Anyone surprised by Alex Salmond’s comments in the Independent about SNP MPs possibly voting on English matters if it helped Labour is clearly missing out on the wealth of wisdom that comes from reading James Forsyth’s pieces, given our political editor’s interview with the former first minister revealed the very same thing last week:
The SNP surge has delighted many Tories, because it could cost Labour as many as 30 seats. Given SNP MPs’ self-denying ordinance about voting on devolved matters (such as health, education and policing), the more seats they win, the easier it should be for Cameron to govern in a hung parliament.
But Salmond has some bad news for the Prime Minister: not voting on devolved matters, he said, is ‘my choice. But of course in that position we would, obviously, be prepared to listen to other counsel.’ In other words, the SNP would, for a price, be prepared to vote with Labour on English legislation. He is also quick to list examples (health reform and tuition fees) where the SNP has already defied its own rule.
You can read the full article here. But some Tories have been working out how to make this sort of arrangement between Labour and the SNP work for them too. Some of them are rather gleeful at the personal discomfort that pairing up with the SNP will cause those Scottish Labour MPs who have fought Alex Salmond’s party all their lives.
But MPs in northern constituencies also think they can make a good go of potential SNP/Labour relations in their campaigning literature for 2015. Ben Wallace, MP for Wyre and Preston North says English voters would be dismayed by a pact between the two parties as they would see it as yet another example of Scotland getting more goodies than its partners in the Union. James points out in his Salmond interview that if the price was right, the SNP could vote on English matters, which means Labour would have to offer a price. And therein lies the rub for English constituents. Wallace says:
‘I could definitely see on the doorstep last weekend that the prospect of a pact bothers northern voters and we shouldn’t miss an opportunity to make the point that Labour might let the SNP tail wag the English bulldog.’
The Conservatives could repeatedly call on Miliband to rule out a pact with the SNP, which he won’t do because he may well need Alex Salmond’s Westminster crew. But it would still enable Tories to put in their leaflets that Labour refuses to rule out a pact with the SNP and is therefore quite happy to shaft English voters and so on and so forth.
Of course, the problem is that no-one really wants to rule out a pact with anyone and is instead having a good think what sort of price would make previously curmudgeonly parties their friends in the lobbies.
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