Without repetition, hesitation or deviation...

There was a fab new late-night game show on BBC2 tonight, presented by Gordon Brewer. The concept is deceptively simple - contestants have to answer exactly the same question over and over again, but without uttering the words "yes" or "no", while always remembering to work the phrase "no blank cheques" into each reply.

Tonight's impressive winner by a large margin was Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm.

War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Labour is United

"No-one is saying Gordon Brown takes an identical position to Wendy Alexander," says Malcolm Chisholm in the Scotsman today. "That's what devolution is all about." What are you on about, Malcolm? Everyone knows their positions are identical. Gordon Brown does not want a referendum, and Wendy Alexander completely agrees with him. On the other hand, Wendy Alexander does want a referendum, and Gordon Brown completely agrees with her too. So now they agree with each other twice over. That's why Labour have emerged from last week more united than ever.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Labour is United.

And if you're still not convinced, David Cairns is available for further interviews.

Yet another twist...

The spin in all the Sunday papers this morning was that Gordon Brown had finally won his tug-of-war with Wendy Alexander, and forced her into a humiliating climbdown, removing an independence referendum from Labour's agenda. But then, Wendy appears on the Politics Show for the second week in a row, and basically restates her original position that she is fairly likely to allow the SNP's referendum bill to pass in 2010. You really couldn't make this up...

On the same programme, David Cairns tells us that he's not the sort of politician to pretend that everything is wonderful when it quite obviously isn't. Funny that, because he's done an astonishingly good impersonation of exactly that sort of politician up till now - not least in the run-up to last year's Holyrood election fiasco.

Wendy-don't-speak

I suppose I should write something about Labour's total meltdown over an independence referendum, but I'm almost speechless (a state of being Gordon Brown must wish Wendy Alexander would emulate for a few days). It's extraordinary how this issue has crept up on everyone - in retrospect it all started with Wendy's appearance on the Politics Show, but as you can see from my post on Sunday, what she said on the subject of a referendum didn't even leap out at me as being the most noteworthy part of the interview.

On an unrelated political matter, I was saddened to hear of the death of Ray Michie, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Argyll and Bute. She was one of the last of a dying breed of politicians who seemed almost too nice and principled to be in parliament (and I mean genuine nice, not any sort of 'Blair Babe' synthetic niceness).

Something's afoot...

Oooh, what's going on? First, Wendy Alexander says on the Politics Show that she won't "rule out" a referendum on independence, now Douglas Alexander says he is "not afraid" of one. When the Alexanders achieve something vaguely approaching inter-sibling co-ordination, you know something's afoot. Rest assured, though, by next week they'll have changed their minds again and decided that a referendum is "a distraction from the people of Scotland's priorities" after all (translation - we've had a proper think about it and we are actually quite scared).

Curiously, Wendy is continuing with her stubborn insistence that the one thing she won't countenance is Alex Salmond's suggestion of an STV-style multi-option referendum. But surely that's what would suit her best? The alternative is a straight yes/no vote, and all the polls show that format produces the most favourable outcome for independence, and sometimes a majority in favour. Is Wendy shooting herself (and the Union) in the foot here?