OK then, since you asked...

I was surprised that so many of you were asking about the legal position with dodgy donations, the Electoral Commission and PPERA. I wonder what you lot did at law school!

I would credit a legal genius of my ken with the groundwork here, but he's a secret legal genius and only appears when we shine the shark symbol onto the clouds...

There was speculation in the papers at the weekend that the Electoral Commission will say that because they have let others off they will let Wendy off as well - a kind of buy one whitewash, get another one free policy.

There's a problem with this, and it comes from the duty of the constabulary to act as constables.
Section 17 of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 -

it shall be the duty of the constables of a police force
(b) where an offence has been committed (whether within or outwith the police area for which the police force is maintained) to take all such lawful measures, and make such reports to the appropriate prosecutor, as may be necessary for the purpose of bringing the offender with all due speed to justice;

That's a clear duty and burden upon Scottish police officers to investigate crimes and bring the criminals to justice. Since the actors in this Labour farce have admitted their criminality, a beginning has been made.

There is no scope for the Electoral Commission to get in the way of police officers doing their jobs, either. The individual constables can be directed by their chief constable who can in turn be directed by the appropriate prosecutor or by the Sheriff Principal:

(3) In directing the constables of a police force in the performance of their functions the appropriate chief constable shall comply with all lawful instructions (whether general or special) which he may receive—
(b) from the sheriff principal having jurisdiction in the place:
Provided that in relation to the investigation of offences the chief constable shall comply with such lawful instructions as he may receive from the appropriate prosecutor.
In this subsection sheriff principal does not include a sheriff.

No Electoral Commission mentioned. I understand and fully support the position taken by the Chief Constables of Strathclyde and Lothian & Borders not to begin an investigation until the Electoral Commission has finished theirs - no point in them falling over each other - but there is nothing which would allow the Electoral Commission to tell police officers what to do nor, indeed, allow the constables to fail to investigate the crime and bring the offenders speedily to justice.

The previous performance of the Electoral Commission has no relevance here, nor would it be reflected in the decision of the Procurator Fiscal about whether or not to prosecute. In fact, there was a case a while back where it was shown that the practices of the Procurator Fiscal cannot be held to be held to be a predictive measure of what should be expected of the Fiscal's future decisions.

If my memory serves me right (and if the secret legal genius has not yet lost his memory), then those of you who take some interest in the game we know as fitba may recall a case where a celebrated bewhiskered QC defended a gentleman who had been known to pull on the colours of the QC's favourite soccer team and also the white of the nation to the south with the three one-eyed leopards on its shirt.

This fine, respected and upstanding king of the karaoke member of the legal profession sought a bit of leverage for his case and attempted to ascertain the extent to which the Procurator Fiscal had, in the past, sought a prosecution against a footballer for conduct on the field of play.

Alas and alack for the good Queen's Counsel, his rapier was blunted on the unforgiving wall of the Procurator Fiscal's right to decide which cases she or he brought to court without those decisions being used against him or her at a later date.

In other words, he got telt 'no'.

Of course, we may both be massively wrong, but that wouldn't be like either of us.

So there ye have it - if there's been a crime the constabulary have a duty to investigate, the Electoral Commission cannot require them not to, and the fact that the Electoral Commission were spineless in past cases in England will not be a defence to the charge in a court in Scotland.

Now here's your homework - if the Electoral Commission found evidence that a crime had been committed (something like someone saying "there's been a breach of the law) and did not report it to the police or tried to deter the police from investigating a crime which had been committed, would the Electoral Commission be guilty of a crime?

Answers should be written on the back of a fifty-guinea note and sent to me at the usual address.

Ach Wendy - stop it!

Spin doctor resigns because he can't work with her, another one goes because he couldn't be civil in public, one coming in made it clear who he thought were the real politicians in Scotland (and Wendy wasn't among them), another had the job and then never - gone before he got here, then there was her dodgy donors, obfuscation, misdirection, discombobulation, inarticulation, disingenuity, and Trappist vow of silence...

Now her election agent has joined the Matthew Marr club.

Stop it Wendy - it's not even funny anymore.

Well, maybe a wee bit.

Nick Clegg - A True Lib Dem

I've been terribly excited reading an interview with new Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

I just wanted to share a quote with you:

"I became a liberal not in a library, but over the dinner table, in the car, in the park, in conversation with my mum,"

If anyone can throw some light on the meaning of this, I'll be awfy interested to hear it.

Labour admits SNP policies are right

In a rare moment of honesty, Labour's leader has admitted that the SNP is right to seek to abolish the Council Tax.

To be fair, it's Labour's leader on Edinburgh City Council, Ewan Aitken, who said

if the SNP deliver on actually getting rid of the Council Tax as opposed to just freezing it … then they will win the next election by a mile.

I take it we'll see him supporting the abolition of the Council Tax, now that we know he knows it's the right thing to do?

