Eddie Barnes - ok, by-election for November

Labour MPs have voted down the SNP motion, so there'll be no moving of writs today - and therefore no by-election in the summer hols (unless parliament is recalled - see below).

A good days work for the SNP all round. They can now tell the good people of Glasgow North-East that the Labour party cynically voted against an immediate by-election, that they are scared of the voters, and that they've deprived them of an MP for four months (how will they people ever cope?) They can say they stood up for democracy.

And they get to do all this while ending up with the outcome that I'm told they wanted in the first place - ie, a delayed by-election. The party candidate David Kerr now has a precious few months to get to know the constituency backwards.

This could be an interesting contest.