If mainstream politicians are a bit confused and downbeat at the moment, Scottish Labour MPs are the most miserable of the lot, facing a savaging in constituencies they never thought would slip out of their party’s hands. But last night Ed Miliband gave them reason to be a bit less miserable, just for a little while anyway.
On Free Speech, the Labour leader came much closer to ruling out a Labour-SNP coalition than he has before, saying ‘I am saying it’s nonsense. I absolutely am saying it’s nonsense. It’ not gonna… you know… you just said it’. He also pointed out that the SNP had ruled out a coalition with Labour.
Of course, the real chances of a coalition were pretty low, given it would seriously damage both parties involved. But Labour had dodged ruling it out because it feared that to do so would be twisted as ‘anti-Scottish’ by the SNP. It is a damned-if-you-don’t-damned-if-you-do situation, though, because Labour MPs in England are finding that voters are picking up on potential deals between the two parties as a real turn-off, and the Tories have been surprised by how much traction they’ve got with their attacks on the idea so far.
What remains is the possibility of a confidence-and-supply arrangement. But even if Labour ends up not needing the SNP for votes, it will still have a tricky trudge through Parliament in a ‘normal’ coalition with the Lib Dems, as I explained in the Times yesterday. And from the backbenches, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens working as the ‘conscience of the left’ would still have a disruptive influence on a government likely to be far less secure than the one currently running the country.
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