Labour Reshuffle

Whilst struck down with the manflu, I saw that Iain Gray has re-shuffled his team. I confess that at first I thought that it was a hallucination - much like the time I was delirious with food poisoning and ended up thinking I was Gordon Brown, tottering around the house mumbling about how I was going to "sort out that bitch Cherie" - only to find that, no, this was real.

In a way, it resembles the old style Executive in that it has a plethora of senior posts. Though interestingly, the demands I seem to recall for a Minister for Economic Recovery - surely still quite relevant while the UK is still in recession - have translated into the Economy & Skills portfolio actually being absorbed by Andy Kerr's finance role. Perhaps Kerr and his Deputy, David Whitton, were under-occupied. Instead, we have a new Housing and Regeneration portfolio and one is forced to wonder what snappy title it will make way for next year when Labour finally realise that criticising a government for not paying attention to housing issues doesn't work if they're the first government since devolution to, you know, actually build new council houses. But given Labour's care and attention to the (now former) Economy and Skills portfolio, we must be wary of any notion from the Labour frontbench that housing has become a genuine priority, and should - for now - work from the basis that this is just a passing fad for Iain Gray and next year's reshuffle will see a Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Check Shirts appointed in place of this post.

Finance, Economy & Skills

Andy Kerr remains at the top here, with David Whitton as his Number 2, Lewis Macdonald still at Enterprise, Energy and Tourism and Charlie Gordon returning to the frontbench as Shadow Transport Minister, the post from which he resigned at the start of Wendy Alexander's troubles. A harbinger, perhaps?

Education

Charlie Gordon's successor and predecessor at Transport, Des McNulty, replaces Rhona Brankin who is stepping down, though will still be formulating policy. It's a significant promotion for Des, who will be leading the attack on Fiona Hyslop - who the opposition do seem to enjoy attacking and who has been derided as the "worst Education Minister ever" - a somewhat harsh assessment of a Cabinet Secretary who finally got around to abolishing tuition fees and who did not preside over any exam result fiasco unlike Sam Galbraith. Though, interestingly, he's now chosen to blame Hnry McLeish. But I digress. The rest of the support team remains as is: Ken McIntosh at Schools, Claire Baker at Further and Higher Education, Karen Whitefield at Children & Early Years. So with those three and Rhona Brankin still drafting the actual policies, it's not entirely clear what Des McNulty will be doing with his time.

Health & Wellbeing

A return to the front bench for Jackie Baillie, who was sacked when Iain Gray first took over. Richard Simpson remains at Public Health and Frank McAveety at Sport.

Housing and Regeneration

Cathy Jamieson takes over at Labour's primary focus for synthetic outrage over the coming year, in which her first task will be to choose between supporting a Thatcherite policy like Right to Buy, or supporting the SNP Government. Mary Mulligan remains Shadow Minister for Housing, which does muddy the job description waters somewhat.

Justice

Richard Baker stays (does he have dodgy photos of Iain Gray in his desk, or something?). Let me explain why this is a mistake: Kenny MacAskill was faced with the toughest decision a Justice Secretary could ever have faced, was placed in a no-win situation, made a choice which, whatever your feelings on the matter, did lead to a major outcry and almost an international incident, and despite being in a minority Government which was outnumbered and outvoted on this issue in the Chamber, he's still the Justice Secretary. This basically makes Richard Baker the Chris Iwelumo of politics and he too remains in situ. His new Community Safety Spokesman is James Kelly, who moves from the Whips' Office.

Rural Affairs and Environment

Sarah Boyack stays here, with Elaine Murray staying as Shadow Environment Minister, Karen Gillon staying at Rural Development (though with maternity leave and illness keeping her out of the loop for a large part of last year, this is, in effect, a new appointment). A new Climate Change portfolio is added (clearly Gray is not confident in Charlie Gordon speaking on this issue as Des McNulty did) with Cathy Craigie filling the role.

The others

Pauline McNeill stays at Culture and the Constitution, John Park loses his portfolio but remains in the Shadow Cabinet as the party's campaign manager, Michael McMahon becomes Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Local Government - thus creating a set of posts that map on to neither the Cabinet nor the Parliamentary Committee structure - and Paul Martin replaces him as Business Manager. David Stewart remains as Chief Whip, with Rhoda Grant and Cathy Craigie supporting him. And of course, Johann Lamont retains her Deputy Leader position.

So what can we say about this revised front bench? Not a lot. It's larger than ever, and despite that, Iain Gray's warm words for Wendy Alexander weren't matched by a job. This is particularly telling as at this stage in the last Holyrood cycle, John Swinney was brought back onto the SNP front bench as Finance Spokesman after a year as a Committee Convener having brought his Leadership of the Party to a close.

We can't trust the realignment of portfolios as a guide to the party's priorities, as the last 'priority' portfolio has been subsumed into Andy Kerr's post.

And there are few new faces (though it's taken Cathy Peattie and Cathie Craigie ten years to get this far), but that would be hard when the full team consists of more than half of the entire SPLP. That problem is further exacerbated when you look at how other figures are ruled out: there are 25 posts in total - 28 if you count the whips and 29 if you count Tom McCabe as the Labour representative on the SPCB - and a total of 46 Labour MSPs.

Wendy Alexander is apparently still frozen out, as is Jack McConnell. That reduces the pool to 44. Trish Godman as Deputy Presiding Officer is also ruled out. That's 43. Rhona Brankin has just stood down citing family reasons, so that's 42. Hugh Henry and Irene Oldfather are Conveners of key Committees - Public Audit and the European and External Relations Committees respectively, though that doesn't preclude Public Petitions Committee Convener Frank McAveety from being a frontbencher - so that's 40. Malcolm Chisholm has been pretty much blackballed since speaking out in favour of Kenny MacAskill over Lockerbie so that's 39. Margaret Curran wants to go to the House of Commons while George Foulkes is already in the House of Lords so that's 37. Duncan McNeil is Convener of the SPLP so a frontbench portfolio is probably out of the question, even though a Committee Convenership isn't. That's 36. Ill health precludes the possibility of Peter Peacock returning to the front bench, and that's probably true of Elaine Smith as well. That leaves just 34. So I can only imagine that Bill Butler, Helen Eadie, Patricia Ferguson, Marlyn Glen and Marilyn Livingstone are somewhat put out. And even then, at least Patricia Ferguson used to be a Minister and Marilyn Livingsone was the first SPLP Convener. That leaves just three figures - Butler, Eadie and Glen - out in the void.

That's the only thing we can tell: efficiency is supposed to be Labour's big thing but their team is far too large, covering more than half of the Parliamentary group and only a small handful of members with neither a position nor an obvious reason not to have one. It's also ridiculously sized when you realise that the smaller parties cope well enough with their 16 members apiece and the SNP produced a credible alternative government-in-waiting (we know this because it is no longer waiting) with just over half the number of MSPs available to Labour.

