Snp

“Is it sensible to spend your way out of debt?” ran the opening question in the last night’s Scottish leaders debate – marking it out, straight away, as something very different from politics-as-usual. It was set in Aberdeen, hence the greater concentration of common sense. The six-way debate was feisty and refreshing, and of a calibre higher than the seven-way UK leaders’ debate. Scotland has joined Denmark in producing the best political drama, except this is real. Nicola Sturgeon won last week’s UK debate, I’d give Tuesday’s to Tory leader Ruth Davidson. I’m not sure anyone won, or lost, last night – but unlike last week’s melee, we did learn

One of the most striking things about Scotland is how the referendum still dominates politics here. I’ve seen more Yes posters and stickers than I’ve seen posters for any political party. The referendum also goes a long way to explaining the SNP surge. In Edinburgh East, for instance, 17 thousand people voted Labour in 2010, giving the party a nine thousand majority. Considering that the seat has been Labour since 1935, you’d expect that to be enough for the party to hold on easily. But as the SNP candidate for the seat Tommy Sheppard pointed out to me, 27 thousand people in this seat voted Yes last autumn. If he

Tonight’s Scottish debate isn’t going to fundamentally alter the dynamics of this general election campaign in Scotland. But it will reverberate through the UK-wide general election campaign. Both Ed Miliband and David Cameron have been left with questions to answer by their Scottish leaders while Nicola Sturgeon has made clear the price she intends to try and extract for supporting a Labour government. In heated exchanges with Sturgeon about the economy, Jim Murphy pointed out that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that Labour would not need to cut further after 2016. Now, the Labour leadership in London has studiously avoided endorsing this idea. But Miliband and Ed Balls can

In a close campaign, you would normally expect the smaller parties to get squeezed as voters decided that is really a choice between Labour and the Tories. But this time, thing might be different. Why, because the general expectation is that there will be another hung parliament and the coverage of the campaign is being reflected through that prism. This emphasis on the likelihood of a hung parliament could change how people actually vote. As I write in the current issue of the magazine, the British Election Study shows that among voters who expect another hung parliament support for both Labour and the Tories is radically lower with the minor

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of the campaign unchanged was, to their mind, a result. As Cameron enjoyed a late night drink with Samantha Cameron, George Osborne and his key aides on Thursday, he reflected on how much better he felt than he did after the first debate five years ago when he knew that he had not only underperformed but

After 15 hours of fascinating and – let’s face it – fairly exciting developments in l’affaire Sturgeon, here’s where I think we are, and I’ll try to stick as much as possible to incontrovertible facts, not political bluster: If this was all a grand misunderstanding, I think the various parties would have come together by now to explain what they think has happened, e.g. perhaps Nicola Sturgeon used the word ‘expect’, that got turned into ‘espoir’ back in the French embassy, and then relayed to the FCO as ‘hope’. That’s pretty plausible, but we’ve heard no such explanation yet. If it’s not a genuine misunderstanding, we’re left with the uncomfortable

So who does Nicola Sturgeon really want as Prime Minister? Her official line is that she’d put in anyone but the wicked Tories – indeed, Alex Salmond told me last week that “the SNP approach to a Cameron minority government will be to bring it down”. But that’s not what Strugeon has been saying in private. The Daily Telegraph has just released a leaked diplomatic memo revealing that Ms Sturgeon has confessed to the French ambassador that she would prefer that David Cameron “remains”  Prime Minister – and that she thinks Ed Miliband is too incompetent. The leaked memo – a UK government memo – goes as follows:- “Just had a telephone conversation

There’s not much love for Labour in Scotland at the moment, with Mr S reporting this week that Jim Murphy has failed to mention his own party on campaign leaflets. As the SNP come out on top in the polls and the reds hope for a ‘late swing‘ to Labour north of the border, the Scottish Labour leader can take comfort that he is at least popular down south. Word reaches Mr S that at a London fundraiser last week for the Scottish Labour Party, a jog with fitness freak Jim was auctioned off for well over £1,000. Meanwhile a bottle of House of Commons whisky signed by Ed Miliband failed to reach £100 in bids,

Scottish Labour is having no luck in denting the SNP’s support. ComRes/ITV News have released a new poll this evening, which shows a 19 per cent swing to the SNP across the 40 Labour held seats in Scotland. Based on this, the SNP would take 28 of these seats in the upcoming general election. North of the border, ComRes puts the SNP on 43 per cent, Labour on 37, the Tories on 13 and Ukip, the Lib Dems and Greens on two per cent each. The ComRes findings fall in line with the other polls taken in Scotland from Lord Ashcroft and ICM — the latter recently suggested that the SNP would take