Souter's donation is no dilemma

Brian Souter posed me a dilemma just over a decade ago. I normally believe in exercising the right to vote at every possible opportunity I get, so it was difficult to resist the temptation to take part in something as unique as a privately-organised nationwide referendum. However, the opponents of Section 28 were adamant that the best way of defeating Souter's agenda was to abstain, so I heeded that advice and stuffed the ballot forms in a dusty drawer, where they probably still reside (albeit hopefully accompanied by a different generation of dust). In fact, my only regret is that it didn't occur to me to do what apparently quite a few other people did, which was to simply return the envelope without a ballot paper inside, ie. to needlessly cost Souter the postage.

So, to put it mildly, I wasn't on the same page as the Stagecoach tycoon in relation to Section 28. But the problem for those who criticise the SNP's decision to accept his latest large donation is that it's not remotely clear how that issue is actually relevant. Has the cause of equality for gay people taken a backward step as a result of a Souter-funded SNP winning power four years ago? I'd suggest the answer is fairly obviously no, so any 'fears' about what the repercussions might be this time seem very synthetic.

Meanwhile, the best thing about the donation is the way it's completely transformed the media narrative about the election. Whether that's temporary or long-lasting remains to be seen, but the powerful message many newspaper readers will have received this weekend is that the SNP are very much back in the game.

Too many eggs in one basket?

I didn't see tonight's edition of Newsnight Scotland, but if this article on the BBC website gives an accurate sense of what Alex Salmond said, I must say it strikes me as another troubling example of the SNP putting, if not all their eggs in one basket, then certainly a few too many of them. There's simply no need to act as if only the party that wins the most seats in May has the automatic right to rule. And contrary to the mythology that's grown up about the last election, the SNP didn't actually go down that road in 2007 - at least, not until it was clear that they had one more seat than Labour. Remember Salmond's speech at the Gordon declaration? Reading between the lines, he seemed at that point to be working on the assumption that not only would Labour emerge as the largest party in terms of seats, but would perhaps even sneak the popular vote on the constituency ballot as well. And yet he was still confidently pressing the case for an SNP-led progressive alliance. It was a PR election, after all.

Of course, the primary aim has to be a clear-cut win, but if the SNP were to fall, say, just one or two seats short of Labour's tally, wouldn't it be somewhat frustrating if they had tied themselves up in knots with too many pre-election pronouncements about what constitutes victory and defeat? It may seem improbable that "Two Hoots Tavish" would negotiate seriously with the SNP in that scenario, but as we learnt last May, all sorts of funny and unexpected things can happen in the aftermath of a tight election. Let's give them the maximum opportunity to happen in Scotland's best interests.

An Über-Christmas awaits? Mebbes aye, mebbes naw...

Kevin Baker's long-awaited 'Überpost' in response to my series of posts on gun control has arrived, weighing in at just under 5000 words. To give him his due, it's a more thoughtful piece this time, and doesn't rely on the familiar 'statistical bombardment' technique. Something of an irony that, because for my own part I'd wearily given in to the inevitable and started discussing the statistical evidence in a number of posts this year (eg. here and here). Indeed, it's striking that Kevin is basically responding to things I said way back in the spring of 2009, rather than in my many posts this year on the subject (notably this one) although to be fair that's probably due to information overload.

All in all, he's presented me with something of a dilemma - having posted on an almost daily basis for most of this year, I'd more or less decided to take a break from blogging over the festive period. But in the light of Kevin's attempts to psychoanalyse me (not least in relation to my support for the SNP) it might be difficult to resist an earlier response. We'll see...

I'll be voting for independence on May 5th

The debate over Bella Caledonia's idea to turn next year's AV referendum into an unofficial vote on independence flared up again yesterday at Better Nation, with Jeff Breslin confirming that he will not be supporting the campaign, and will instead be voting Yes to AV. He put forward two arguments that hadn't previously occurred to me - firstly, that if the SNP endorsed the campaign they'd be playing with fire by turning it into "the" independence referendum, and secondly that it would harm the party in the Holyrood elections if they were seen to be sabotaging the vote. I think the latter concern is probably unfounded - doubtless such a course of action for the SNP would attract scathing criticism from opponents, but I'm not sure the electorate really care enough about AV for it to occur to them to punish a party for 'sabotaging' it. However, having reflected on the other point I think it has considerable validity. If the 'write-in independence' campaign was sufficiently high-profile and officially sanctioned by the SNP, it would be very easy for the unionist parties to say for years afterwards "you had your referendum, and it failed". And why am I so sure it would fail, if 'failure' is defined as not achieving majority backing? Simply because it's so much tougher to persuade people to vote for something that isn't on the ballot paper (especially when what actually is on the ballot paper bears absolutely no relation to the topic you want them to express a view on).

