Labour MP helpfully lives up to caricature

Tuesday evening's very funny broadcast by the Yes to AV campaign featured a self-satisfied MP being confronted by voters while he is busy enjoying the finer things in life. They suggest to him that AV will make him work harder for them by forcing him to seek 50% of the vote at general elections. "Work...harder?" he mouths disdainfully, with the emphasis on the word that seems to cause him almost physical pain. "Can we rely on you to vote Yes on May 5th?" the voters press him. "Certainly not!" is the emphatic reply.

Yesterday, in a stunning exemplar of the famed self-awareness of certain Labour MPs, Ian Murray announced that he was so miffed at the suggestion in the broadcast that he and his colleagues could possibly "work harder" that he has now decided to vote No, having previously been undecided. In other words, he's quite brazenly admitting that he's made this important decision entirely on the basis of his wounded pride as an MP, rather than on the merits of the two voting systems we're choosing between. Yep, Ian, that's a grand way of demonstrating to us all that the Yes campaign's depiction of MPs as being totally self-absorbed and self-interested is well wide of the mark.

It's also worth pointing out that if the message of the broadcast hit such a nerve with MPs, it's also likely to have hit a nerve with voters - but probably in a slightly different way.

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Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie came up with a devilishly original ploy on Newsnight Scotland last night, dodging an awkward question by flatly denying that she is the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. Now, if she tries that defence in one of the leaders' debates, we really will be entering Alice in Wonderland territory...

Shadow Cabinet gains another junior part-time observer member

I get the impression that the BBC's Betsan Powys has, to some extent, interpreted Annabel Goldie's elevation to part-time "Shadow First Minister" in David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet in the same way I did. Having probed whether the same 'honour' would be conferred on Welsh Tory leader Nick Bourne, she poses the question - "is it better to be Shadow First Minister or real life Leader of the Opposition?"

(For the uninitiated, the Tories are the Official Opposition in the Welsh Assembly despite being only the third largest party. This came about after the two largest parties - Labour and Plaid Cymru - formed an improbable governing coalition.)

Party leader, or observer status at the Shadow Cabinet?

Is this the new-found Tory respect for devolution? The Herald reports that Annabel Goldie will be invited to attend Shadow Cabinet meetings in London - once a month. They just don't get it, do they? The logic of devolution is that Goldie is an autonomous party leader in her own right, not some ultra-junior, part-time member of someone else's Shadow Cabinet. And I can't help wondering if this arrangement will work a bit like the participation of Scottish ministers in EU negotiations - will Goldie have to agree a joint line with David Mundell first, and will she require his permission to speak?

Of course if there was any natural justice in this world it would be the other way round, and if Annabel refused Mundell permission to speak our ears could all have a well-earned rest.