Scottish Nationalists : In The Limelight

Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish Nationalists, says something and it is headline national news. She is not even standing for the Westminster parliament. Yet everyone knows that her party, defeated in the independence referendum, rides now so high that it it is likely to be the third largest party in the House of Commons after the election in May. Whether their potential leader at Westminster, Alex Salmond, will or will not join a coalition with Labour is all Cameron now talks about and all Milliband tries not to talk about. Yet the talk may be premature.

Although the two main parties are running neck and neck in the polls, when translated to seats all agree that Cameron will have the most. He will therefore have first shot at forming a government. There is no other party which, on these projections, can do as the Lib Dems did in 2010 and give him a majority in a coalition, so it is likely that he will go for a minority administration held together on a wing and a prayer from issue to issue. To get anything through will require a hotch potch deal, so not much big will happen.

The significance of the Scot Nats is that if their potential Westminster strength had remained unchanged, Labour would be, on all the projections from whichever source, the largest party and it would be Milliband leading the government either in coalition or on a deal or some informal pact. Unfortunately for Ed on all these projections even if he joins up with a much enlarged Scot Nat contingent, whatever words are used to describe it, he still will not have a majority. Once again on the projections, and remember projections can be and are sometimes wrong, the only absolute majority combination between two parties is with Tory and Labour together. Like Churchill during the war.