So, as Simon Cowell might say, here's the dilemma. As I've noted before, without the SNP's endorsement, the Bella campaign is doomed to make little or no impact. But with the SNP's endorsement, the campaign could easily end up harming the prospects for a genuine independence referendum in the years to come. Bearing all that in mind, I'm becoming ever more confident that I'll be doing the right thing by answering the question that's actually in front of me when I vote in the AV referendum.

A little while ago, I had another look at the original post at Bella announcing the campaign, and I spotted a rather pointed editorial comment that I hadn't noticed earlier -

"It’s disappointing that some of these bloggers aren’t supporting this but hundreds are. Some of these people can’t decide whether to sit on the fence, to paraphrase Cameron."

Now, call me paranoid, but I think that might just have been aimed at the likes of me. That being the case, I couldn't help but raise a smile at this riposte from Jeff -

"By all means try to bring some dynamism to whatever it is you’re doing but don't have a go at people who don't join in with your specific endeavours. I hope you can see that it’s mildly offensive to suggest that any of us here don’t believe in a 'Better Nation' just because we plan on voting Yes (or No) in an AV referendum rather than scrawl 'INDEPENDENCE' over the ballot slip, as you would have us do instead."

Quite. It was the suddenness and relative randomness of the Bella announcement that struck me, and to criticise anyone who didn't instantly and dutifully fall into line behind it for not being able to "decide whether to sit on the fence" seems a touch bemusing, not to say ironic. From my own perspective, devoting a great deal of time to concocting the most improbable way to spoil your ballot paper in an electoral reform referendum seems like the very definition of struggling to make up your mind how to be undecided on an issue. I can see how such an approach might just be rational for those who genuinely don't give a monkey's about the difference between FPTP and AV (and admittedly there seem to be a lot of people who fall into that category), but for the rest of us it's a somewhat different matter.

For my part, I'll be voting full-bloodedly for independence on 5th May, and I'll be doing it in the way that actually promises to be effective - by voting SNP in the Scottish Parliament elections.

But does anyone give two hoots, Tavish?

I'm always a tad sceptical when I hear claims that Tavish Scott has "demolished" someone, so I'm grateful to Caron for reproducing his speech on the "SVR scandal" in full so we can all make our own minds up.  It certainly sounds like he was terribly excited by the whole thing, which begs the obvious question - why?  After all, it will be recalled that a few months ago, when pressed about his reasons for silencing debate on whether the Scottish people should be allowed a say on their own constitutional future, he informed us that the country had "moved on" and that no-one gave "two hoots about it" anymore.  Well, he was demonstrably wrong about an independence referendum, the principle of which is clearly supported by an overwhelming majority of the public.  But those words would, ironically, have been more accurate if applied to the minor constitutional matter presently in hand (if it can even be called 'constitutional' given that the tax-varying powers remain fully intact).  It was once thought conceivable that the SVR could be used in the foreseeable future, but now that we've woken up to the downsides of such a decision, the country has indeed "moved on".  And, while I haven't seen an opinion poll on the subject, I'd be - to put it mildly - somewhat surprised to learn that the electorate would have preferred that £7 million of extra cuts to public services had been made in order to symbolically 'upkeep' a power that isn't going to be used.  I'd also be a bit surprised if they thought the unilateral demands from HMRC for extra payment were remotely reasonable in the first place, but given the widely-reported spin from the unionist parties we'll have to see on that one.

John Swinney has of course now apologised, very graciously, for the one aspect of this trifling affair for which the government can be legitimately criticised - not being more open with parliament about the problems they were encountering with HMRC.  That apology leaves some of the apocalyptic conclusions Scott was drawing in his speech looking even more bizarre...

"Mr Salmond expects to pass a Budget. To negotiate with other parties. After this."

Yes, Tavish, I think he probably does expect that.  After this.  More pertinently, I think the Scottish public probably do still expect the opposition parties - yes, after this - to engage constructively on a matter of such national importance as the Budget, and will not look kindly on this most blatant and contrived of excuses for yet another round of immature obstructionism.

Perhaps the subtext of the speech can best be summed up in the following terms - "look, guys, I've found yet another wizard excuse for regarding the SNP as untouchables in coalition negotiations".  No wonder he was excited.  But honestly, Tavish, we got the message months ago - to say the body language has been leaking somewhat is a bit of an understatement.

