The SNP will support Labour in the first couple of years. They're not going to vote against a budget that includes increased top rate tax, a mansion tax, abolition of the bedroom tax, a bankers bonus tax etc.

But they will fall out eventually. All of those Scottish Labour voters that have switched to the SNP havent done so in the expectation that the SNP will simply have a cosy relationship with Labour. The SNP will have to be able to show that they have advanced the cause of independence or clearly obtained a better deal for Scotland if they are to keep those votes. And Labour will not be re-elected if they blatantly pander to the SNP. There isnt really a win win outcome for the two parties. One of them has to have beaten the other by 2020.

The SNP's biggest weapon is in the votes of confidense. They're not going to bring a Labour government down, at least not for a couple of years. But when the Trident vote goes through they'll probably start to abstain. They'll make sure that the threat of bringing down Labour hangs over the government in the second half of the parliament. It will all end in tears.

The SNP will not be allowed to forget what happened in 1979 when they helped bring down the Labour government. What followed hit Scotland particularly hard and there'll be no wish to repeat that experience

I don't see it that way at all. Labour and the SNP don't need to "beat" each other. All the SNP need to do is extract either one major or several minor concessions from Labour.
The SNP and Nicola Sturgeon herself, have already admitted they can't do anything about independence because it requires another Scottish Parliament.
As I said, I wouldn't be suprised to see a concession from Labour that the nuclear weapons will be moved out of Scotland. That would give the SNP a "win" so to speak. Plus a few tax and spend things that in reality Labour would like to do anyway.

There is no way whatsoever the SNP will bring down a Labour government to let the Tories in. They'd be finished as a party.

If the SNP play it right, extract a few concessions, appear sensible and as if they are helping "govern" the country then it massively enhances their position in Scotland and enhances their case for independence.

They might not vote to bring down Labour, just severely disrupt them.

When the Trident vote goes through they could announce that they will revert to their traditional stance of only voting on matters that affect Scotland. That doesnt bring the government down, just emasculates them.

And there will be a whole raft of stuff that Labour will want to do that isnt in anyone's manifesto, perhaps not even on the radar yet. Foreign affairs, criminal justice stuff, anti terrorism etc, etc The SNP can easily take a contrary position on them.

The SNP have to differentiate themselves from Labour, move the independence movement forward.

And I dont really think Milliband will move the Trident base a hundered miles down the road to England. It will cost a pile of cash in addition to the replacement missiles, is very time consuming, will not make anyone feel safer and is clearly a very expensive bribe of the SNP. Could cost him the next election.

The Tories bringing out Major is a lot safer than Labour bringing out Blair a couple of weeks ago, I find the man totally repellent.




The SNP seem to be saying 'vote SNP and get rid of Cameron'. If Scots vote Labour they are most likely to do this. Going off the polls Labour are likely to lose 20+ seats in Scotland to the SNP. This would help the Tories as I can't really see much change in England and Wales from the last election. Although this may be the SNPs aim. 5 more years of the Tories will help the cause for independence, especially with the SNP being so good at telling people what they want to hear and blaming all social problems on Westminster.

FPTP will also help the SNP. last time around they returned 6 MP's. From memory most of those the Tories came second in the constituency. This time they will be taking swathes of Labour votes.

If the Unionist parties in Northern Ireland get their act together and work with each other and not against they should win the majority of seats over there. They may prove valuable allies to the Conservatives if an agreement does come about between Labour and the SNP.

Surely that is not in Labour's longer term interest in Scotland. If they allow the SNP to grow credibility how do they improve their popularity in Scotland where they desperately to reverse the current trend if they are regain the seats they will lose this time?

It's not, in Scotland. But it is for Labours interest in the UK as a whole because it gets them into government. And if Labour and the SNP work relatively amicably together then it provides an option for Labour in future general elections.

It seems that both Milliband and Sturgeon are busy painting themselves into corners so that any co-operation, even informal, means that one of them will sufffer a severe loss of credibility.

I think its increasingly likely that Labour will go it alone and run a minority government. Dare the SNP to vote against, or abstain, a budget with plenty of left wing measures. Eventually they'll fall out over Trident and Devo Max but by then I dont think Milliband will be too bothered if he needs to engineer a second election in about 18 months.

Labour have again ruled out a deal with the SNP and so it won't happen. The SNP will have to tread very carefully on what they oppose a Labour government on. If they are policies their former Labour voters support and they oppose Labour for political reasons they will soon lose their newly gained support.

I think Labour will be quite prepared to suffer the odd defeat with the SNP voting against them to show both English and Scottish voters what happens if you vote SNP. For English voters it shows them the govt isn't in hock to the SNP as it hasn't done dirty deals and sold out English interests. For the Scottish voter it would illustrate if you want a Labour govt the way to get it is vote Labour not SNP.

Labour has to keep the SNP at arms length so in the next election after this the charge from the Tories about Labour/SNP alliances holds no sway at all.

The effect of the fixed term parliament act on any minority govt, Labour or Tory, is going to be interesting. It might be impossible to get a majority in a no-confidence vote as don't you need 66% now not just a simple majority?

From my albeit sketchy knowledge of it I think the Act has 2 ways in which an election can be called early.

1 is through a Vote of No Confidence by the House of Commons in the same way it always has.

The other is where 2/3rds of the House of Commons directly calls for an early general Election. So there wouldn't have to be a vote of No Confidence but there'd have to be 2/3rds of the House wanting an Early General Election.

