Alex Massie

For the want of a question mark, the empire was defeated. Something like that anyway. Changing The Man Who Hated Britain to A Man Who Hated Britain? would have saved the Daily Mail an awful lot of bother. Too late for that now. And, of course, there are many people savouring the Mail's distress. Many more, too, who appreciate the irony of the Mail being the object of this week's Two Minute Hate. What goes around comes around. Sauce for geese and ganders and all that. I thought the problem with the Mail's hatchet job on Ralph Miliband was that it used a very small, rather blunt hatchet. A couple of diary entries, a few quotations from his books and, er, that was it. Surely there should have been more material than this? Disappointing.

A novice poker player quickly learns - or had better quickly learn - that strength often connotes weakness and weakness is a reliable indicator of strength. But as the stakes increase and the level of play becomes more sophisticated such elementary tells can be misleading. They are false friends in the land of the double and triple bluff. So a novice poker player might conclude that David Cameron's refusal to debate against Alex Salmond is a sign of weakness. A slightly more experienced player would think this weakness too obvious to be true and conclude that Cameron is holding better cards than he is indicating. And it is true: with the polls indicating a No vote Cameron has little need to risk a debate the outcome of which must be uncertain.

Ronald Reagan once quipped that  "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help." As was so often the case the Great Communicator was only half-joking. He knew government had important jobs to do, jobs only government could do. What was needed was a rebalancing. Government had become too invasive. It needed pruning. (Never mind that not much pruning took place; the rhetoric and the positioning was what mattered.) I didn't watch Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour party conference this afternoon but no-one, I think, would say he possesses a Reaganesque delivery.

I was at a funeral on Friday and so late catching-up with the latest entertainment provided by UKIP. But, gosh, thank heavens for Godfrey Bloom. Not just because he and his ilk have injected some welcome craziness into British politics - the circus always needs new clowns - but because by doing so they have reminded us of the stakes involved. Bloom - last heard decrying aid squandered on feckless Bongo Bongo Land - one-upped himself with his talk of sluts who fail to clean their kitchens properly. Sure, there was something refreshing about hearing Nigel Farage admit all this amounted to a disaster for UKIP but the bigger point is that it should concentrate Tory minds. Far too many Tories seem to think UKIP might be rascals but rascals-with-their-heart-in-the-right-place.

What price a Scotsman's vote? About £500 apparently. Beneath a headline claiming 'New poll gives Yes campaign hope' The Scotsman reports that support for independence, as measured by ICM, rises to the giddy heights of 47 per cent if voters are told that they will be £500 a year better off in an independent Scotland. If this seems a disappointingly mercenary reason for voting Yes the same poll finds that many supporters of independence have their price. Only 18 per cent favour independence if, hypothetically, it were to leave you £500 a year worse off. The Incorruptible 18 per cent! Almost everyone else, it seems, has a price. Upon such things does the fate of nations hang.

On Sunday an opinion poll was just a poll. Nothing to be too excited by. Unreliable too. The real poll - the one that counts - is still a year away. So put not your faith in numbers. Disappointment that way lies. On Monday the mood in the Scottish nationalist camp changed. Opinion polls now offered a persuasive and necessary reminder that Scotland's on the march. A march that ends in freedom and liberty and whisky next September as an ancient country reasserts her prerogatives  and takes here rightful place in the family of nations once again. Polls are pure dead brilliant, don't you know? From which you will gather that two opinion polls have been released in Scotland these past few days and they cannot both be accurate.

A muddle and a cock-up. For all the talk of parliament reasserting itself, last night's vote on Syria showed a parliament that voted, twice, to oppose actions it actually supports. David Cameron has been humiliated but this was hardly a banner day for Ed Miliband either. The House of Commons has, for now, cut off its nose to spite its face. Perhaps surgery can repair the damage. Perhaps it can't. Because the longer and more deeply one contemplates yesterday's events the more evident it seems that there were no winners. The government motion was defeated. So was Labour's amendment. Since these motions were, in essence and in most practical respects, identical one wonders what on earth has happened.

For a long time my view of the Imperial Capital — as, like other Scots, I am still prone to considering London — was borrowed from Joseph Conrad’s description of its riverside: ‘It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a jungle by the confused, varied and impenetrable aspect of the buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose, but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London’s infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life.’ London was mysterious, huge and confusing. I disliked it intensely. Times change. London seems a place transformed these days. It fizzes.