Swansea Sweep

In a letter to the Swansea Evening Post, Plaid Cymru Councillor Darren Price rebuts the paper's earlier editorial that he claims "talked Wales down". He insists that as an independent country Wales could equal Iceland as he believes "Literacy, life-expectancy and income levels there are first rate"

Fair enough, I prefer Tesco myself but each to their own.

Unionism "Overrun"?

Following on from yesterday's post about the Plaid Cymru "landslide" in Welsh blogs, it seems that this isn't a phenonemum exclusive to Wales. Northern Ireland Unionst blog "Pint of Unionist Lite" notes:

Online, be it in the comments-zones in newspapers like The Scotsman, in the nationwide online arenas like "Our Kingdom", in the lower blog regions, Unionism is being absolutely overrun and slaughtered by its nationalist critics. It seems sometimes that there's only about half dozen or so of us Unionists from Northern Ireland who're the only ones in the blogosphere caring enough about the continuance of the United Kingdom to devote the time needed each day to put our case across to the wider audience. Well then, are we, in reality, on our own? If not, then when are we going to see a bit more online help from our brothers in England, Scotland and Wales?

Federal Friends?

A couple of the newspapers today are winking and nudging about informal talks between David Cameron's Tories and the SNP about what happens after Labour are removed from government sometime in the next two years.

The Tories' worry is that Glasgow East has proven that Alex Salmond knows exactly what he's doing in delaying the independence referendum until after the next General Election. They have looked at the by-election results and have come to two conclusions:

1. They will win the next general election with a comfortable majority, and

2. Scottish voters now see the SNP as the alternative to Labour, leaving the Tories with only a couple of seats up north

The Tories know damn well what the result of that will be. Alex Salmond will have a field day (or, to be more specific, a field year!) and will not miss a single opportunity to decry the Tory government's lack of mandate in Scotland. While this may or may not result in a yes vote for independent it would undoubtedly make David Cameron's first year in office very very hard.

The Herald states that:

It would benefit the Conservative Party on both sides of the border if David Cameron pre-empted this by having informal, exploratory talks with First Minister Salmond about granting far more powers, which must include taxation to the Scottish Government, while making it clear that unless a referendum decided otherwise, this would occur within the Union.

But the London Daily Mail goes further, saying that such talks are already ongoing:

That is why, I can reveal, allies of Cameron have entered into informal talks with the SNP over recent months. Their objective is to save the union by working out a new kind of constitutional settlement for Scotland...An incoming Tory administration would need to meet Alex Salmond's demands that the Scottish Parliament should have massive new powers over taxation and public spending. In domestic terms, a Scottish administration would be entirely self-governing and have complete command over economic policy. And yet the union could be maintained through the retention of shared armed forces, and foreign policy, and the monarchy.

Is this the start of a Federal UK instead of full blow independence? And where does it leave Wales?

Scottish Review

So what does today's "off the scale" result in Glasgow East actually mean?

For Labour, there's not much of a debate. It's a disaster, totally unmitigated. There can be no positive spin on it. Is it the death knell of Gordon Brown? Could be, but it will be a very long knell - he's going nowhere until 2010. Although battered and bruised at the moment, Labour aren't stupid. They know that there is no chance in hell that the voters would accept a third Prime Minister in one term. having one "un-elected" Premier hurt them, having another one would be suicide. There's also the fact of course that no-one can think of a credible alternative to Brown.

Which leaves Labour in a bit of a limbo. Brown will plod along until the autumn, the try and regain the initiative in the Autumn. Barring some miracle he'll fight an election as late as possible (2010) and lose. Prime Minister Cameron it will be.

The harder question is what does the result mean for the Union? Most of the newspapers and media have gone out of their way to stress that this was not a vote on independence and in that they are correct. This was a fight on the economy and on governments' records.

What I find harder to agree with however is that this was just another by-election shock, only newsworthy because of the size of the old majority. This election was not a run of the mill by-election. This cannot be explained away as a mid-term protest against the government. For the first time ever in UK politics this was an election not between government and opposition, but between government and government.

By voting for the SNP the people of Glasgow weren't telling Labour they'd rather have SNP running the show in London, they were telling the London government that at the moment they preferred the Scottish government. This ws not merely a protest vote against the UK government, it was also a confidence vote in Holyrood's government. And that's why this election, although not fought on constitutional matters, does have some real significance to that debate.

In a way it is a clear indication to the SNP that their decision to hold off an independence referendum until they'd served a (nearly) full term is vindicated. Any debate/argument/campaign between the SNP and Labour are no longer seen as a Scottish spat, it's seen as Scotland vs London. With every such conflicts, 2010 seems set to be more and more unsettling for the Union.

Self-deluder of the day is Tory Underground who believes that by winning by only 365 votes "the results were bad for the SNP"!