Private Fraser - all doomed

Murdo Fraser MSP, Annabel Goldie's pet deputy in Parliament has decided to hand out to Alex Salmond MSP and MP, First Minister of this parish, a sound thrashing on the grounds that Private Fraser thinks Salmond doesn't vote often enough in the Parliament in London.

Leaving aside how little of an MP's job involves voting (see the public whip website - linked from this marvellous website), let's have a look at voting records in Westminster. Remembering that the SNP MPs do not vote on matters which do not impact on Scotland, Salmond's record since the 2005 General Election doesn't seem too bad:

134 votes out of 598, 22.4% - Alex Salmond SNP
158 votes out of 598, 26.4% - David Cameron - Conservative
259 votes out of 598, 43.3% - David Mundell - Conservative
100 votes out of 598, 16.7% - Gordon Brown - Labour

Should Cameron and Mundell resign with immediate effect?

Runners and Riders

Labour's leadership election is now expected to start in early May, so let's have a look at the runners and riders - which are runners and which are riders you can decide for yourself:

Well, OK, non-runners first - Wendy Alexander and Jack McConnell are out, one injured and one retired.

Charlie Gordon - well, he's wounded and he's in trouble with the authorities, he'll be getting his collar felt at some point and it looks like his political career is over (which is a pity because he's one of the best in the Labour group and would have made a decent leader except for his casual disregard for the law, in common with many other Labour party representatives) - but he's a streetfighter and fairly smart, so don't write him off, Pat Lally may not be the only Lazarus in Glasgow Labour.

Steven Purcell - there has been some speculation that Purcell will be slotted in to take over as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Why would he? The salary he gets as leader of Glasgow Council isn't far behind the salary of an MSP; as leader of a large council he has the power and the opportunity to make a difference to people's lives fairly easily and very quickly; there's going to be years of pain in the Labour group in Parliament that you wouldn't choose to be part of unless you were a masochist; and the group of Labour MSPs is a snake pit of competing interests.

Jackie Baillie - has a *ahem* direct approach to politics and is used to defending the indefensible (she supports keeping nuclear weapons in Scotland, for example), so she'd fit in fine trying to defend Labour's incompetence in Parliament. Her difficulty is that she has been too closely associated with Alexander's failures; she was part of the "hokey-cokey" when Henry McLeish stepped down, and she's been the one fronting up the "unintentional criminality" defence. I'm not sure that can be shrugged off.

Iain Gray - was playing a good game of nudging Alexander aside and positioning himself to take over until the donor scandals swept him aside. He's invisible now and will have to make up some ground, but he will have the support of the London bunch, including Brown and Darling - whether that's an advantage or not we'll have to wait and see.

Tom McCabe - rumour has it that he still harbours ambitions of heading to London. He certainly doesn't seem interested in what is going on in Edinburgh, he's been invisible in Parliament since May, and he's associated with Alexander. I think he's out.

Margaret Curran - well, there seems to be a few people who think she's highly talented and then there's Robert McNeil (who has been known to frequent the scribes' benches of Parliament) who once warned that she could have your eye out with that teatowel. Strident voice, blinkered in debate, she's exactly what's wrong with Labour (which probably means she's got a fair chance of making it to the top) - then again, she's also highly combative and forceful and knows how to hold a line and that might stabilise the Labour ship a little, and she wasn't too involved in the Alexander saga.

Geordie Foulkes - a blustering leftover from the days of hegemony, I never thought I'd see someone disappointed to be elected, never mind distraught like Geordie was at Ingliston. He's mumphed around Parliament, can't get the hang of the modern procedures we use here, and looks like he'd rather be suffering corporal punishment than actually be there. Kezia Dugdale is his assistant and you'll notice that he was completely silent while she was seconded to Wendy Alexander - draw your own conclusions. I suspect we'll see him resign from Parliament around the first anniversary of his election.

Malcolm Chisholm - serial martyr, no spine, no political courage, nothing of substance to him. He blusters, whiffles and discombobulates himself frequently and regularly, he mistakes himself for someone competent every third Tuesday and puffs himself up with self-importance twice a month. Even Labour wouldn't be that daft.

Hangdog Hugh Henry - the most miserable man in Scottish politics, you'll never mistake him for a ray of sunshine. He is as inspirational as a fusty loaf at a romantic meal.

Cathy Jamieson - no leadership skills, little political ability, analytical skills of your average housebrick, it is to be hoped that she is good at serving her constituents.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of choice for Labour's fifth Scottish leader since 1999, but I can offer them some inspiration - Helen Eadie! No, no, hear me out.

Helen Eadie is a visionary - it was way back in February 2003 that Helen Eadie proposed demolishing the Forth Bridge. It was the rail bridge she wanted rid of, right enough, but she proved she wasn't afraid to tackle diffcult subjects and slay sacred cows, and she's got the arguments to back up her position:

"Clearly this bridge is virtually a national monument and a testament to the engineers and workers who built this splendid structure and it is without doubt one of the Great Wonders of the World.
"Perhaps it should be preserved in the same way that the other Great Wonders of the World have been preserved regardless of the cost.
"However, maybe too, people need to at the very least consider the unthinkable.

