Jeremy Purvis reaches the light at the end of the tunnel

One of the constant refrains from Neanderthal opponents of electoral reform in the London parties is that it is simply unconscionable to have a system that enables a "loser to win".  We heard it endlessly during the AV referendum campaign, but it's also often been raised as an objection to the AMS system used for the Scottish Parliament, which makes it possible for a candidate who has been defeated in a constituency to still be elected on the regional list.

Curiously, though, there seems to be considerable overlap between complaints about the so-called "losers winning" vagaries of PR, and enthusiastic support for the House of Lords as an anachronism that supposedly "works".  Chiefly, of course, the anachronism works by allowing "sound chaps" like Jeremy Purvis to carry on legislating for us in spite of having been roundly rejected by the errant electorate of Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale.

Altogether now...

Every loser wins
Once the dream begins
In time you'll see, fate holds the key
And every loser knows
The light the tunnel shows
Will shine on you

Jeremy was so right to keep the faith. Why would a Liberal Democrat need democracy?

* * *

Plaid Cymru seem to be storming to victory in the Ynys Môn by-election - a huge relief, given that it will deprive Labour of an outright majority in the Welsh Assembly. Although it may have looked like a safe seat for Plaid on paper, that was highly deceptive because Labour have held the equivalent Westminster seat since 2001 (a situation eerily reminiscent of the Aberdeen Donside by-election, where of course the incumbent government's parliamentary majority was also hanging in the balance).

Plaid were helped along by some stardust from their TV personality candidate Rhun ap Iorwerth, a man so famous that even I recognised him straight away. He's already being spoken of as a potential long-term successor to Leanne Wood as party leader, although I was slightly shocked to read this reaction from a Labour source -

"Plaid are getting rather ahead of themselves. Rhun is likely to win the by-election, but talk of him as a future leader is very premature...

Most people in Wales won’t even be able to pronounce his name, and it’s difficult to imagine someone called Rhun ap Iorwerth going down well in Islwyn."

Can you even begin to imagine the outrage if Labour had made that comment about a candidate with a Pakistani or Chinese name? And yet what exactly is the difference?

* * *

UPDATE : The sensational Ynys Môn result in full -

Plaid Cymru 58.2% (+16.8)
Labour 15.9% (-10.3)
UKIP 14.3% (+14.3)
Conservatives 8.5% (-20.7)
Socialist Labour 1.6% (+1.6)
Liberal Democrats 1.4% (-1.8)

YouGov poll : All to play for in Wales

Still no sign of a new Holyrood poll, although for good or bad it sounds like we're twenty-four hours at most away from the next one. In the meantime, what we have instead is a YouGov poll for the Welsh Assembly election, which suggests that (contrary to what some would have you believe) Labour are by no means guaranteed an overall majority. Here are the full figures -

Constituency vote :

Labour 49% (+2)
Conservatives 20% (-1)
Plaid Cymru 17% (-)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Regional list vote :

Labour 44% (-1)
Conservatives 20% (-)
Plaid Cymru 18% (+2)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-)

Although Wales uses the same Additional Member voting system as Scotland (or Mixed-Member Proportional as it's called in New Zealand), Labour rigged the ratio of constituency to list seats to give themselves a much better chance of winning an outright majority. Even so, on the numbers in this poll they'd only be past the post by one or two seats, so there must still be a fighting chance that Plaid Cymru will remain part of a coalition government after the election.

Since the assembly was founded in 1999, Labour have tried minority government, coalition with the Lib Dems and coalition with Plaid, so it would be interesting to know which will be their preferred option this time round if they don't creep past the winning line. By all accounts, the Labour/Plaid coalition has been surprisingly harmonious over the last four years, although that's probably partly because Welsh Labour is led by a small 'n' nationalist, and not a big 'G' Gray.

Time to call the London establishment's bluff with a UK 'Free Alliance'?

So the SNP have failed in their bid to secure fair representation (or indeed any representation) in tomorrow's final leaders' debate, but if anyone had lingering concerns that the decision to take legal action was a tactical error, I'd suggest the considerable publicity generated over the last thirty-six hours or so ought to dispel them. In a sense what this has all been about is simply reminding people that the SNP do actually exist and are an option in this election - that may sound a silly point, but given the obscene disparity of coverage fuelled by the rigged debates, there are a lot of people for whom the SNP haven't registered on the radar yet. I'm not necessarily suggesting that what has happened will be sufficient to help the Nationalists close the gap that appears to have opened up in the polls with the Liberal Democrats, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's been worth an extra 1% or so in the popular vote. If so, it's been well worthwhile - as the Tesco evil empire would have it, every little helps.