It's also particularly barking mad when you realise that the SNP have just one MSP more than Labour, have the 13 Parliamentary Liaison Officer posts to fill in addition to 16 Ministers, three Whips, a DPO, a number of Committee Conveners and a member of the SPCB, have three former Ministers on their benches but have seven MSPs - two more than Labour - on what could be called the waiting list.

The oversized Labour frontbench means that even if Iain Gray wanted to bring in new talent, there isn't any available to him as the people he does have are already in position. Perversely, therefore, he has to cut the number of posts and await the election. And of course, the fact that not all of these people will get something should he get to name a Government means that while he might be trying (and able) to please everyone now, sooner or later, he's going to have to piss someone off and he's leaving it too late. He's just deferring slightly awkward personnel decisions - which begs the question of how he'll handle the more important matters. Perhaps he should keep using the subjunctive to describe how he'd behave if he were FM.

Mev, p'tahk!

Well, this has got me off my sick bed: nominations for the Glasgow NE By-Election have closed and we have learned that Mev Brown is on the candidates' list. Here's his political CV up to now:

5 May 2005 - Westminster Election. Tory Candidate in Edinburgh East. He came fourth out of eight, with 4,093 votes (10.31%).

29 September 2005 - Livingston By-Election. Independent candidate. He came eighth out of ten, with 108 votes (0.37%).

10 November 2005 - Murrayfield By-Election (City of Edinburgh Council). UKIP candidate. He came eighth out of eight, behind even the Liberal candidate - and I mean Liberal Party candidate , as they had a candidate besides the LibDem - with just four votes (0.2%)

27 April 2006 - Moray By-Election. NHSFirst candidate. He came fifth out of fifth with a slightly more respectable 493 (1.8%) votes.

3 May 2007 - Holyrood Election. #1 on the NHS First List - having agreed an electoral tie-up with Scottish Voice which saw him drop his plan to stand in Lothian. They came thirteenth out of sixteen, with 1,955 votes (0.69%). He also stood in Airdrie & Shotts, where he came fifth out of five with 970 votes (3.57%).

4 June 2009 - European Election. #3 on the Jury Team List in Scotland. They came thirteenth out of thirteen with 6,257 votes (0.57%).

And that list doesn't convey the alleged attempted hook-up with the SSCUP (they knocked him back), his intervention on the scotsman.com comments section, his presence on policing forums asking for policies, the presence of his party mildly pissing off a genuine health campaigner whose candidacy for Coatbridge had been declared about a year in advance of the election, and two differing biography pages on his websites.

So with the Jury Team backing John Smeaton this time, Mev begins another stage in his quixotic journey through the footnotes of electoral history.

Incidentally, mev is Klingon for 'stop'. I'm not sure whether I want him to or not...

My tupp'orth on the BNP

Let me begin this post by saying that I rarely watch Question Time. I don't find anything out from it that I can't find out from the blogosphere, which, frankly, tends to put things far better. Spending an hour listening to politicians ignore questions from a studio audience and basically say what they were going to anyway - and have said often enough beforehand - is, quite frankly, some distance down my list of fun ways to spend a Thursday night in. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the choice were between gouging my own eyes out with a pair of matchsticks and watching QT, I'd ask whether the matchsticks were lit or not. So it was mostly out of morbid curiosity that I tuned in on Thursday night.

I needn't have bothered.

And the reason for that is that we didn't learn anything that we didn't otherwise know. The other parties hate the BNP. We knew this. Were one to analyse Nick Griffin's demeanour and opinions, one would conclude that he is the result of some sort of genetic splicing experiment involving the DNA of Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. With maybe some Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson thrown in just for the hell of it. Again, nothing new there.

Besides, looking at the reaction, it seems as though everyone saw what they wanted to see. Those already hostile to him saw a fascist bully out of his comfort zone, weakened by his smarter opponents (this was definitely true whenever Bonnie Greer spoke). Those already sympathetic saw a man victimised by the rest of the studio, David Dimbleby et al representing an Establishment bent on suppressing him. Those few undecideds saw a bunch of politicians squabbling and Griffin failing miserably to deal with any question put. Certainly the guys in my local, who you'd think would be the kind of people Griffin would speak to, were not impressed.

But for me, the rest of the panel, in their urge to kick the shit out of Griffin, missed the killer blow. He referred to a poll which suggested that three quarters of the public agree with the BNP's stance on immigration. Bonnie Greer snorted with derision, but no one thought to ask the question that would have felled him:

If so many people agree with you on immigration, why aren't you in Downing Street already?

And of course, none of the answers to that are good for Nick Griffin. Barring any paranoid rants about media suppression, there are three possible responses: first, the poll is bogus; second, there's about 70% of the population who might well agree with the BNP but find the whole party package so repugnant that they won't actually vote for it; third, that many people may well be unhappy about immigration, but to put it bluntly, they don't actually care that much in the grand scheme of things as they have other, more practical, more immediate things to worry about.

Those possibilities need not be mutually exclusive, but I suspect that Griffin himself will probably own up to the third, and possibly, to some degree, the second, given how much time he spent trying to assure us that because of him, the BNP was almost respectable. Of course, respectable parties don't get people frothing at the mouth to the extent that they're willing to riot outside a television station that invites them before the cameras, but that's by the by.

No, the BNP's speciality is going into communities that have been left behind, taken for granted by the other parties and left basically to rot, cut off from the main centres of power and left to feel that any vote is a wasted vote. So when the BNP come in, like the proverbial new broom, of course they're going to get noticed by people who, frankly, haven't been noticed by anyone else in years.

And I should know about that frustration: I spent a large chunk of my childhood on one of those council estates that had basically been left to fall apart. The sort of place where the BNP could very easily sneak in.

Except, at that time certainly, and even today, the BNP couldn't gain much traction as there was no immigrant community to play the locals off against. I must have been seven before I actually met someone who wasn't white.

That was Mr. Singh, who my Dad found a job with at the time. And unlike his previous job - where when the boss finally did get round to paying him, the wages consisted of a chicken breast, three tins of beans and a pair of size 10 boots - Dad actually brought cash money home from it. But he wasn't just treated like he'd joined Mr. Singh's business. No, we were all treated like we'd joined his family. My parents got an invite to his daughter's wedding; when Dad called to see him, I went too, and I'd be invited into the house and play with his younger kids, who were about my age.

So you can give me Mr. Singh's enterprise and hospitality over Griffin's vile scapegoating any day of the year.

But my point is this: the immigrant, ethnic minority population were a lifeline for my family, not a drain. Immigration and ethnic minorities had nothing to do with the grim situation we found ourselves in beforehand - and that's doubtless true of the communities where the BNP have been successful as well: the problems people face will go back decades and will now be shared by the same people that the BNP vilify.

That's the truth that the BNP don't want you to hear. The problems that those potential BNP voters face existed long before any wave of immigration, and they won't be solved by any wave of deportation either. The BNP's core principles won't make anyone's lives any better. And they know it just as well as anyone.