How to misread silence : a textbook case

From somewhere in the murky recesses of my memory, I seem to recall that in the early days of devolution, the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition rather casually announced that - for the time being at least - it wasn't going to bother making provision for the collection of the Scottish Variable Rate, thus meaning the parliament's tax-varying power would to all intents and purposes lapse.  It was a responsible way to save public money, we were told.  I think for about thirty seconds I was fairly outraged - it had been less than two years since Scotland had specifically voted for that power in a referendum, and nobody had bothered to make clear at the time that it was merely intended to be a 'potential' power that the Scottish Executive would be allowed to 'purchase' if it so wished.  Although that point of irritation lingered (and is plainly highly pertinent to this day) I couldn't really stay angry with the coalition for their own decision - even I could see that if there was no possibility of the power being used within the relevant timescale, it was a fairly academic point.  The main thing was that the power remained on the statute book, and would be available to future administrations.

I strongly suspect that those who are now expressing synthetic anger in similar circumstances know perfectly well that the same logic applies here.  If anything, the logic is considerably stronger, given that we've now learnt that the powers wouldn't have been available for some time even if the Scottish government had shelled out for them - not to mention the fact that the current system is about to be replaced (without a referendum) with a tax-raising power that the Westminster government apparently intend to force us to pay to upkeep on an ongoing basis.  Bearing all that in mind, I think most people must know in their heart of hearts that (cheap Nat-bashing opportunities aside) to throw away £7 million on the symbolic maintenance of a soon-to-be-defunct power that none of the major parties intend to use in the interim period wouldn't just have been unnecessary - it would have been idiotic.

But it seems that James of Better Nation is one of the few to be genuinely spitting fury over this rather esoteric issue, and is interpreting the silence of many SNP-friendly bloggers as a sign of deep shame or embarrassment.  Well, that's one possibility, but as I pointed out in a comment on his post, there is another one - that nationalist bloggers don't, on the whole, actually give a monkey's about it.  I'd also suggest James was rather foolish to list a number of bloggers that he apparently regards as guilty of supine loyalty, given that in many cases it's not at all difficult to find instances where those people have departed markedly from the party line.  For example, it's only a few weeks since Lallands Peat Worrier went out of his way to publish a guest post that was scathing about the Scottish government's emergency legislation following the Cadder ruling, while Subrosa has always been several billion light-years away from SNP policy on Europe, climate change, and a whole host of other topics.  And many, many nationalists haven't exactly been shy about calling for a homegrown inquiry on Lockerbie, despite the SNP leadership specifically ruling that out.  Given such a track record, the idea that nationalist bloggers would hold back on an issue that touches on their most fundamental political priority of all - the powers of the Scottish Parliament - seems risible.

I suspect James is making the classic 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' mistake of assuming that his own anger about a particular topic must be universal, and that if others are keeping quiet about it they must - as rational people - be secretly fuming.

SNP opt out of the tartan tax charade

I'm getting slightly confused by the attacks on the SNP government from the right-wing press.  The usual refrain is that they're irresponsible spendthrifts who refuse to take the tough choices necessary to protect the public purse (neatly ignoring the fact that they're working within a fixed budget anyway).  But now it appears that the Telegraph think it would have been highly appropriate in the current economic climate to throw away £7 million on the purely symbolic upkeep of a tax-varying power that even the dogs on the street know isn't going to be used in the foreseeable future, no matter who wins the election in May.

There's no great mystery about why all the major parties have been so reluctant to use the tax-varying power - it only applies to the basic rate of income tax, and therefore is a blunt instrument that isn't progressive enough.   Calman doesn't actually offer much of an advance on that - higher rates of tax can be raised or lowered, but only in direct proportion to changes made on the basic rate.  So the central problem remains - if the UK government sets a regressive income tax framework, Scotland has no meaningful way of breaking out of it.  The unionist parties have deliberately set this trap to neuter Scotland's 'rebellious' ideological impulses, so grumbling about the SNP's hard-headed acceptance - for the short-term only - of the logical consequences of that seems a trifle odd.

Patrick Harvie is perhaps one of the few people in a position to attack the Scottish government on this issue with any credibility, as his party would actually use the existing tax-raising power.  But his claim that the SNP shouldn't even think about demanding extra powers for Holyrood until they use the ones they've already got simply doesn't stack up.  The SNP have their own analysis, and the fact that they have no interest in using a power that in their view is barely worth having should scarcely preclude them from seeking meaningful powers that would be of considerable use.

How would a Galloway candidacy affect the SNP v Labour battle?

