Hamish Macdonell - no rest for the faithful.

IT may be St Andrew's Day and the Scottish Government may be on holiday tomorrow (even though nobody else in Scotland seems to be getting the new holiday) but some of those in the political process never rest.
Labour's spinners fired off a whole series of releases today, claiming of a "crisis" in education because of a lack of teachers, warning about the Scottish Government's desire to lease some of Scotland's forest estate, and claiming there was a housebuilding crisis.
The Nationalists hit back, dismissing all the Labour charges and attacking with accusations of their own.
A lot of effort expended, many emails sent out and for what? There may be some coverage tomorrow in some of the newspapers but I guess if they didn't, and some story did take off without their comments, they would not have done their job.
There will no doubt be more of the same tomorrow, much more.
One item which will dominate the news agenda though, home reports. They are introduced tomorrow, a government holiday and a quiet news day. Expect a lot of coverage, very little of it favourable to the SNP government.

George Kerevan worries about arresting MPs

Does anyone remember the ‘cash for honours’ police investigation? In 2006, it surfaced that a number of secret loans had been made to the Labour Party before the general election, and that – suspiciously - many of those lenders subsequently had been nominated for peerages. New SNP MP Angus MacNeil wrote to the Metropolitan Police asking them to investigate. The Met bobbies, led by Yates of the Yard, launched an investigation. Everyone denied wrongdoing and after 16 months of high profile sleuthing, the CPS said there were no grounds for a criminal prosecution.

I mention this because for the fracas over the arrest of shadow immigration spokesperson, Damian Green, who was held by the Met for nine hours and who had his House of Commons office turned over by police officers in the search for files about immigration that the Government wanted to keep secret. David Cameron and the Tories are predictably unhappy but it is the response of Labour ministers which is fascinating. They have taken refuge in the old line that they cannot possibly comment or interfere in police business.

Strangely, this is not how they reacted during the Met’s investigation of the cash for honours affair.

Downing Street began briefing that someone in the Met was engaged in a dirty tricks campaign against Labour by leaking stories that No 10 officials had erased e-mails relating to nominations for peerages. The Prime Minister's official spokesman hinted darkly: "You really have to start questioning who is spreading this information because it is wrong."

Peter Mandelson (then a plain citizen) thundered against the Met: "Those who undertook this investigation used the media to create a false impression of the then Prime Minister, and to undermine public trust in the government...I feel even sadder for the lasting damage that has been done to British politics".

I expect Labour is enjoying the Tories being on the receiving end of a police investigation, this time round. But they should not laugh too long. When the police start arresting elected politicians for ferreting out what the Government is trying to hide from the electorate, then we are all in trouble.

Kenny Farquharson: Class warfare

Labour plainly thinks it has found a weak spot in the SNP government's hide - education.

Last week there was a pretty coherent attack on delays in the school building programme. Today it's a decline in the numbers of teachers.

There are obviously some Labour people who see Fiona Hyslop, the education secretary, as a weak point in the SNP administration.

Education is an emotive issue - far more important to people than the usual political fare - so expect more of this in the weeks and months to come.

The stats used by Labour in its attack, and the official website they're drawn from, are as follows:

Compare Q2 2007 with Q2 2008:
Scottish Government staff up by 600 from 4300 to 4900
Teachers down by 300 from 64,600 to 64,300, and 900 in last quarter.
Police staff down by 800 from 24,100 to 23,300
Council workers down by 3700 from 287,900 to 284,200
Source: Public Sector Employment Statistics, 17 September 2008 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/09/17083742/0

(Police figures are also interesting, given the SNP's promise of 1,000 more officers. Another broken pledge?)

Hamish Macdonell: Sunday - spin and speculation.

WELCOME to The Steamie.
Its St Andrew's Day, its a Sunday so that means politics and patriotism fuse in the Sunday papers.
Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is having a go at the Nats over the oil price and Alex Salmond is having a go back over the proposed £500 million cut to the Scottish budget in 2010-11.
Oh, and Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie is claiming Salmond and the SNP have hijacked the saltire for their own ends.
So far, same as usual then except that there is one political event this week which is casting a shadow over all this political posturing - the publication of the Calman Commission's interim report on Tuesday.
There is a piece in one Sunday paper today, reporting outrage that the Calman interim report will not come up with anything of substance and will not recommend the transfer of new tax powers to Holyrood.
Well, no, it was never going to. Kenneth Calman himself has made it clear for months that this interim report will just set the scene, setting out which areas he will look at more closely in his final report, so its probably best not to get too obsessed with that issue.
Of more import is the report in Scotland on Sunday quoting economist Andrew Hughes Hallett, one of those who looked into the tax powers question. He accused the commission of effectively "tempering with the evidence" by skewing the report towards the status quo. That is a much more meaty story but, again, this argument will not come to a proper end until the final Calman report is published next summer - so expect a lot more spin, counter-spin and accusations until then.
The other big political story of the weekend, and one which is sure to run and run, is the extraordinary arrest of Damian Green. There are unconfirmed reports today that the young Home Office civil servant who was arrested for leaking material to Green claimed he was persuaded to do so by Green. With Speaker Michael Martin now involved, and calls for investigations as well as acres of opinion pieces warning of the death of democracy, this will one will only gather pace through the week.
As, I have no doubt, will The Steamie ...

A warm welcome to The Steamie

Welcome to the new home of Scottish politics on the internet.

The Steamie is a seven-day-a-week blog on Scottish politics brought to you by Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman and the Edinburgh Evening News.

Our aim is simple - to be the number one place in the blogosphere for Scottish political news, analysis and gossip, provided by the nation's most experienced team of political journalists and commentators.

We intend The Steamie to be the place where Scottish politics washes its dirty linen (in the nicest possible way, of course); where policies and strategies are held up to the light and scrutinised; and where political reputations are examined for unsightly stains.

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Let’s turn up the heat...