Which is why they concentrate on the broken fences, the burnt-out street lights, the pot holes, the litter and the dog shit. And before you know it, you've actually voted for them not because you're racist or because you fear immigration but because they're the only people who've ever done anything useful for you.

The moral of this post is this: QT didn't legitimise Nick Griffin or his viewpoints. If that's been done at all, it's been done by the thousands of people who have voted BNP. He's spent a week in the media spotlight, facing all sorts of criticism and responding with a melange of evasion and paranoia. He wanted to talk about the issues of the day on television (is racism not an issue of the day?), but even if he had, would his performance have assured people that he and his party could be trusted to sort out the postal strike, or get the economy out of recession. Judging by the fact that he's spent his week in the sun ranting about Churchill and re-writing the history books, I'd say he couldn't get the economy out of a paper bag.

But just as I don't trust him to sort out the problems I see, so those who voted BNP don't trust the other parties to sort out their problems. And that's the real nut to crack. You don't fight fascism by storming television stations that broadcast views you don't agree with (as Orwell might have said, the viewers looked from UAF to the BNP, from the BNP to UAF, and from UAF to the BNP again, but already it was impossible to tell which was which). You don't respond to fascist parties by sending bovver boys to break up their events - if you do that, you've sunk to their level and they have won.

You don't win the argument against them by flouncing off the stage either. As always, it's positive messages that win out, and in this case, real actions. If mainstream parties want to get these people who've voted BNP back, they need to treat them like mainstream communities, and deliver actual, concrete positive change to their lives in the way that they haven't done before.

Blanking the BNP hasn't worked - they've got enough elected officials to prove that. Screaming at them hasn't worked. Debating them can at least stop the rot, and show people that whoever does have the answers, the BNP certainly do not. But if you really want to beat the BNP, you do it by going directly to the people, and taking steps to make their lives better. We can all stand here and preach moral superiority all we want but if we've allowed whole communities to fall by the wayside, then we have no moral high ground at all as our action (or rather, inaction) has caused such suffering and desperation that people now turn to the likes of Nick Griffin.

And the longer we leave it, the longer we spend whinging about the BNP rather than actually tackling the poverty and frustrations of people who've been left on the margins, the harder it'll be to win them over, and the more embedded the BNP will become.

The reality is that the BNP will never offer solutions to people's actual problems. The mainstream parties can, but they have to start doing so. That's how we beat them.

In which Yousuf has a hissy fit

And I don't ever want to hear people like Will or others complain that Labour are negative when their campaign strategy has no positive reason to vote SNP at all.

Thus spake Yousuf Hamid, Labour activist, general good egg, and usually quite smart. Smarter than this, anyway.

Because here's the thing, as his party colleague Kez Dugdale said this week:

In fact, most of the leaflet is spent defending the SNP Government - talking about their justice and policing policies.

So in his rush for the high horse, Yousuf clearly hasn't been paying attention to what's actually going on around him. And the mad part is this: the SNP have been in Government for two and a half years - a full decade less than Labour - and yet has a record it feels confident that it can stand on. Indeed, the press release unveiling David Kerr is pretty positive in tone. So if Yousuf wants a positive reason to vote SNP, here's one of many: SNP MPs will do whatever they can to prevent any Government of any hue cutting the Scottish Budget and putting those benefits and that progress at risk. Labour - and Tory - MPs will spend this Parliament and the next one attempting to explain why their ham-fisted economic policies and scramble to defend bankers should jeopardise measures designed to ease the lives of ordinary, hard-pressed men, women and children.

But Labour are reduced to defending the indefensible and waving the Tory stick about. My, how Yousuf has grasped it!

Of course, if Labour's record were that good, we'd be hearing all about it, I'm sure. If what Yousuf says about the SNP not offering positive reasons to vote were right, there wouldn't be people in Glasgow North East - like the first voter David Kerr spoke to on the campaign trail - who have decided to vote for the SNP for the first time next month.

Instead, we have that old chestnut: "Vote SNP, Get Tory". It's nothing less than a lie: this is a By-Election and the loss of Glasgow North East will not even cost Gordon Brown his majority, let alone put David Cameron into Downing Street. The only David that could gain from an SNP vote is David Kerr. I assume that Yousuf knows this, but has chosen to peddle the fib anyway.

And of course, this leaflet comes in the week when the SNP announce a plan to reverse one of the Tories' most devastating policies - which Labour did nothing to counter-act - in Right to Buy: a savage embodiment of the "Me first!" culture that Thatcher promoted, in which people who benefited from affordable, social housing have been permitted to snatch that right away from others who might need it, increasing the snobbish stigma around rented properties, making affordable housing for others harder to get, and forcing them to take their chances in the private sector. Getting rid of that disgusting pillar of the Society of the Self is the single most progressive thing to happen in any part of the UK since the creation of the National Health Service. And it's been done by an SNP Government.

So when Yousuf whines that protecting affordable social housing isn't progressive - he's wrong.

When he says that a vote for David Kerr is a vote for David Cameron - he's wrong.

When he says that the SNP offer no positive reason to vote for them - he's wrong.

When he says that it's perfectly all right for Labour (and himself) to mislead people in their campaign of spite and negativity, as opposed to offering a defence of their twelve years in office, or some sort of hope for the future - he's wrong.

And if he thinks that Labour losing votes, losing seats and losing power is the fault of anyone other than the Labour Party, for taking so many people for granted and letting so many people down, people that Labour was founded to look out for - then he is very much wrong!

And with all that misinformation, this high horse that he's found? Well, it turns out it's an ass.

Conference Call: Revved Up and Ready to Go

Well, that was that. For me, I leave Inverness having handed in a membership form for the Electoral Reform Society and having acquired a Membership Card for the SNP Trade Union Group, so I'd chalk that up as successful on that level, at least.

As regards the Party, I'd say this was the sort of Conference needed around six months before an Election: no rows, no fiascos, just the membership coming together in a positive mood, ready for the campaign ahead.

Indeed, what the Press did attempt to inflate into a row - the debate over the Euro - really didn't justify the hyperbole it got. Think about the Tory discomfort over Lisbon, and the splits that ripped apart the Conservatives in the 1990s. Think about Tony Blair's supposed enthusiasm for the Single Currency being suppressed by Gordon Brown. Think about the 1975 Common Market Referendum, when collective responsibility was set aside and Cabinet members could campaign however they wished on the idea of whether or not the UK should even remain in the EEC.

So, really, the SNP position was pretty harmonious and this weekend, members were broadly happy to support the adoption of the Euro as an independent Scotland's currency. The only question was the 'how' and the 'when'. There again, Conference was generally happy to accept a measure of caution: that conditions have to be right (which makes sense) and that there has to be a referendum on the matter (which is also wise as the SNP wants a referendum on independence and wanted one on Lisbon, so to suddenly adopt the Euro without so much as a by-your-leave would, frankly, make not one jot of sense and I can envisage Labour press releases declaring that the Party that wants an independence vote wants to drag Scotland kicking and screaming into the Euro).