I'm ever so slightly dismayed by the hints from George Galloway that he might be gearing up for a run in the Holyrood elections next year. Although I certainly don't agree with everything he says and does, I've thus far been able to take a certain amount of satisfaction in his occasional triumphs since being expelled from Labour, as it was that party he was a perennial thorn in the side of (along of course with a US Senate Committee that was almost as clueless as Menendez and co). However, if he does stand for the Scottish Parliament, he unfortunately seems somewhat more likely to do harm to the SNP than to Labour, simply because the SNP are so reliant on their list seats in Glasgow (and because Labour have no list seats to defend in the city at all). I can see five possible scenarios...

1) Galloway is no longer the force he was, and in any case his defection to the bright lights of London a few years ago has done him few favours in Glasgow. He receives a derisory vote, making no difference to the distribution of seats.

2) Galloway still has a big enough personal following to secure a seat, but in doing so he simply takes a seat that would have been won by another far-left candidate anyway. This ties in with Jeff Breslin's theory that the socialists are likely to recover sufficiently from their 2007 trouncing to at least sneak a seat in Glasgow.

3) Galloway does still have a big following, and it's one that the two 'indigenous' socialist parties can no longer match following the Sheridan saga. He takes a seat on the Glasgow list that would otherwise not have been won by the far-left, and that would otherwise have been taken by the SNP.

4) Same as scenario 3, except that either the Lib Dems or Greens underperform in Glasgow to such an extent that Galloway takes a seat that would otherwise have been won by one of them, not the SNP.

5) Galloway doesn't poll strongly enough to take a seat, but does do well enough to split the socialist vote and prevent another far-left candidate from being elected. This would leave an extra seat available on the list to be seized by a grateful SNP, or another mainstream party - but almost certainly not Labour.

So that makes three scenarios that would have no impact on the Labour v SNP battle, one that would harm the SNP, and one that might even conceivably help them. Unfortunately I think scenario 3 is probably more likely than 4 or 5.

Cameron draws the wrong lesson from Jackanory Jim's success

David Cameron, in response to Angus Robertson's question about the likely closure of RAF Lossiemouth at PMQs -

"If you had an independent Scotland, you wouldn't be flying planes, you'd be flying by the seat of your pants."

A sneering reply that was the cue for lots of equally sneering laughter from the Tory benches - but let's just examine this for a moment. Who are they actually sneering at? Not the SNP, that's for sure - Cameron wasn't particularly talking about an SNP-run independent Scotland, or even a Labour-run independent Scotland. He was simply mocking the capacity of Scots to govern themselves under any circumstances.

Now, you can see how Cameron might have been deluded into thinking that he's onto a winner here. After all, Labour have been talking Scotland down for decades and have more often than not been richly rewarded for their troubles. But the difference is that it's usually Scottish Labour figures who are the front for the talking-down operation. Why else does it infuriate us so much when Jackanory Jim does his "as a Murphy, it breaks my heart to say that an independent Scotland would be as rubbish as Ireland" routine? Because we know that the spinning of such yarns does get under people's skins, and it does ultimately sap this nation's morale. But hearing an Old Etonian Tory PM repeatedly sneer at "you" Scots will, I suspect, have a somewhat different effect.

Great politics, Dave. Don't stop.

YouGov : SNP trim Labour's list vote lead by five points

At long last, there is a new full-scale Scottish opinion poll out. It was conducted by YouGov for the Scotsman, and makes slightly more encouraging reading for the SNP than the figures from early September, when Labour enjoyed a comfortable ten-point lead on both ballots. Here are the full figures -

Constituency vote :

Labour 40% (+1)
SNP 34% (+5)
Conservatives 14% (-2)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-3)

List vote :

Labour 36% (-)
SNP 31% (+5)
Conservatives 15% (-)
Liberal Democrats 8% (-4)
Greens 6% (-)

The Scotsman's reporting of the story focuses on two points - that Labour is "maintaining" its "solid" lead over the SNP, and that the Lib Dems are finally taking the long-anticipated hit for going into coalition with the Tories. But this seems to me to miss an obvious point - not only have the SNP eaten into Labour's lead somewhat, but on the face of it that extra support seems to have come directly from the Westminster coalition parties, while Labour have remained roughly static. That may be a wholly misleading impression, but equally it could offer some grounds for optimism about what might happen if the coalition's (and especially the Liberal Democrats') support is squeezed yet further. Either way, I'm sure most SNP supporters will just be relieved to note that this poll shows them still very much in the game.

Another concern facing enthusiasts for the nascent Iain "the Snarl" Gray/Tavish Scott Dream Team is that, on these figures for the Liberal Democrats, such a coalition may quite simply not be arithmetically viable - even if Labour emerge as the largest party. A second consecutive minority government (of one colour or another) is looking somewhat more likely tonight.