The main reason I always thought it was so important that this matter be tested in court is that the format of the leaders' debates isn't just a one-off issue for this election alone - it sets a precedent for all future Westminster elections. Tragically (and it genuinely is tragic for the democratic process, not just for the SNP and Plaid) that precedent will now stand. Crucially, however, the spurious rationale the broadcasters and London parties have put forward for the debates as constituted will also now stand, and I'd suggest - ironically - that provides the nationalist parties with a considerable opportunity for the next general election, assuming plans are put in place well in advance. Alex Salmond has mused a number of times over the last few weeks that perhaps the SNP and Plaid should put up candidates in England to gain access to the debates - he seemed to be saying it facetiously, but if that really is all that's required, and there are now four or five years to organise things, why not? The main obstacle would of course be financial, but the events of the last few days have shown how generous small donors to the SNP can be when there's the clear incentive of righting the wrong of this democratic outrage.

So how much would it cost to stand in all 632 seats across Great Britain? (Note - it's not necessary to stand in Northern Ireland, as the broadcasters bizarrely seem to regard that as a complete irrelevance to the issue of who qualifies as a 'national UK' party.) Well, the SNP of course already routinely stand in all 59 Scottish constituencies, and Plaid Cymru in the 40 Welsh constituencies. The Cornish party Mebyon Kernow, allied to the SNP and Plaid at European level, would hopefully be keen to join the alliance. That brings us to 104 seats already, leaving 527 to be filled (according to convention the Speaker's constituency can be ignored). It would be ideal if there was a pre-existing English party, however small, to fill the breach, but as far as I can see there isn't one that fits the bill - the English Democrats have sometimes claimed to be an English equivalent to the SNP, but their right-wing chauvinism suggests otherwise. The stunt of standing candidates in Monmouthshire in the Welsh Assembly election (on the pledge to take the county back into England) said it all - can you imagine the reaction if the SNP made an explicit territorial claim on Berwick-upon-Tweed? The EDs are essentially just UKIP draped in a St George's Cross rather than the Union Jack.

So unfortunately it'll be probably be necessary to bite the bullet and put up the remaining candidates independently. To fund the deposits for that would cost £263,500. But if it was possible to raise £50,000 over a day or two, surely it would be eminently achievable to raise five times as much over a four or five-year parliament, especially if donors knew how immense the potential reward was?

Once established as a Great Britain-wide force, this new alliance could then appoint a nominal 'Prime Minister-designate', just as the SDP-Liberal Alliance did in 1983. Realistically this would be either Angus Robertson or Elfyn Llwyd, assuming they were still the Westminster group leaders of their respective parties. At that point, it really becomes very difficult to see how the broadcasters could continue to justify the alliance's exclusion from election debates. They would be standing in as many seats as Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and they would have an identifiable leader who would not only have the theoretical capacity to become Prime Minister, but who would also be - in the convenient new jargon - "trying" to do so. Crucially, this alliance would be in a different category to the likes of the Greens and UKIP (although quite honestly I see no reason why those parties shouldn't be involved in the debates either) because, like the Lib Dems, it would have a long, settled history of continuous parliamentary representation. If you look at the SNP and Plaid Cymru in combination, they've had an unbroken presence in the Commons since Gwynfor Evans won the Carmarthen by-election in 1966.

So all that's left is the tricky question of what this new political force should call itself. The SNP and Plaid Cymru have of course been referring to themselves collectively as the 'Celtic Bloc' (perhaps inspired by the Bloc Québécois) but that wouldn't seem quite appropriate for an alliance spanning the whole of Britain. My next thought was 'Nationalist Alliance', which has the beauty of doing exactly what it says on the tin, but of course the word 'nationalist' means different things to different people, and can be easily misconstrued. So perhaps the simplest thing to do is look to the name of the European political family the SNP, Plaid and Mebyon Kernow are already part of. Time for a UK 'Free Alliance' to step forward?

You know when you've been Paxoed - even if your name is Jeremy

I've long thought that the question of whether Jeremy Paxman's almost absurdly belligerent interviewing style serves - or is an irritant to - the democratic process is a bit like the question of whether it's a good thing that Prince Charles uses his privileged position to speak out on issues of political controversy. In other words, it all depends on whether you agree with the point he is making at any given moment. I'm sure there have been occasions when I've found myself cheering Paxman on - but equally there was one incident that made my blood boil like no other. During the 2001 election campaign, the then SNP leader John Swinney was invited onto Newsnight for what was billed as an 'interview', but what actually unfolded was little more than a prolonged Paxman sneer-fest. His introductory remarks were "OK, Mr. Swinney, you're on national TV now". He then spent almost the entirety of the exchange demanding to know why the SNP manifesto contained pledges that they could never implement, since they wouldn't be forming the UK government. But when you think about it, what was Paxman actually getting at there? That the SNP shouldn't have the temerity to stand candidates at all? Or that those candidates should stand without publishing a manifesto or telling anyone what their policies are? A line of attack that basically amounts to "justify your existence, not your policies" can scarcely be said to aid the democratic process. Naturally, Swinney as one of the most mild-mannered political leaders in recent history found the forbearance not to inform Paxman he was being an oaf and storm off, but I'm not quite sure how.