All in all, then, tails are up. There's no complacency, no dejection or desperation, just excitement and drive. Most of the people in the hall are straining at the leash for the campaign to come. If that energy can be sustained all the way through to next Spring, the SNP are on track to do very, very well indeed.

A Green Gain

As of yesterday, Councillor Debra Storr (one of the Aberdeenshire Four) followed in Martin Ford's footsteps and joined the Greens, though she'll remain in the Democratic Independent Group on the Council. Even so, that gives Aberdeenshire two Green Councillors out of ten nationwide, making Aberdeenshire something of a Green growth area, even if the new officials are coming from defections.

The thing that the LibDems need to be worried about is this: while it is obviously the Trump affair - and the LibDem group's handling of internal dissent surrounding the future of the Menie Estate (which is why they have only themselves to blame for this) - that triggered the move, this may well alert present LibDem supporters to the possibility that the party is less in tune with their values than they thought, and that the Greens are a more logical destination. Certainly as the LibDems professionalise and try to look more like a mainstream party of potential power than a pressure group for - and I apologise for the old stereotype here - beardy sandal-wearers, those who would be more inclined to tell Donald Trump where to stick his golf course, regardless of their facial hair situation or choice of footwear, will have difficulty recognising the LibDems at this time and may feel less than comfortable in the party.

And this is what they want to watch out for: although we can't work out how people might have voted under other circumstances, looking at the swing to the SNP in Dundee East in 2003, where there was neither a strong independent nor an SSP candidate, then looking at the swings against the SNP in the Regional Vote that year, it's not too great a leap to suggest that the SSP under Tommy Sheridan cost John Swinney's SNP about a quarter of the support it could otherwise have got.

If the Greens manage to take a quarter of potential LibDem support in Scotland, the party has a problem next year. For quickness, i've resorted to using Electoral Calculus, but using their present predictions for the Scottish consituencies, and subtracting a quarter of the projected LibDem vote, we see that potential LibDem gain Aberdeen South would stay Labour, while four other seats that the LibDems would hold on the present projection would be lost: West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine and Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk to the Tories, and Gordon and Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey to the SNP. So the defection of two Aberdeenshire Councillors has the potential - and I emphasise that potential is all it is - cost the LibDems their two Aberdeenshire MPs.

Then there's 2011. James is excited at the prospect of the North East once again sending a Green to Holyrood. That might not be the only one. If nothing else were to change, other than a loss of a quarter of the LibDem Regional Vote to the Greens (a Scotland-wide swing of approximately 2.8%), the results for the LibDems would be a major problem.

Firstly, that Green North East MSP would be a reality, at the expense of Alison McInnes, the LibDem North East MSP. But the Greens would end up with one MSP in each region, with differing results:

In East Central Scotland, it would be a straight swap: Hugh O'Donnell out, a Green in.

In Glasgow, the LibDem fall in support would cost Robert Brown his seat, which would be gained by the SNP.

The Greens would cost Labour a seat in the Highlands and Islands, as they did in 2003.

Lothian would, unless the Greens started to field constituency candidates in Edinburgh, be the only region to see no change on the notional figures.

the Greens would cost the Tories an MSP in Mid Scotland & Fife.

Labour would lose a notional Regional MSP in South Scotland.

And the Greens would replace Ross Finnie in West Central Scotland.

What this means is that the LibDems would have no MSPs at either Constituency or Regional level in three of the eight regions: East and West Central, and Glasgow. When you add to that to the gaps created where the LibDems have Constituency MSPs but no Regional ones (the Highlands, Lothian, Mid Scotland & Fife and the North East on this projection), that's a lot of constituencies without LibDem representation: in 54 out of 73 notional Constituencies, a LibDem vote will not result in any kind of LibDem MSP - that's exactly three times the number of Constituencies on the new boundaries that won't have access to a Liberal Democrat at Holyrood. By contrast, the Greens, on this supposition, would achieve Scotland-wide representation with one MSP in every Region, despite winning fewer votes and seats than the LibDems. That must surely be a galling notion for the Liberal Democrats.

What I'm trying to say is that a couple of Aberdeenshire Councillors falling out with the LibDems over Donald Trump might not seem like a big deal, but if the idea that current LibDem supporters have, as Martin Ford and Debra Storr feel, a more comfortable home in the Green Party, then the impact they have on the LibDems (and other parties) certainly is a big deal. And the onus is on the LibDems to find a way of keeping the supporters they currently have - before they too are lost.

UPDATE The above figures were worked out on a straight LD-Green swing of 2.8%. Ironically, one quarter of the present LibDem support in each individual region would be better for them, even though some of the swings would be far heavier. On a more localised analysis, Messrs, O'Donnell, Brown and Finnie would retain their seats, and the Greens would not gain an MSP in those regions, but they would cost Labour an MSP in both the Highlands and South Scotland, the Tories an MSP in Mid Scotland & Fife and would eject Alison McInnes. So the biggest casualties of a Green resurgence from LibDem votes could end up being Labour. But the threat to the LibDems is still very real, especially in the upcoming FPP election, even if the Greens aren't the winners from that!

Patrick Hannan RIP

A few months ago, I received a copy of Patrick Hannan's latest book, A Useful Fiction: Adventures in British Democracy. I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it, but was quite sure that a second edition wouldn't be far behind.

Unfortunately, BBC Wales reports that the work will be his last: he has died at the age of 68, after a short illness. At a time when Welsh politics is in a state of flux, with a new First Minister in the way, with a One Wales Coalition, and uncertainty over what precisely the future holds for the constitutional status of Wales, this is one bad, bad time to lose one of the country's most authoritative voices. But that is what Welsh journalists and Welsh audiences must now face up to - when politics is at its most chaotic, they're missing someone who could help them make sense of it all. Try and imagine a Scotland without Brian Taylor, and I think that's the broad equivalent of where Welsh political reporting is today.

Condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Vote Labour, Get Tory Policies

Jeff has flagged up the new Labour campaign: 'Vote SNP, Get Tory'. I've already taken a look at whether or not that's actually possible without Labour's own failing taking a share of the blame, and mentioned the obvious implication that Tories are bad.

Which is why it's a little bit rich coming from a Labour party that has spent twelve and a half years emulating Tory governments.

Labour abolished the fifty-year-long principle of free education by introducing tuition fees, then introduced variability to the fees a few years later.

They propagated the idea of a two-tier NHS with the Foundation hospital model and maintained the idea of the internal market using the buzzword 'choice' - which seemed to involve cutting services.

Their spin doctors used 9/11 as a 'take out the trash day', then a row between spin doctors ended up overshadowing a royal funeral.

They celebrated the relentless march of easy credit and unsustainable growth, which led to the Credit Crunch and saw entire banks fail.

They privatised the Air Traffic Control System, and waited for several fatal train crashes before doing anything about the Tories' botched privatisation of the rail network.