Moray's punishment for voting SNP?

I'm starting to wonder if my old sparring-partner, Aberdeenshire Tory activist ChristinaD, is finally losing what little there was left of the plot. A few hours ago, she launched this astonishing attack on the SNP and the people of Moray for daring to take issue with the likely closures of RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth -

"The lying littel toe rag!! [She means Alex Salmond.] You have a constituency with not one, but two airbases. You demand a commitment from the UNITED KINGDOM MOD to fund and keep open both bases. You have an economic meltdown and the Nimrods grounded. And you even have someone launch an inquiry into the economic importance of these airbases.

So what do the electorate of Moray do, they could vote for anyone of three various Union/MOD/UK military presence supporters. Or anyone who might actually get voted into government with the accompanying power or influence. But they didn’t, they voted SNP. Yep, they voted for independence. And the very ‘independent’ SNP MP vowed to fight for the Westminster government to retain its presence in his constituency. You cannot buy that kind of hypocrisy."

Rather startled by the implications of this outburst, I asked her if she was really saying that people had been punished by the Tories for voting the 'wrong' way. She was in a hole, but did she stop digging?

"You have to love the Scottish way of life. You can stick two fingers up at the United Kingdom, but if the United Kingdom takes you at your word, they are punishing you."

Now I fully appreciate that Christina is not an official Tory spokeswoman (more's the pity for all the other parties) but even so, if this vindictive attitude towards the electorate is at all typical of their activists, it's little wonder they've got such an enduring problem in Scotland.

Incidentally, implying that the SNP aren't allowed to believe in military bases simply because an independent Scotland wouldn't be part of the British armed forces is approximately as silly as saying that the SNP aren't allowed to believe in postal delivery because an independent Scotland wouldn't be part of the British Royal Mail.

Labour's presumption comes unstuck

I was on Twitter for the first time in ages today, and I was intrigued to spot this so-called "top tweet" from the sainted Kezia Dugdale -

"Ha - "Let's stick together" is an unfortunate theme tune for #SNPConf in light of commitment to breaking up Britain!"

Now, I'm quite sure Kezia and her Labour retweeters were convinced they had spotted a connection there that would never have occurred to a Nat in a million years - but in fact the very first thing that leapt out at me when I heard the choice of 'theme tune' was that it's near-identical in sentiment to Altogether Now, Labour's pick for the 1999 election when they were attempting to draw a sharp distinction between their own values and the SNP's plans for "divorce" (yawn). Given the care that goes into these decisions, I doubt the similarity is entirely a coincidence, and all I can say is - what a stroke of absolute genius. It boldly colonises campaigning territory that Labour always presumptuously imagined to be its very own - unity, cohesion, solidarity.

The party election broadcasts that accompanied The Farm's ditty in 1999 were, if I recall, somewhat stomach-churning, featuring lots of images of Donald Dewar tugging his forlock (figuratively speaking) in the presence of Tony Blair. The intended message could hardly have been less subtle - "working together" and "cooperation" meant that devolution could only be a cosmetic development, with the old chain of command remaining exactly as it was before. I'd say it was high time that the Scottish electorate were presented with a rather more inspiring vision of national solidarity than an intention to defer to the wisdom of grown-ups in London at every conceivable opportunity.

'Independence is not everything'

A sentiment which many of the fundamentalists within his own party have of course long suspected Alex Salmond of treacherously harbouring, so it's somewhat ironic that his uttering of those words at the SNP conference heralded a reorienting of the party's strategy towards making a full-blooded case for independence. It's a paradox that in order to do that you really have to start off by declaring that independence is not the be-all-and-end-all, but as the First Minister acknowledged in his speech, it's quite possible that many people are under the false impression that nationalists do merely hanker after the sterile trappings of statehood, such as flags and anthems. In fact, I'd go further - I'd suggest that impression is so deeply entrenched for some voters that they will be extremely resistant when they hear Salmond make a passionate case for independence in economic and social justice terms. They'll instinctively suspect that this is a phoney after-the-fact rationalisation for the nationalist impulse.

