Scotland

We have been here before, you know. Seven years ago Alex Salmond looked forward to the prospect of a hung parliament and spied an opportunity to ‘make Westminster dance to a Scottish jig’. If Scotland returned at least 20 SNP MPs – members, as the then First Minister indelicately put it, ‘ready, willing, and able to defend our parliament and our people’ – then Scotland’s interests might yet hold the balance of power in London. Not, he stressed, as part of any formal coalition but on a case-by-case and vote-by-vote basis. That didn’t happen, of course. The SNP won only six seats in 2010. Still, a victory delayed is not the

Last year Russia Today launched a poster campaign with a fanciful strapline: ‘This is what happens when there is no second opinion’. The extraordinary implication is that the conflict could have been avoided, if only we had listened to Putin. This is such an obvious fallacy that it’s hardly worth dwelling on. But RT (as it now likes to be known, as if people don’t know what the ‘R’ stands for) is producing lightly disguised state propaganda. The viewers know it and so do the mercenaries that make it. In contrast, Scotland’s new pro-independence daily newspaper – ‘The National’– is written with earnest conviction. Its contributors are devout believers, and

It’s dangerous, in my line of work, to promise you’ll be anywhere by 8 p.m. I made this mistake recently, saying I’d turn up to a dinner after a Budget discussion — a ‘quad’ meeting, where I sit with the Prime Minister, George Osborne and Nick Clegg. We’ve been doing this for five years, so have come to know each other pretty well. Not that we all agree; on the night in question, Nick was angry about something (I won’t say what) and our meeting ran on. I headed back with him to Dover House, a magnificent building where I was based during my tenure as Scottish Secretary. A great

Later today, Vince Cable will launch his traditional conference attack on the Tories. He’ll denounce them for their positions on Europe and immigration. But his pre-conference interview in The Guardian will have, for once, delighted the Tories. For in it, Cable rules out a deal with the SNP. Now, this is a turn-around from Cable. Just last month, he said “We’re perfectly happy to work with the SNP. There’s no taboo on the SNP. ” But Cable’s decision to rule it out on the grounds that ‘It’s virtually inconceivable that you can have a coalition with a party that is committed to breaking up your country’ will please the Tories

When Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership in 2010, his supporters boasted that he spoke human. Tonight, in a question time session with a group of young people broadcast on BBC3, Miliband showed flashes of his ability to connect with an audience. But, overall, it was a patchy performance. Miliband was very good on some subjects and dealt neatly with some left-field questions. However, he still doesn’t have the right answer to the question of whether he would do a deal with the SNP after the election in the event of a hung parliament. He dismissed the ideas as ‘a piece of nonsense from the Tories’. But, in contrast

Labour has found Sir John Major rather useful in this Parliament, with his criticisms of government policy and praise of Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze. But his op-ed in today’s Telegraph in which he demands that Ed Miliband rule out a coalition with the Scottish National Party is rather less helpful. What makes this call even more unhelpful is that many Scottish Labour MPs are desperate for Miliband to rule out a pact because of the damage that shacking up with the SNP would do for their brand in Scotland. They will also have emerged from a bloody battle in which many of their number will have lost seats to

Has the SNP threat to Labour in Scotland abated? Not yet according to Lord Ashcroft, who has released his latest round of constituency level polling. Focusing on the SNP/Labour marginals, Ashcroft has found that in five current Labour strongholds, the SNP are on track to swipe away four of them: Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock, Dumfries & Galloway Edinburgh South West and Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath — the latter of course being represented by Gordon Brown. The only good news for Labour is East Renfrewshire, where Labour has a one-point lead. Thankfully for the party, it’s their leader Jim Murphy’s seat.  In the single Conservative Scottish seat, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale, the Tories are neck

One of the things that even its critics, such as myself, have to concede that the European Union has been good at is making clear what it has funded. By contrast, in this country there’s little to tell you that the taxpayer has paid for something. But this is changing. The government will tomorrow, as I mention in the Mail on Sunday, announce that all publicly funded infrastructure projects will now be branded with a Union flag logo and the message ‘Funded by the UK Government.’ This will apply right across the UK and should provide some clarity as to who is paying for what; using this branding will be

Are the SNP poised to become Westminster’s kingmakers? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Alex Massie discusses this week’s cover feature on the role the Scottish nationalists could play after the next general election. If the SNP wipe out Labour north of the border, will questions about the future of the union be back on the table? How is propping up a Labour government second prize for the SNP? And are the Scottish elections in 2016 more important to Scottish labour than this year’s battle? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss why the upcoming election will not be very general. Are any of the parties planning to fight a national

Today’s Scottish Conservative conference in Edinburgh proved unexpectedly interesting. No, really. Or, rather, yes, really. Or whatever. David Cameron spoke, you see, and so did Ruth Davidson and they said very different things. For important Prime Ministerial timetabling reasons (ie, he needed to get back to London) Cameron spoke first and thus, unusually, served as the warm-up guy. Which merely helped emphasise the difference between what the Prime Minister said and what the Scottish Tory leader had to say. Some of this was a question of substance.Cameron declared that the national question is “settled” whereas Davidson warned that “This isn’t over and it hasn’t gone away”. Only one of them