Even now, they're still looking for family silver to sell and the Channel Tunnel and the Tote are next for the clearout. Even student loans are getting sold off.

They made fraudulent expense claims - like Elliot Morley getting money for a mortgage he'd paid off ages ago - and only bothered to put right any of the damage when they got caught - a hallmark of the latter years of the Tory Government (say what you like about Alex Salmond's food bill... at least he bought the food in the first place!)

We had the image of John Prescott cavorting around his grace and favour home, and David Blunkett's indiscretion.

We had Anne McGuire presiding over the running down of Remploy, closing 28 sheltered employment sites at a cost of 2,000 jobs for disabled workers. That's not protecting vulnerable people, that's hitting those who can't fight back, and not even Thatcher stooped so low as to twist the knife there.

Then last but not least, they dragged us into the mess that was Iraq - and even fabricated a pretext for a naked war of aggression!

So Labour can crow all they want about the Tories, but their Government has been a carbon copy of a Tory Government. Voting Labour might not get you a Government run by the Tory Party, but since 1997, it's got you one practising Tory policies.

The Old Firm and the SPL

As my old friend Rob has noted, that old chestnut of the Old Firm heading for the English setup is back. Again. Now, in many ways this fact is probably the biggest argument in favour of letting Rangers and Celtic move as it means that the back pages of Scottish newspapers need never again be filled with such tedious handwringing. But on a more serious level, I'm not sure it's all it's cracked up to be:

Firstly, there's the idea of stadium capacity. Celtic can fit 60,000 into their ground and Rangers more than 50,000 but Newcastle United had the third-largest stadium capacity in last year's Premiership. They now have the largest ground in the Championship, so the lesson we can draw from Newcastle (and the lesson that the Glasgow teams would do well to remember) is that gate receipts don't determine the league table.

Plus which, the main rationale for the OF heading for England would be to compete better in Europe. Now, let's see: the English Premiership is dominated by the Big 4 - Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool - with Man City using their new found wealth to break into that rather cosy cartel. It's rather similar to the Old Firm's dominance of the SPL, except no one is as yet seriously advocating that the major teams up sticks and move to a European SuperLeague where they don't have to slum it at places like the Reebok Stadium. Anyway, the English League is allocated four Champions' League places and three Europa League places - so that's five of the seven European spots - including all the CL spots - filled before the Old Firm even get a sniff. That's just two left and the OF will face tough competition for them from Spurs, Aston Villa and even Everton in a good year. And if you think that the Old Firm have a snowball's chance in Hell against the Big 4/5 in a competitive environment, just bear in mind what happened to Celtic against Arsenal: they found themselves in the position that Wigan usually end up in against the major teams - with the notable exception of the Latics' 3-1 victory over Chelsea last month, of course. Now, the Wigan model is fine for clubs like, well, Wigan. Or Reading. Or Hull before Phil Brown's canoe plunged over the edge of Lunacy Falls. Or Burnley. It should not be a consideration for the Old Firm. Ever. A move South wouldn't be a ticket to a better Champions' League performance, but a passport to mid-table obscurity and a season that has fizzled out by March.

Then there's the effect on the other 10 SPL teams. With money tight - so tight that Aberdeen couldn't sign anyone of note this Summer - every penny counts and it's a question of bums on seats.

Pittodrie's highest attendance last season was against Rangers - 20,441 and more than 7,000 higher than the average. Tannadice's highest gate was the Helicopter Sunday title decider against Rangers: 14,077 and 5,000 greater than average. Rugby Park saw almost double the average gate turn up to see them play Rangers. The closest thing to a capacity crowd that the Falkirk Stadium saw last season was against Rangers. 4,000 greater than the average gate turned up at Fir Park when Rangers were away to Motherwell. Inverness CT's highest gate came against Celtic. And the closest thing to full that New Douglas Park got was the Rangers game. So out of ten non-OF clubs, seven saw their highest gates come against the Old Firm. Of the other three, two grounds saw their highest gates for the Edinburgh derby, while St. Mirren Park got its highest gate for the new stadium's official opening.

But the clubs can't open a new stadium every week, so with the exception of the Edinburgh derby, the implication is clear: Old Firm games = ticket sales. That's part of the reason that the SPL insists on teams playing each other at least three occasions. That means extra visits from the big boys, and extra gate receipts. That's something the other clubs might want to bear in mind before they start muttering 'Good riddance'. And that's before you ask just how easy it would be to market an Old Firm-free SPL for TV rights. You think the Sky/ESPN deal was crap? Enjoy your slot on BBC Alba, kicking off at 3:15 on a Sunday, with the second half clashing with the main Super Sunday fixture on Sky.

Then there's the old chestnut that the Old Firm hoover up the talent from the other clubs, particularly Hearts and Hibs. Except that since the 2008 Summer transfer window, only two players have gone to Glasgow from another SPL club: Willo Flood - who was on loan to Dundee United from Cardiff anyway - and Lukasz Zaluska. Hibs lost as many players to Berwick Rangers in the last transfer window alone as the entire SPL-10 did to Celtic and Rangers in the last two combined. Right now, the Championship is the main destination for players - if they're lucky - and that'll still be the case wherever the Old Firm play.

And as for the Old Firm? Well, as Rob points out, they wouldn't be wise to buy the likes of Novo or Flood and would have to set their sights a little higher. Unfortunately, such players are the best they can afford. Celtic are treading water and Rangers are still in debt, and while they'd get more TV money in the Premiership, that would be offset by the loss of European income in the time it took to assemble a squad that could compete for a European place, and even then, they'd still be outgunned by the Big 5. There'd be a gulf between what they needed and what they could get, and their only hope would be to emulate Steve Bruce's scouting network and poach someone from Peru or El Salvador.

Then there's the famous 'Welsh Precedent' or 'Liechtenstein Principle'. What the latter overlooks is that Lichtenstein doesn't even have a league of its own - only a cup, which is nearly always won by FC Vaduz, who got relegated from the Swiss top flight last season. Even the Welsh Precedent overlooks the fact that the modern Welsh setup was put in place a century after its English counterpart, so UEFA hasn't as yet had to deal with a club quitting their existing national set up for someone else's - usually, the reverse is true. But with the Welsh Premier League now running, how has playing in England been for those who stayed behind?

Cardiff and Swansea have done OK out of things: the former is well established in the Championship - and can poach a number of SPL players - but the Premiership remains just tantalisingly out of reach. Swansea are in the Championship and are doing OK for themselves, albeit missing Roberto Martinez. As for the others, Wrexham are now in the Conference, and are lucky to remain in existence after a turbulent couple of years off the pitch. Newport County are plying their trade in the Conference South, Colwyn Bay have eschewed the Welsh League for the glitz and glamour of ties against the likes of Chorley, Bamber Bridge and Leigh Genesis in the footballing hothouse that is the Unibond First Division North. Merthyr Tydfil, meanwhile, are rooted to the bottom of the Southern Premier League, and have been in administration for the last four months. The Old Firm are likely to do better than even Cardiff and Swansea, but should remember that England is not necessarily the land of milk and honey.