So what can the party do in the face of such scepticism? The successful 2007 strategy was to essentially opt-out of the problem - using the prospect of the referendum to 'quarantine' the issue of independence, and instead making the election about what could be achieved within the devolved powers of the parliament as they stood, or possibly as they would be under 'devo plus'. Make no mistake, if today's speech was a declaration of intent, that strategy is now defunct, and the SNP's mission will in future be to tackle head-on the cynicism and apathy encountered in various segments of the electorate about the cause of independence. It's a mammoth task, and perhaps even one that is not wholly achievable in the space between now and the election - but making a start now could pay long-term dividends, regardless of who wins power in May. I'm sure the SNP leadership have been acutely aware for some time that a strategy designed to secure a referendum on independence could be spectacularly counter-productive if the groundwork to win that referendum has not been done in time.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps one thing we can be grateful to Labour for is that in their foolishness of replacing Wendy Alexander's (admittedly chaotic) imagination on the subject of a referendum with Iain "the Snarl" Gray's knee-jerk rejectionism, they may well have bought the SNP more time to make their case. Due to the economic climate, winning a referendum on the planned date this year would have been a long-shot - it looks like Salmond, shrewd gambler that he is, is resolved to ensure that the odds are firmly in the SNP's favour whenever the referendum does finally come.

The SNP's 'away game' problem

Allan at Dispatches from Paisley has written a very interesting post on 'where the SNP went wrong in May and how they can win next year'. I have to say I disagree with much of his diagnosis of the problem at the general election - while the dispute over the SNP's banning from the leaders' debates was an intensely frustrating quagmire, I don't think the party had much option but to do what they did. Granted, some people found it tiresome that they kicked up a fuss, but I think we can rest assured that those are the types of people who wouldn't have been minded to vote SNP (at least in a Westminster election) anyway. The danger of just meekly accepting the injustice would have been an even greater level of invisibility during the campaign, and indeed it could have been seen as a tacit acceptance of the charge that the party is "irrelevant" in UK-wide elections.

Allan is perhaps right to suggest that Labour's jibe about "Ripped-off Glasgow" had some effect, but I doubt it was huge, and in any case it would by definition have been restricted to one part of the country. As for the suggestion that the SNP chose the wrong narrative in "More Nats, Less Cuts" and should instead have been hammering home the issue of independence, I have my doubts. Again, there would have been a severe danger of seeming irrelevant, or at least detached from the campaign that people were tuning into - by focusing on the cuts the SNP were getting to the heart of what the election was really about for most voters. Perhaps one slight mistake was that the "protecting Scotland" angle seemed too parochial, or even selfish - they maybe should have emphasised to a greater extent that they planned to vote in Westminster to protect everyone against the worst of the cuts, not just Scots (as indeed is now demonstrably the case).

I'd suggest there's a danger of overthinking this - the SNP's disappointing showing (which wasn't half as bad as I feared at one point, incidentally) can largely be explained by the Labour juggernaut, which in turn can largely be explained by the false perception that only a vote for Labour was an authentic vote to keep the Tories out. How the SNP will ever overcome that inbuilt disadvantage in a Westminster election (short of fair TV coverage, I mean) I really don't know. In spite of the huge challenges that next May poses, at least we can be grateful that it's a "home fixture" for the SNP.

Sorry, Matt - Angus MacNeil and Stewart Hosie are both in the pink!

Now that Ed Miliband has moved Labour onto the ground occupied by many Liberal Democrat members and voters (if not necessarily the current party leadership), it's encouraging to see that a conversation has started over at Liberal Democrat Voice about the possibility of ditching the coalition with the Tories before this parliament is out. Matt Gallagher raises a very interesting prospect, and one which hasn't received enough attention thus far - what will be the psychological impact if, as seems highly likely, Labour at some point make enough by-election gains to enable them (theoretically) to form a coalition with the Lib Dems without the support of the nationalist parties? If by that stage there are opinion polls showing massive disapproval ratings for the Tory/Lib Dem administration, and perhaps even majority support for an alternative coalition, the enhanced arithmetical viability of that alternative might present the Lib Dems with a severe dilemma.

However, where Gallagher's argument takes a wander off into the bizarre is his suggestion that the by-election gains Labour need to trigger this scenario would come at the expense of the SNP and Plaid Cymru, rather than the Tories. I'm not sure he's thought that one through - perhaps he was misled by the frequency of Labour/SNP by-election battles in the last parliament? Anyway, I left this comment -

"For the life of me I can’t see why Matt is thinking of by-election gains from the nationalist parties rather than the Tories. As far as the SNP are concerned Labour would only have a theoretical chance in two of the six seats, and what are the statistical chances of either of those falling vacant? Angus Brendan MacNeil and Stewart Hosie are both in the pink as far as I’m aware!

The truth is that the arithmetic for a progressive coalition is already there, because the nationalists would be happy to give it a fair wind. But, sadly, some Lib Dems were determined to promote the narrative that “the numbers simply aren’t there” in order to justify their unholy alliance with the Tories, and a number of Labour neanderthals did the same because they were so horrified by the idea of having to work with other parties. 'Purity or death' is the mantra for the likes of John Reid and Tom Harris."