On top of that, her son-in-law is spinner for Labour in Parliament, so she has a support structure in place already.

You heard it here first - Helen Eadie to lead the Labour party!

The perils, the perils

I have been chastised, perhaps even berated, by SNP activists over my previous post identifying the seats the SNP would win on an assumed straight swing on the scale shown in the recent polls. Why? Well, some of them were saying "wheesht, laddie, dinna tell them we're coming for them", and others were saying "hoi, we're winning over here too". You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you'll never get an easy ride as a nationalist.

Two comments stood out though, and I've taken those points on board - it really is worth laying out some of the local circumstances which will affect the next election. Where we've won Holyrood constituencies the hard work of those SNP MSPs will stand in stark contrast to the pallid efforts of the previous incumbents (Falkirk West is excluded from that) and of the current Westminster incumbent where that incumbent is not an SNP member, so there may be some large shifts in voter preference that wouldn't be picked up on by a national swing.

That leaves some questions to be asked like is the Tricia Marwick effect in Central Fife enough to make the difference in the Westminster seat of Glenrothes, overturn a 10,664 majority and oust John MacDougall (I don't believe I've seen anything of that fella since he got elected)? Judging by the way that Fife SNP has got the bit between its teeth, the wind in its sails, the spark in its engine (and many other cliches that all mean the same thing) I think that it's a possibility. If you want to know how much of a possibility you can try dragging that out of Tricia - I don't fancy your chances of getting information out of her unless she wants to give it to you, but you're welcome to try.

Argyll and Bute - coming from fourth place, but it's in on the swingometer and this is Jim Mather's patch - seeing the Lib Dems trying to catch him will be like watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner. Falkirk - Michael Matheson will be beavering away and he's got a decent team around him and it's a case of removing the galloping Major, so that's in the SNP's favour as well.

Livingstone - the campaign's so driven that Angela Constance has decided she needs to breed new activists to take some of the strain - even though the campaign has people like Uncle Fester driving it. The opponent is the far from divine Jim, so it's all in our favour.

I have no idea what's going on in Glasgow, so someone else can tell us. Gordon is surrounded by SNP seats and has a young upstart nationalist as MSP - can't remember his name just now - so that should be fine.

The other point worth making is about the collapse of the Labour party's organisation in the aftermath of May's election. It's true that Labour had forgotten how to campaign because the outcome of the internal troubles they had in the 1980s and 1990s was the abandonment of principle in favour of the pursuit of power, but their troubles now run, perhaps, even deeper.


Losing power in Scotland for the first time in 50 years was bound to be traumatic, but the opportunities were there in the summer for Labour to regroup and refresh the party and come back stronger and with some sense of purpose, some sense of what they want to do, but that would have required some level of debate about the direction they wanted to take collectively. Instead of taking that opportunity the party that sees a clunking fist as a virtue stamped its collective feet in a collective tantrum then refused to have a leadership election, preferring instead to fling rose petals at the feet of a once favoured candidate.


That opportunity lost, Labour could still have pulled through and taken a longer path back towards significance, but that would have required surefooted leadership and a determination to develop intelligent policy and a coherent philosophy. The poor preparation, lack of underpinning research and petulant delivery in Parliament knocked any of those hopes on the head. I'm told that the resulting bad feeling has poisoned the Labour party and the organisation is in such a parlous state that some long-standing members are questioning whether there is any seat in Scotland that could be described as a safe Labour seat - even the support from full-time union officials is fading away.

There's the real possibility that Labour could be looking at losing seats all over the country to whichever party makes the best running in that seat in the campaign. Their saving grace could, bizarrely, be the collapse of their continuing coalition partners the Lib Dems, those votes garnered by the Lib Dems as a result of the free publicity they got in a governing coalition will now be going all over the place, with the possibility that Labour might pick up one or two, and the fall-off in the Lib Dem vote means that they will not be challenging in any current Labour seats and the distribution of their former supporters could keep a split in the anti-Labour vote in many seats where Labour would otherwise have fallen. The question will be whether any single party will be able to garner that vote and deliver it in seats like Edinburgh South, Lanark and Hamilton East, and Aberdeen South among others.


Unless Labour sorts out its problems in the next couple of months and re-engages with its own members it may be facing a long and unforgiving slide, shedding elected representatives and party members along the way, and ending in the kind of doldrums the Conservatives encountered in 1997. Far-fetched? There was a time when you would have doubted that it could have happened to Scotland's Tories.

In the SNP there is still a heart beating, we have maintained our historic sense of mission - a sense which I am told is palpable at our conferences but absent at others - and we continue to work to improve our country. For so long as we remember that we are in politics to change and improve our country and the lot of the people who live here and we're not here in pursuit of power for its own ends we will have an advantage over those who have forgotten why they entered politics in the first place.

Here endeth the homily