Then the Welsh teams who formed the Premier League haven't had life easy in Europe either. In fact, in the last five years, only three teams have ever made it beyond their first tie and no team has played more than two. Scottish teams take note: even if UEFA lets Scotland keep the co-efficient points that the Old Firm have accumulated on the others' behalf - despite Rangers losing to Kaunas and Celtic to Artmedia Bratislava - a slide down the rankings is surely inevitable. After all, only one non-Old Firm team has played more than one tie this season: Motherwell (who, funnily enough, beat Llanelli) - and they only got in because of the Fair Play rules, and benefited from being placed in the First Qualifying Round against teams primarily from leagues of - how can I put this? - a weaker reputation in European football. Imagine Hearts filling Rangers' place in the Champions' League Group stage - in Pot 4, probably against Man United, CSKA Moscow and Besiktas (based on Olympiakos replacing Rangers in Pot 2, and Wolfsburg replacing them in Pot 3). Imagine Aberdeen's Champions' League Qualifier against Panathinaikos. Even if they beat them, can you imagine Aberdeen up against Arsenal? Even if Dundee United and Hibs got something together - and Hibs' record in the old Intertoto Cup was less than stellar, remember - the likelihood is that Scotland would be sliding down the UEFA Club Rankings faster than you could say "national disgrace".

And of course, that's predicated on the Old Firm's points staying in Scotland. As things stand,
for the next two seasons, Scotland will have two teams in the Champions' League Third Qualifying Round, then three teams in the Europa League qualifiers, coming in in the Second, Third and Fourth Rounds. Without the Old Firm's points, Scotland's entitlement dwindles to a team in the Second Qualifying Round of the Champions' League, and three teams in the Europa League: one definitely in the Second Qualifying Round (where Falkirk got knocked out), one definitely in the First, and one in either depending on whether or not UEFA had to award a special place in the Group Stage to the winner of the previous season's Europa League. While comparisons with the League of Ireland may seem unfounded when you look at the health and attendance of clubs there, that's exactly the same position that the Irish were in this year when it comes to European football.

Basically, for European football, the Old Firm and the SPL need each other. Full stop. Without one, the other can't make real inroads into Europe.

And even if you disregard the absence of European cash, the change to the Old Firm's balance sheets by defecting to the Premiership wouldn't translate into anything useful, and the loss of the Old Firm would do massive financial harm to a League that needs every revenue stream it could currently get.

The Old Firm still wouldn't get players of the required calibre, and their departure wouldn't stem the flow of players out of the other clubs. Right now, the Old Firm benefit from being big fish in a small-ish pond. Certainly they benefit more from that than they would from competing for ninth place with the likes of Fulham, Sunderland and Wigan.

Even in England, 18 Premiership teams might benefit from extra gate receipts when the Old Firm come to town, but to make way for Rangers and Celtic, Premiership status would have to be withheld to others - possibly one extra team relegated and one fewer team promoted from the Championship. Can you imagine being in 17th place in the Premiership that year, booted out of the League solely to make way for a pair of Glaswegian cash cows? Can you imagine being second in the Championship, and losing a play-off you wouldn't even have to play under normal circumstances, or being sixth and being denied a play-off place that would, ordinarily, be yours? And then there'd be the ripple effect down the English pyramid, as clubs had to make way for others knocked down because of changes at the top? Imagine supporting a team who would lose League status because of this. Even if you implemented Phil Gartside's proposed Premiership 2, that would have the same impact as the SPL 2 proposed for Scotland. It would still be a side-show, and miss the point of why the top flight teams broke away in the first place.

No. This would represent a bit of extra cash for the Old Firm that wouldn't do much good in the Premiership transfer market so would be counter-productive in terms of European ambition, and a few extra gate receipts for the lucky teams. But the damage it would do to so many clubs, in Scotland and in England, would be immense. It's not worth it.

The Old Firm have to stay. For now, at least. Even if that means a few more years of those turgid newspaper headlines.

The Sunday Whip

Parliament has now gentle eased into recess, with a broadly consensual approach, save for the now regular education policy bunfight.

Anyway. Wednesday was quiet: the only substantive business was a report by the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee on rural housing, called, imaginatively enough, Rural Housing. Once this was noted, MSPs waved through a decision to put the Local Government & Communities Committee in charge of the Home Owner and Debtor Protection (Scotland) Bill and agreed the Summer recess dates for next year.

Thursday was, of course, different, and seven MSPs were absent: Tory Finance Spokesman Derek Brownlee (South of Scotland), Labour's Shadow Finance Secretary Andy Kerr (East Kilbride - and should the Government be worried that two Opposition finance spokespeople were absent at the same time?), Marilyn Livingstone (Lab, Kirkcaldy), Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead (Moray), Margo MacDonald (Ind, Lothians), Hugh O'Donnell (LD, Central Scotland) and Elizabeth Smith (Con, Mid Scotland & Fife).

First came the Labour motion on School Buildings. The SNP amendment fell by 75 (everyone but the SNP) to 46, the Tory amendment passed by 104 (SNP/Lab/Con) to 17 (LD/Green) and the LibDem amendment fell by 62 (SNP/Con/Green) to 59 (Lab/LD). The amended motion passed by 58 (Lab/Con) votes to 48 (SNP/Green) with 15 LibDem abstentions:

That the Parliament notes with concern that the Scottish Futures Trust has yet to fund a single new school building in Scotland despite the 2009 School Estates Statistics revealing that around 150,000 pupils remain in schools classified as being in poor or bad condition; is dismayed that, after more than two years, the SNP government has identified only 14 schools to be built under its first school building programme, that none of these 14 schools will be open to pupils in this parliamentary term and only 55 will be built in total by 2018; further believes that the SNP government's claims on the number of schools that it has commissioned are unsustainable given that its own School Estates Statistics reveal that a majority of schools built or substantially refurbished in the last two financial years were legacy PPP projects, and further believes that it is hypocritical for ministers to criticise PPP schools while praising them at their official opening and that the SNP's record in government is falling far short of its 2007 election manifesto pledge to "match the current school building programme brick for brick, and offer an alternative funding mechanism through the Scottish Futures Trust", and believes that the school building programme should be funded so as to deliver best value for money and that all sources of finance, including those in the private sector, should be considered.

Then came the Labour motion on Volunteering. A LibDem amendment fell by 104 (SNP/Lab/Con) to 17, but the motion passed without further quibbling:

That the Parliament recognises and celebrates the role of the voluntary sector and volunteers across Scotland in supporting individuals, families and communities and in shaping and delivering services locally; notes the excellent work of volunteering organisations in encouraging volunteering through offering training and volunteering placements and particularly in reaching out to those who might not otherwise have the chance to volunteer; agrees, given the opportunity that volunteering provides to develop skills and build confidence, that, in this economic recession, volunteering organisations should be given adequate resources to allow them to do that important work, and further agrees that innovative organisations that create structured volunteering placements for young people, such as ProjectScotland, should be recognised and supported by the Scottish Government.