So how delicious to see Paxman try a similar job on Plaid Cymru last night and be made to look an utter fool for his troubles. Once again, there was a sneering introduction intended to undermine the credibility of the interviewee before he had even spoken a word - "I'm joined now by Eurfyl ap Gwilym, who's Deputy Chairman of the Principality Building Society, in which august position he's also Plaid Cymru's senior economics adviser". But, once underway, the exchange quickly spun completely out of Paxman's control. When he claimed that public expenditure in Wales was higher than in any region of England, Gwilym was able to point out that spending per head is actually higher in London, and with single-mindedness worthy of Paxman himself admirably refused to move off the issue until that point had been conceded. "Do your homework!" he repeatedly said, to Paxman's evident fury. The telling thing was that Paxman clearly started to twig at an early stage that he had probably got his facts wrong, but boneheadedly refused to simply acknowledge that, ultimately resorting to utterly risible bluster about how London wasn't really a region of England. And that, surely, is the Paxo problem in a nutshell - if his belligerence is to serve any real purpose it must be to break through the obfuscation of politicians, not to assist in his own obfuscation, or to shout down those who challenge him when he's clearly in the wrong.

A taste of what could and should have happened?

I've just been watching the tail-end of the re-run of the Prime Ministerial (sic) Debate on BBC2, mainly because I was intrigued to see that a two-hour slot had been set aside for a ninety-minute programme. The reason, it turned out, was that the half-hour 'political reaction' segment from the BBC News Channel had been tacked on at the end. This started, refreshingly, with responses from Angus Robertson of the SNP and Helen Mary Jones of Plaid Cymru. Ironically, if only this had been the format for the main broadcasts of all three debates (ie. reasonable space provided immediately afterwards for reactions from representatives of excluded parties) it could have formed the basis for a compromise that might just have been grudgingly considered acceptable to the nationalist parties. And if it was perfectly possible to do it for this re-run, it's very difficult to understand why even this relatively minor concession could not have been made for the main broadcasts. What could possibly have been the objection? That the public don't have the stamina to watch for more than ninety minutes? In that case, it would scarcely have been the end of the world if the debate had been cut down to seventy-five or eighty minutes, leaving a few minutes of space at the end for alternative political voices. Or perhaps the excuse is that it's just too tiresome for middle England voters (who are clearly deemed the high-grade citizens in this process) to have to listen to the SNP and Plaid Cymru. In that case, simple enough - have right-to-reply segments for the nationalist parties that are shown in Scotland and Wales only. There really is no credible excuse here.

The other thing that is extremely dismaying is how it's increasingly become clear that the broadcasters have consciously embraced the role of political opponents to the SNP and Plaid on this issue, rather than adopting a more appropriate neutral/passive tone. Their tactics in doing so may be somewhat more subtle than Fox News applies to the Democrats in the US, but there can be little doubt that there have been orders from on high about the language that must be used at all times by presenters to hold the line, and to justify the nationalists' exclusion. When Angus Robertson raised a (quite brief) objection tonight, Laura Kuennsberg immediately shot him down with a clearly pre-prepared line about how the SNP would have a chance to put their case at length in the Scottish side-debates. The reason this stuck out a mile was that it came in the form of a statement, rather than a question or a point to which Robertson was being invited to respond - ie. not at all what you would expect from Kuennsberg when she is in the middle of conducting a political interview.

