David Maddox: The end of the SNP's flirtation with the Catholics?

WHEN Alex Salmond went on his jaunt to China to portray himself again as a world instead of a parochial figure, he may not have calculated that his trip would undermine his attempts to win an important group in the Scottish electorate.

Much has been made of Mr Salmond's attempts to woo the Roman Catholic vote in Scotland for the SNP not least with calls to change the discriminatory Act of Settlement which prevents Catholics becoming the monarch or even being part of the Royal family.

He also made a rare trip back to Westminster to vote on bio-ethics and tightening abortion laws and in 2008 drew praise from Cardinal Keith O'Brien (pictured) when he announced that he wanted moral values taught in schools.

The stakes are high not least because the now Tory supporting Bishop Joe Devine has been trying to persuade his flock to abandon their traditional support for Labour, but more importantly because the Catholic vote is an identifiable group which could be the key to breaking Labour's historic grip on Glasgow and the West of Scotland.

Putting a firmly Christian anti-abortion candidate up in the largely Catholic Glasgow East, John Mason, helped tip the balance in a tight result against the Labour MSP Margaret Curran who supports abortion and experimentation on foetuses.

But it seems that his apparent support for stem cell research on the China trip, an issue that Cardinal O'Brien has described as "Frankenstein medicine", giving his blessing to collaboration between Edinburgh University and Chinese scientists, has undone some of his good work as this article in the Scottish Catholic Observer, Scotland's biggest Catholic newspaper, appears to suggest.

This was accompanied by a leading article quoting the Cardinal's Easter sermon which suggested that Scotland is on the verge of social collapse.

Which all goes to show that it is no simple matter to win over the support of large interest groups, although it was also perhaps misguided to believe that thousands of Catholic would be persuaded to vote on ethical arguments rather than the more practical issues of life.