Following that, a Government motion on Civil Justice, along with amendments from Labour and the Tories, passed without dissent:

That the Parliament welcomes the Report of the Scottish Civil Courts Review conducted under the chairmanship of the Lord Justice Clerk and the reports of the Administrative Justice Steering Group conducted under the chairmanship of Lord Philip; looks forward to the report of final appellate jurisdiction in preparation by Professor Neil Walker, and believes that, following a full and wide consultation, the people of Scotland deserve a reformed and modernised civil justice system that is fit for purpose in the 21st century, which is founded on the principle of ensuring access to justice and that reforms must be driven by this as well as by efficiency in the justice system.

Finally, MSPs waved through the Health Board Elections (Scotland) Regulations 2009. And for the record, the regulations state that NHS Fife will have 25 members on its Board: 12 appointed, 12 elected, and one Councillor. Dumfries and Galloway will have 21: 10 appointed, 10 elected and one Councillor.

So there you have it. No more whippage now for a couple of weeks, though I daresay I'll be issuing a couple of missives from Inverness next week.

The Return of the Tory Stick

"Labour's campaign – Vote SNP, Get Tory – will put this issue centre stage between now and the general election."

Thus spake Jim Murphy, who bears a striking resemblance to the villain Sokar in Stargate SG-1:



But leaving his potential Goa'uld lineage aside, this is yet more tosh from Labour.

Firstly, it's the old negativity. If that's the Labour message, where's the celebration of their record? Where's the promises for the Parliamentary term to come? Nowhere. Instead, the Labour tactic is "Let's slag off as many rival parties as we can because we just don't have anything positive to offer anymore". The Tories looking like a Government? Slag them off. The SNP doing well in the polls? Make it look like they're closet Tories. Make no mistake, folks, this lot would slate the Keep Clackmannanshire Smiling Party if they thought it would get them anywhere.

So it's a mark of how desperate Labour are.

But is it accurate? Well, for those wondering how many Constituencies there are where a straight Labour-SNP swing could let a Tory candidate in, the answer is just three: Dumfries & Galloway, East Renfrewshire (so you can see why this line of attack might have added piquancy for Jim Murphy) and Stirling. So unless Labour are only campaigning in three constituencies, for most voters, the line is a bald-faced lie: even in other seats where the Tories came second in 2005, the Labour-SNP swing required for Labour to lose the seat to anyone would see the SNP overtake the Tories.

And even in those three, if there is a straight Labour-SNP swing, you can hardly blame the SNP for, you know, trying to win votes like political parties are supposed to. No, blame - if blame has to be allocated at all - should go squarely to Labour for disappointing their constituents and the country to the extent that they're willing to vote for someone else.

Then there's the possibility that, in the event of a Hung Parliament, SNP MPs may well support the Tories on issues where they do - or can agree - and gain concessions on others. Like the Tories do in Holyrood, come to think of it, and it's an approach that's given them extra clout, extra credibility and an element of kudos as opposed to the approach favoured by Labour which involves taking their ball home. And even on issues where the two parties don't agree, the Tory apporach contrasts favourably to Labour's: for example, the Tories in Holyrood disagreed with the SNP over Lockerbie, but they had an alternative approach and a principled reason. Labour in Holyrood kept hitching the issue to who is - and who could be - in power. They used the Lockerbie Bombing as a vehicle for political point-scoring.

So the SNP have a good model to follow. But for it to work, we need to reach a situation where Tory MPs and SNP MPs can together (and only together) form a working majority. By my quick reckoning, for that to happen, Labour would probably have to lose more seats than are actually available to the SNP. And, as I said before, if Labour are losing seats to anyone, that's not the SNP's fault for winning some of them. It's Labour's fault for letting so many people down that they're willing to eject them... even to the extent of voting Tory.

This blog has no time for David Cameron, and is not overly enthused at either the prospect of more Tory MPs or a Tory Government, but is exasperated with Labour. Indeed, I was exasperated enough to quit Labour for the SNP. So if people are more willing to support the Tories than Labour, that's merely a mark of how low Labour have sunk. And their petty, childish egg-throwing (coupled with a blatant lie) in lieu of a positive defence of their record or promotion of future policies only serves to compound their indignity.

To put it bluntly, if they can't think of a reason to stay in office other than the fact that they're not the other guy, then they should piss off and let people who do have ideas put them into practice.

The Rise of the Teflon Tories

So, the Tory Conference has been and gone. In many ways, this should have been billed as a complete disaster: the Irish Yes to Lisbon put the spotlight back on Tory policy as regards the treaty: with the prospect of the entire Union completing ratification before the UK Election now very real, how would a Cameron Premiership deal with a fait accompli?

Of course, this then led to an element of strain on those old fissures that caused the Tories such pain: that ripped the Major Government apart, that drove the Hague Tories to obsession and irrelevance, that saw Tory members elect the bland, uncharismatic, Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith as Leader rather than the popular, but pro-Europe Kenneth Clarke.

And an appearance at Conference by some of the Tories less pleasant allies in the ECR Group in Parliament really didn't help matters (though it's telling that by forming allies with such men as Michal Kaminski, it's the Tories who lose credibility: a couple of years ago pundits would have wondered why Kaminski was touching the Conservatives with a bargepole). Rather, it led to justifiable questions about the Tories 'compassionate' credentials.

Then we had Tory press men issuing 'clarifications' of policy. And Chris Grayling inadvertently deriding David Cameron's appointment of General Sir Richard Dannatt as a defence policy advisor as a stunt, in the mistaken belief that it was Gordon Brown who had signed the man up. Plus which, I'm still struggling to see where the beef is: around half a year is left before the election and we have nothing but the broadest of brush strokes to paint a picture of Tory Britain. Yet no one is asking them the tough questions.

(In fact, from what I can tell, no one is asking them any questions except the Labour Party, who are only doing so to deflect questions about their record and their platform. We're so close to polling day, and we still have nothing but the vaguest, airiest slogans, namechecks and buzzwords to tell us just what the two main prospective post-election governments of the UK will seek to do with power. Why has that been allowed to happen?)

And to top it all, the conference tracker poll by YouGov saw the Tory lead down to nine points - a four-point fall in just 24 hours!

So this could have been described as a shambolic week for the Tories, and it might have suggested that the caution they claim to be exercising is 100% justified. It's not over yet. They haven't won yet. David Cameron is not Prime Minister yet.

Except.

Contrast this with Labour's week, where they didn't do too badly - indeed, their week went better than expected, only for it to be ripped to pieces by The Sun. What should have been a good press, and the start of the fightback became another PR disaster and another nail in the coffin.

For the Tories, the reverse is true.