I suppose the first way is how a minority govt could be (potentially) booted out and the 2nd way is for a sitting govt to call for another election early.

If a government was effectively unable to pass legislation and put forward a motion for an early general election, could any Leader of the Opposition not support that motion? Turn down the opportunity of an election? They'd have blokes dressed as chickens following them about everywhere.

Apparently in other countries that have fixed term parliaments its not unusual for governments to table a motion of no confidence in itself and then abstain to make sure its passed.

Spot on. All the Act did really was take the power to call a General Election out of the sole hands of the PM and into the hands of the government. So the PM would at least have to have the approval of his own party in calling an early election, the other parties as you say would all HAVE to vote for an election.

A government can still be kicked out by a straight majority vote of No Confidence.

Having said that there's no way the SNP would vote against Labour in a No Confidence vote. It'd be suicide for the SNP. Nor would UKIP & the DUP vote against the Tories if the Tories were the main party in government.

That's only if they believe that FPTP has a future, the only party still clinging to that concept is the tory party.

Labour have spent near 20 years ignoring Scotland, it'll take more than five for any confidence to return

If Milliband becomes PM, what are the chances of him taking steps towards electoral reform? Plenty of stuff on devolution, decentralisation, reducing the voting age in Labour's manifesto. Nothing on FPTP or alternative voting systems.

No party has a mandate for changing the voting system as in 2011 we had a referendum and it was rejected. Pretty high turnout of 41% of which 62% voted to keep FPTP. A pity but even the Lib Dems won't got for it in the next parliament.

In other news the economy grew less than expected in the 1st 1/4 of this year continuing a trend:

Q1 2014 0.9%
Q2 2014 0.8%
Q3 2014 0.7%
Q4 2014 0.6%
Q1 2015 0.3%

Cameron's reaction? It is a risk to let Labour in to run the economy! On those figures !!!!

The LimpDems got suckered into that referendum, that's why they refused to back boundary changes.

Instead of offering AV asd the only alternative to FPTP, the question should have been: "Do you want to see an aternative to to FPTP?". If the answer had then been "yes", an electoral college should have been set up to debate the various alternatives of PR and a short-list offered to the public in a 2nd referendum.

Far from being dead, I think it is very much on the agenda again and given we've had recent experience of coalition government, I doubt it would be too difficult a sell this time around

It depends if people see PR as a system that [ialways[/i leads to a coalition government as I get the impression the vast majority don't think much of the coalition experience, even the Tories who benefited the most.

I think it would be a harder sell than ever to most of the electorate. The ones who would favour it would be those who would like to vote for the smaller parties without it being a wasted vote but they themselves are in a minority.

Apart from a major disaster (war etc), can you envisage a time in the future when one party will gain a workable majority?

Concensus government works in most European countries, there's no reason it couldn't be effectively sold to the UK electorate

As long as there is no written constitution, it will never happen. An executive only responsible to itself will ensure that as will the unelected, unaccountable power mongers of the aristocracy and big business.

Until parliament is answerable to the electorate and an independent body then the current situation will just continue to the detriment of all but to the huge benefit of the few.

The government is responsible to and answerable to parliament. We have a written constitution. It's called the law.

Labour are allowing the Tories to get away with their BS about how well the economy is doing. As my stockbroker wrote (these guys are not noted for their left-wing credentials!):
- People don't feel better off because they are not. GDP growth is on the back of a rapidly increasing immigrant population and GDP per capita is down
- they promised to extinguish the deficit in 5 years but have only halved it
- our deficit exceeds the criteria for EU membership
- we apparently now have the dubious honour of being the lowest wage economy in Europe outside Greece and Portugal.

If that's an economic miracle and long-term plan I'd hate to see what their idea of incompetent mismanagement is.

I would be more inclined to think we have the largest "wage " disparity in the EU and probably could the USA a run for it's money

on this one.

The fact that people vote to be ripped off is something truly bizarre yet come the election they will vote with their idiot heads on.

We live in interesting times.

Thank you for posting the figures that proved your ridiculous statement that 'the economy is not going to grow before the next election' a couple of years ago absolutely miles out. Clueless.

Starting to look like a Tory majority. Cameron outperformed Miliband on QT tonight and they had already taken a 5% poll lead. They are also concentrating their efforts just on the marginal they need. Can also see some major allegation / scandal; being leaked against Labour in the day(s) just before polling day.

Relatively speaking, Miliband got torn a new one tonight. I had expected Cameron to get the hardest time but he was pretty impressive. By far the best performer of the three, his answers were concise and as good as any politician has given in this campaign. Lots of straight answers avoided despite the best efforts of the audience - as is par for the course for any politician - but he did better than the others.

Miliband simply couldn't defend Labour's track record or their plans to borrow, and to deny they overspent up to 2010 was simply astounding. The audience was surprisingly hostile, he struggled to cope and it was only in his last 10 minutes he recovered a little ground. The phrase 'all mouth and no trousers' sprang to mind several times - a far cry from earlier debates when he largely basked in the knowledge the minor parties around him will need to come begging.

Clegg was his usual affable but slightly desperate self. I'm starting to wonder if he knows something we don't - that a Tory or Labour majority would see him back in a coalition, with all sides apparently ruling out an SNP deal. Could we even end up with another Tory-Lib Dem coalition?