Eddie Barnes - the Leakproof SNP

A SNP contact informs me that yesterday's reshuffle was known about by quite a few people within the party for the last two weeks. And yet not even the merest sniff of a story snuck out until Alex Salmond and his team wanted it to yesterday morning. Reshuffles always leak out, even if the details beforehand are usually inaccurate. Not this time.

This all suggests that the iron internal discipline which has characterised the SNP since May 2007 is just as strong as it ever was. That should fire a warning to the party's opponents who have felt increasingly in recent months that the slick Nationalist operation is beginning to show a bit of wear and tear. Perhaps not so.

Either that or we hacks just aren't doing our job properly. SNP 1; Journalists 0.