They've sidestepped the Europe question for now, and the Czech President appears to have another delaying tactic up his sleeve. The alliance with homophobes and fascists seems to be sinking once again without trace, mostly because it's European politics and, well, much as I hate to admit it, even fewer people care about that than about domestic politics. The clarification has moved on, and the story about Sir Richard has become just that - Chris Grayling's role is diminishing. And let's face it, a nine-point lead is never a disaster: this is like when a five-point Scottish opinion poll lead was described a "reality check for the SNP" by the Scotsman, though the Tories might wish to bear in mind what the outcome of that particular election was, but in any case, the final tracker is not yet out.

So they've got away with it. Vulnerability after vulnerability after vulnerability, displayed to the general public, the media and the Tories' political opponents, yet they've got away it.

And that is why, I think, we can forget the Labour fightback, and even the Hung Parliament scenario that the SNP, LibDems, and everyone else longed for is now receding into the distance. These are the Teflon Tories.

However hard they tried to make it for themselves, they got an easy ride. Compare and contrast with Labour, how every attempt at revival fails and they end up ever closer to electoral armageddon. Similarly, compare with Labour in the run-up to the General Election, and the immediate spell afterwards, when they were riding along on the crest of a wave.

As with Labour then, so with the UK Tories now. I hate to say it, but regardless of their protestations, there's an air of invincibility about them: if anything can take them down, it only does so slightly, and it doesn't keep them down for long.

No, this should have been somewhere on the Conference scale between a fiasco and disaster, but they are still on the front foot and the only thing that could put their status as front-runner in jeopardy is if Labour ditch Gordon Brown and a new Labour Leader shakes things up. And even then, the Tories would probably still be the largest party.

So despite the potential row over Europe, they're solid. Despite the raised eyebrows over their unseemly allies, they're solid. Despite the wooly, back-of-a-fag-packet policies, they're solid. And despite David Cameron not tipping off a party spokesman in a major Frontbench role about a key appointment (looks like 'sofa-style' Government will be with is for a few more years yet), they're solid.

The Tories can have a week like that, and still come out looking good. That road to a Tory government I talked about appears not to have any turnoffs.

The Sunday Whip

Well, this was one easy week for everyone: everything - and I mean everything - passed without dissent.

On Wednesday, MSPs noted the 7th Paper by the Economy, Energy & Tourism Committee: Determining and delivering on Scotland's energy future, agreed to suspend Rule 13.7.4 of the Standing Orders for the following day, so that Johann Lamont could stand in for Iain Gray at FMQs, and passed the Mutual Recognition of Criminal Financial Penalties in the European Union (Scotland) Order 2009.

On Thursday, the Local Government & Communities Committee's 12th Report, Equal Pay in Local Government got its day in the Chamber, then discussed the Government motion on the role of colleges in the economic recovery. Labour, Tory and LibDem amendments were all moved and accepted, so the motion which passed unanimously read as follows:

That the Parliament recognises that Scotland's colleges are central to the Scottish Government's plans for tackling the recession and preparing for economic recovery; agrees that through the provision of flexible, locally relevant skills and training they are helping individuals and employers build for recovery; welcomes the fact that, as a result and working in partnership with other agencies, colleges are helping the communities that they serve to adapt to changed economic circumstances; notes the particular support that colleges provide to young people, and notes the continued financial support that the sector receives from the Scottish Government; notes the contribution that colleges are making in further developing links with industry that can help deliver the 7,800 apprenticeships promised in the 2009-10 budget; recognises the concerns that exist regarding the ability of colleges to fully accommodate the increase in applicants, including the 2009 Christmas school leavers, and to cope with pressures on childcare and hardship funds, and calls on the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning to report to the Parliament on how she intends to address these concerns; urges the Scottish Government to encourage the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, in allocating funds to the sector, to recognise the particular needs of colleges in rural areas and calls on the Scottish Government to review the current system of discretionary childcare funding, to work closely with the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council to develop articulation routes between further and higher education, helping to address problems that students face during transition and enhancing and developing links between the sectors, and, in recognising the valuable role of Scotland's colleges in skills development, to bring the revised skills strategy before the Parliament to allow detailed debate of its recommendations.

So that was that. Next week sees the Rural Affairs & Environment Committee get an afternoon in the spotlight on Wednesday, Labour business on Thursday morning and a Government debate on Civil Justice on Thursday afternoon.

There Have Been Better Springboards

It could have been OK. Not great, but OK. The only Leadership chatter surrounded Rhodri Morgan, the Welsh First Minister who has confirmed his retirement (meaning that as of December, Alex Salmond will be the longest-serving of the First Ministers). There were some attempts to convince us that there was life in the party yet - and I suspect that some people in the hall believed it. The speeches weren't bad (though Brown could have done without the BBC cameras apparently picking up the yawning guide dog and the woman doing her knitting during the PM's speech), and there was even some evidence of policy - a welcome change from the petty, personality politics that Labour has made its own in recent years (though I accept that it's hard to scrutinise Tory policies when there don't, as yet, appear to be any).

But then, this happened:


Now, obviously, Governments are at the mercy of events, particularly Governments that have managed to notch up twelve years' worth of public grievance and exasperation. But it's how you react to them that counts, and when the battle is essentially a squabble with (and within) the Fourth Estate, you need to deploy the spin, guile and media-savvy ways for which Labour have hitherto been known. You certainly don't behave like this to a prominent reporter for one of The Sun's sister companies:


Of course, in Brown's case, we can almost forgive him the strop. He is known to have a temper, he can get tribal with the best (or worst) of them, and I don't disagree with his suggestion that Adam Boulton and his colleagues are turning from political reporters into political campaigners. But you'd think someone like the First Secretary of State would still keep his charm and wits about him. Not so:


Nor do you make it look like The Sun's decision has got to you, particularly when you're - quite reasonably - trying to play it down. You certainly don't allow one of your major supporters, and the frontman of a massive trade union like Unite head out to the platform and not only put on a major show of childish petulance, but actually implicitly compare the paper's reporting of the Government to the Hillsborough Disaster:


But of course, that's what Labour did. They have decided to shoot the messenger, which is particularly sad when you realise just how pally the Government has tried to be with the Murdoch press since 1997 - even managing to get The Times on board in 2001. Yet now that The Sun has turned against Labour - and it was always going to happen given how uneasily the friendship sat with the paper at times - they've hit back venomously. Which, in turn, has given the paper all the reason it needed to print photos like this:


As I said, this was never going to be a brilliant Conference for Labour, but they were doing OK. The Sun lobbing a hand grenade into proceedings was always going to throw things into confusion, but as always, it's the reaction that gets scrutinised more heavily. And the Labour reaction looks like rage that a paper owned by someone else should dare to support someone other than Labour. It's hubris like that which has been the major problem for Labour in recent years and they should learn what comes after hubris, particularly with six months (give or take a couple of weeks) to the General Election.

Labour's reaction to The Sun's defection has made one thing blatantly obvious: rather than marking a potential turnaround, this Conference has become yet another milestone on the road to a Tory Government. From that, one other thing is clear:

Only a major Tory cock-up can change things now.