The SNP are like Cheryl Cole : they don't need a parachute

And so, with a single press release, the SNP have put an end to one of my theories from a few weeks ago - there is clearly now no chance whatever of a full-scale coalition with the Tories after the election in May. In one sense, to rule that possibility out so unequivocally seems a trifle rash, given that it provides the most plausible route by which the SNP might be able to remain in power if they slip to second place. It's also worth pointing out that their Welsh sister party Plaid Cymru have no such bar on coalition with the Tories, and indeed came within a whisker of forming one in 2007. So the SNP have consciously made a choice they didn't have to make - they've cut away their own safety-net, and ensured they will almost certainly have to defeat Labour outright next May to hold on to power.

It's not hard to see why they've done it, though, since the election battle will to a large extent be fought over which party can best stand up for Scotland against a Tory-led government at Westminster - hence the suggestion in the press release that it's Labour who are quietly keeping their options open and might well consider a deal with the Tories. The supporting evidence cited is that there is a Labour/Tory coalition in no fewer than five of Scotland's 32 councils, and that since 2007 Labour have voted with the Tories in the Scottish Parliament more often than the SNP. Now, in the literal sense, that's a bit thin - while Labour's irrational hatred of the SNP would probably lead them instinctively to favour coalition with the Tories if that was the only way of keeping the Nationalists out (hence what's happened in the councils), they nevertheless have a fiction of anti-Tory purity to maintain to keep their own electorate onside, and that would almost certainly preclude any chance of a formal coalition with the Tories at Holyrood. As for the parliamentary voting record, it is of course much easier for opposition parties to find common cause against something than it is for any opposition party to vote with the government in favour of a specific proposal. Such statistical analyses are therefore very crude - but Labour can hardly complain about their use in this case. They have, after all, spent much of the last decade-and-a-bit using voodoo statistics to peddle the fantasy of a de facto SNP/Tory alliance, both at Holyrood and at Westminster.

Bracing wind of open democracy is no humiliation

Scottish Labour's obligatory knee-jerk rant about the SNP's regional lists for next year's election -

"The release of this list is not only deeply embarrassing for the SNP, but it is a humiliation for Alex Salmond that his own party members have effectively deselected so many of his sitting team."

While I may have expressed dismay in the previous post about Anne McLaughlin's fate (and I take the same view about two or three others) I'm quite sure that's arrant nonsense on the part of John Park. Does he really think that the public would prefer the cosy 'closed shop' culture that brought us the expenses scandal to one where merit takes precedence over the privileges of incumbency? It's a brutal process in many respects, but one that ought to leave the SNP - on balance - in stronger rather than weaker shape going into the election.

A cruel and chilling message to victims

There has been an interesting discussion going on over at Lallands Peat Worrier about the causes of the 'gender gap' in the SNP's support, and what can be done about it. But the poster Am Firinn makes an interesting point about one thing the SNP categorically shouldn't do, even if there is a chance that it might help matters. He points to the Scottish Parliament debate on June 10 about domestic violence against men, and the way in which even "normally sensible" Labour MSPs like Malcolm Chisholm were prepared to dismiss the problem as trivial.

I must say, having had a quick look at the Official Report from that debate, I think Am Firinn has got a point. The most telling contribution comes from the SNP's Christine Grahame, in which she explains how the biggest problem that male victims face is that they simply have nowhere to turn, because of the popular perception that domestic violence is exclusively something that men do to women. And if you want to know where that popular perception comes from, you need look no further than the Labour contributions to the debate. To those MSPs, male victims are few in number, in many cases are really the perpetrators of the violence anyway, and even just acknowledging the existence of the problem is an unwelcome distraction from the message that domestic violence is all about 'gender inequality' - ie. an inequality that women are on the wrong end of.

What I found even more depressing is that it appears SNP members joined with Labour to vote through Johann Lamont's amendment, which made the gender inequality point, and also noted "that overwhelmingly victims are women and that eradicating domestic abuse will only succeed where that pattern is acknowledged". This ignores the fact that there is quite simply no credible evidence to support the assertion that the "overwhelming majority" of victims are female - if anything, there is rather a lot of evidence to suggest that a significant minority of victims are male. And if this is solely a 'gender inequality' issue, how do we explain the many victims of domestic abuse in same-sex relationships, including lesbian relationships? What might be the case is that there is a gender inequality in terms of the outcome of abuse, in that violence inflicted by women tends to take a different form, and men are perhaps better equipped to physically defend themselves. But there again, aren't many men culturally conditioned never to strike a woman, even in self-defence? There's certainly precious little cultural conditioning of that sort in the opposite direction. And isn't the fact that male victims of abuse are less likely to receive help - or even be believed in the first place - also a clear-cut case of gender inequality?

