. Mike makes the comparison with Margaret Thatcher in the late 80s saying she would, in the words of the Ariston commercial, "go on and on", and also with Tony Blair's insistence that he would serve a full third term. Both of those strategies ended in tears (although, intriguingly, in neither case was this directly at the hands of the electorate). However, far be it from me to defend Brown, but there's one obvious difference in his case - he's been Prime Minister for less than two-and-a-half years. If he lets the impression get about that he's resigned to serving less than seven years in office regardless of the election outcome, it would send out a terrible message about his confidence in his own ability.

Mike suggests that "five more years of Brown" is not a winning pitch for Labour at the general election. If that's the case, though (and it may well be), there's only one conceivable remedy - ditch Brown now. A vague hint that it might be possible to 'buy one Prime Minister, get one free' isn't going to be much use to Labour at this stage.