But the first sign of this consciously oppositional orientation towards the SNP in fact came several weeks ago when the issue was raised on the Glasgow edition of Question Time, on which Alex Salmond was a panellist. The audience member who asked the question innocently referred to the debates as what they are, ie. "leaders' debates", but was instantly 'corrected' by David Dimbleby, who informed us that "these are in fact Prime Ministerial Debates, for the three men vying to become Prime Minister". Again, this was clearly a very carefully prepared line that he had been instructed to use to preempt Alex Salmond's response. But, thankfully, there remains one reliably off-message broadcaster who we can always look towards to blow the lid off what's really going on. Just the other day on his blog, Michael Crick revealed that the BBC were horrified that ITV and Sky hadn't stuck to the original agreement of branding their debates 'Prime Ministerial' - but that journalists were being instructed to carry on using that term regardless, because it was considered necessary to justify the SNP and Plaid's exclusion. And sure enough, it's been very noticeable that every single time the ITV or Sky debate has been mentioned in a BBC news broadcast, it's been referred to as a Prime Ministerial Debate. Thus, on each and every occasion those three words are uttered, it can reasonably be viewed as an intentional, calculated - albeit subtle - assault on the nationalists' stance on this issue. There's realistically no other way of interpreting it, given that it would otherwise be far more logical to refer to the debates by their actual names. (For the record, the ITV one was called The First Election Debate, and Sky's was called either The Leaders' Debate, or Decision Time : The Sky News Debate.)

I, like others, have already given innumerable reasons why the 'Prime Ministerial' conceit never stood up to the slightest scrutiny - but here's another. If you take the principle to it's logical conclusion, it means that all election debates should be based upon the government office the participants are aspiring to hold. In which case, the Scottish debates should have been dubbed 'Scottish Secretarial Debates', and the SNP should have been banned from participating on the grounds that Angus Robertson is not 'trying' to become Scottish Secretary, and that he has no 'realistic prospect of doing so'. The broadcasters would have been laughed at if they'd tried to make that stick, but in truth it's no more or less logical than their threadbare excuse for barring the nationalists from the main leaders' debates.

Former Labour spin-doctor Lorraine Davidson hit the nail on the head on Newsnight Scotland tonight - if (as seems quite possible) it becomes clear that voting patterns have been substantially affected by the nationalists' exclusion from the main debates, that by definition is sufficient to establish that the broadcasters have breached their legal and moral obligation to provide fair and balanced coverage of the campaign. And that, in turn, significantly compromises the 'free and fair' status of the whole general election in Scotland and Wales, bearing in mind the central importance of the broadcast media in modern campaigns. Yes, given the variable political geometry of the UK, it was always going to be hard to devise a suitable format for the debates that is fair all round - but it's nevertheless the duty of the broadcasters to do just that, rather than to spend all their time dreaming up ever more inventive excuses for evading that responsibility.

Alan Johnson revels in being 'right-wing' Home Secretary

The most jaw-dropping moment of Question Time this evening was when Alan Johnson claimed that the Tories had "got it wrong" by not "staying right" on the DNA database - in other words, he was unashamedly boasting that Labour are more right-wing than the Tories on the issue. In many ways this is, of course, similar to the familiar Blairite conceit that in modern politics the distinction is no longer between right and left, but instead between right and wrong. Naturally, the 'right' policy on any given issue was the Blairite one, with all the myriad alternatives being the 'wrong' policies, regardless of where on the political spectrum they came from. No wonder Mr Blair found the basic nature of Catholicism so much to his taste.

In reality, most of us recognised that the distinction between the two meanings of 'right' was in reality remarkably thin, with this nominally 'democratic socialist' government being identified as one of the most - perhaps the most - right-wing administration in western Europe. But where Alan Johnson has broken new ground tonight is in brazenly acknowledging that truth, rather than adhering to the now-traditional doublespeak.

So should those of us on the left take any comfort from the fact that even Labour acknowledges that an incoming Tory government would not be quite as far to the right on certain issues as the current administration? Hardly. Looking at the broad sweep of policy - law and order, immigration, the economy, taxation, education, human rights - there is no doubt that, on balance, the Tories would represent a significant shift still further to the right. They would also block long-overdue progress on constitutional reform, notably extra powers for the Scottish Parliament, democratisation of the voting system for the House of Commons, and an elected upper house. So it seems to me the only rational thing for voters to do is to look beyond the false choice between a rubbish incumbent government, and an even more rubbish alternative. We're fortunate in Scotland to have the SNP to turn to, and in Wales there's Plaid Cymru, but even in England there are other options - most notably the Greens (who have a great chance of winning their first seat) and Mebyon Kernow, who memorably humiliated Labour in Cornwall in the Euro elections last June.

YouGov marginals poll shows 9% swing to SNP

A few Scottish Labour hearts must have warmed last night at the early indications of what YouGov's massive (in terms of participants) poll contained, with the headline prediction of a result in Scotland practically identical to the 2005 election. Only four seats were predicted to change hands - admittedly these were all Labour losses. However, the detail of the poll released today paints a dramatically less rosy picture for Labour, and a very positive one for the SNP. Given that sampling was done only in selected marginal constituencies, there are no national vote shares available. However, it is possible to compare the parties' vote share in these constituencies with what happened in 2005. It's pretty much one-way traffic -

SNP up 11
Labour down 8
Conservatives up 1
Liberal Democrats down 6

If we assume a uniform national swing, that puts the SNP just two points behind Labour nationally. And whatever the individual constituency predictions (and YouGov's methodology there has been questioned by some) those figures put Labour perilously close to the territory where they would be in danger of losing a shedload of seats to the SNP.