So it cuts both ways, and there's no mystery about what is perpetuating the latter problem. The message from Labour (and, to be fair, from many other quarters) that some victims of domestic violence are less equal than others is a cruel and chilling one.

The SNP and Labour already have the power to thwart Clegg's opportunism

The Scotsman reports that Alex Salmond has suggested that, by initiating a likely U-turn on the clash of dates between the 2015 Holyrood and Westminster elections, Michael Moore has effectively "conceded" that it is also wrong to hold the AV referendum on the same day as next year's Holyrood poll. In terms of logical consistency, Mr Salmond is of course right, but are the Liberal Democrats ready to admit that to themselves yet? If they agree to a decoupling of next year's polling dates, the whole purpose of their ploy will have been defeated. My guess is that Michael Moore hopes that, if he does end up feeling obliged to devolve control of election dates to Holyrood, he can conveniently delay the transfer of power until well after next May.

But the irony is that, as things stand, the SNP government don't actually need any new powers to thwart the Lib Dems' plan. Labour have been completely supportive of the arguments against holding both the election and the referendum on May 5th - and between them, the SNP and Labour hold some 72% of the seats in the Scottish Parliament. As we all now know due to an issue that has been very topical in recent weeks, under the Scotland Act a two-thirds majority is sufficient to trigger an early dissolution of parliament. I suggested not too long ago that this rule was a touch superfluous, given that a dissolution can also be triggered simply by a short period of time elapsing after a no-confidence motion has been passed without a new government being formed. That, I felt sure, was the much more plausible sequence of events, thus ensuring that the two-thirds rule would never be activated in practice. But, remarkably, we seem to have stumbled on one of the rare circumstances where there might just be a use for it.

Whether the SNP and Labour's common cause on this subject really runs deep enough for them to vote together for an early election (probably in March or April) is of course a very big 'if' - as the two main contenders for power they will be reading the runes and seeking to maximise their own advantage. On the face of it, they're unlikely to be able to agree on a preferred election date for that reason alone. But if by any chance they can, the coalition government's embarrassment will be a sight to behold.

Forces of conservatism suffer defeat at Holyrood

During the election campaign Jim Murphy repeatedly asserted that the SNP usually "vote with the Tories" at Westminster, and offered that up as spurious "proof" that the SNP would prop up a Tory government in a hung parliament. The lie was of course comprehensively given to Murphy's claim when we did indeed end up with a hung parliament, and the SNP moved heaven and earth to try to avert a Tory government, while assorted senior Scottish Labour figures were busily helping to smooth David Cameron's path to Downing Street. Indeed, rarely has Tom Harris shown so much passion for anything that didn't involve the storage of innocent people's DNA or the demonisation of teenage mothers.

But what Murphy actually meant when he said the SNP voted with the Tories is that both parties voted against the Labour government quite a lot. A rather fatuous observation given that it's much easier for parties that have little in common to find themselves in the same voting lobby when they're voting against something rather than for something. Whether they like it or not, I suspect Labour will find themselves regularly "voting with the SNP" at Westminster over the next few years.

Tony Blair used to like to pretend that anyone who veered from the true Blairite path by voting against his government's programme could automatically be lumped together as "the forces of conservatism", regardless of whether they came from the right or left (indeed, he specifically name-checked the SNP and Plaid Cymru in that original deranged speech). More than a touch brazen, of course, because so much of New Labour's programme was deeply conservative and authoritarian. But with the Conservatives and Labour both in opposition in the Scottish parliament, it now gives us the opportunity to observe which way Labour jump when a clear-cut conservative/progressive dividing line comes up - ie. a vote on a progressive policy which, by opposing, you can only really be doing so for conservative reasons. What about today's vote in the Scottish Parliament on scrapping prison sentences of three months or less, for instance?

The issues could hardly be more clear-cut. Short-term prison sentences are expensive, ineffective, and indeed counter-productive because they lead to a high rate of reoffending. The alternatives to such sentences are tough, productive for the community, and rehabilitative. The only conceivable reasons for opposing such an obviously rational shift of emphasis in the justice system is a wish to pander to populist instincts, and a boneheaded attachment to the traditional belief that "prison works", regardless of evidence. Conservatism in a nutshell, in fact. No surprise, then, to discover that the Scottish Tories are on that side of the argument (in spite of Ken Clarke's intriguing musings). But what about Labour? Yep, you guessed it...

Still, rather refreshing to discover that there is a progressive majority in the Scottish Parliament, even if Labour are determined not to be part of it.