The truly extraordinary finding (so extraordinary I'm inclined to doubt it slightly) is that the Conservatives - supposedly a party cruising to victory at UK level - are making no headway at all in the Scottish marginals. However, the Liberal Democrats' collapse is no surprise, given the giddy heights they reached in 2005 before foolishly jettisoning their greatest asset Charles Kennedy.

Also unambiguously great news for Plaid Cymru in this poll - a 4% increase in vote share, a 7.6% swing from Labour, and a projected gain of three seats.

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.)

'Others' up 3% in Populus poll

More potentially good news for the SNP in the latest UK-wide Populus survey - the combined figure for parties other than Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (which is all we have to go on for the moment) now stands at 12%, a three-point increase from the last survey. There is of course no way of telling yet whether this is due to increasing support for the SNP and Plaid Cymru or for UK-wide minor parties like UKIP, the Greens and the BNP, but at the very least it is in line with Saturday's ICM poll in suggesting that the squeeze on the non-Labour/Tory parties we saw in the autumn is now well and truly over. As in ICM, the Liberal Democrats see an increase in their share of the vote, while Labour is down a full five points to 28%.

Full figures -

Conservatives 42% (-1)
Labour 28% (-5)
Liberal Democrats 18% (+3)
Others 12% (+3)

So now begins the interminable wait to see what the Scottish breakdown is - but at least we know there'll be one eventually, which is not the case with ICM. I did have a quick peek at the Populus website on the off chance, but their 'latest poll' link directed me to a 'Fabulous Sex' survey for the News of the World, the fieldwork for which was supposedly carried out between the 23rd and 26th of February 2009. I know that polling is getting quicker, but that's impressive by any standards. Has someone at Populus invented a TARDIS?

Positive thoughts on local elections

One of the untold stories of the local elections (untold outside Wales, that is) has been the solid progress made by Plaid Cymru in their first test as a party of government. Across Wales the party scored a net gain of 33 council seats - just one short of what the Liberal Democrats managed across the entirety of England and Wales. That figure looks better still when you realise it was achieved even as Plaid were taking something of a hit in their Gwynedd heartland due to a local controversy over schools.

Not that you'd be likely to be aware of any of this if you live outside Wales, of course. The so-called 'national' UK media's coverage of political life in Wales is so minimal it makes their treatment of Scotland look positively fair (well, perhaps not). The truly historic moment of Plaid ministers taking up office for the first time last summer barely seemed to even register - there was, perhaps, fifteen seconds on it halfway through the Six O'Clock News. On last night's BBC election results programme, there was an extensive interview with Peter Tatchell on behalf of the Green Party of England and Wales. Quite right too - but given that the Greens won just 47 seats to Plaid's 207, that makes the omission of an interview with a Plaid represenative all the more indefensible. I dare say the defence would be the usual line that there was extensive coverage of Plaid's results during the Welsh opt-out segments. This is simply not good enough. If political coverage is to be ghettoised in that way, I really struggle to understand why those of us in Scotland have been subjected to relentless chatter about the London mayoral election for several weeks now. (And, no, repeated contrived explanations from Nick Robinson of 'Why This Matters to You Even If You Live Outside London' do not really alter that fundamental point.)

On the subject of the Ken and Boris show, I hear that Boris has finally been declared the winner, a mere twenty-six hours after the polls closed. We in Scotland set an impressive record of twenty hours last year, but it seems London with its instinctive understanding of its own importance simply couldn't resist taking matters to the next level. As for the result itself, I feel weirdly disappointed. In recent years, I've tended to be allergic to Labour under all circumstances, but the stubbornly progressive Ken is perhaps an exception. It's been quite amusing watching New Labour's finest (ahem) Tessa Jowell forced to defend him to the hilt - if only someone had put her on the spot about his pro-Chavez foreign policy!

Nevertheless, Boris it is. Of course, it's his multiple appearances on Have I Got News for You that have got him to where he is, but I think my own favourite Boris moment was when he won a prize at the Channel 4 political awards two or three years back. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly what he said, but it has to be one of the funniest acceptance speeches ever - and to be fair, I think that time I was laughing with him, not at him. Hopefully somebody might stick it on YouTube at some point.