Eddie Barnes: Cameron takes early lead

And they're off.

Best start goes to David Cameron. He spoke before Brown this morning and chose an airy setting outside County Hall on the banks the Thames, symbolically on the other side of the river from Westminster, and all the sleaze therein. He spoke crisply and clearly about the need for change, although I thought his line about wanting to speak for the "The Great Ignored", sounded a little too close to comfort to the phrase "The Great Unwashed" which I doubt is quite the image the Tories want Old Etonian Dave to conjure up.

At least you could hear what he was saying. Gordon Brown was let down by the BBC who got his sound all wrong so that when he starting speaking outside 10 Downing Street, it was as if the election was being called by the platform announcer at Queen Street station.

Meanwhile, Alex Salmond kicked off the campaign in a rain-lashed Edinburgh alongside former Scotsman columnist and now SNP candidate George Kerevan. The difference in the weather between stormy Edinburgh and sun-dappled London was highly symbolic. There are going to be two completely different election campaigns fought over the coming weeks: the simple straight fight we see on our TV screens between Brown and Cameron, and the more cluttered contest up here involving four parties all fighting for our attention.

Eddie Barnes: The Future's Bright; the Future's Orange (Tony)

JUST finished watching Tony Blair. Even Tommy Sheridan has never managed to match the extraordinary orangeness of Blair's skin colour. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

As to the content of his speech, it amounted to a Man of the World summation of the global crisis, and a full-on critique of the Conservative strategy. The Tories were, he said, caught between what they believed in and what they thought they had to say in order to win. Hence the confusion over their policy on the NHS, law and order, Europe, and the economy. This, of course, was in total contrast to New Labour of the mid-90s. All those changes weren't motivated by the desire to win an election but because Tony and the gang believed in them all.

All very interesting, but there's something bigger going on here, evident both in Blair's speech today and the Chancellors' debate from last night. Today, Blair focussed relentlessly on the record of Brown and Darling during and after the financial crisis. Meanwhile, last night, Darling, Osborne and Cable all similarly discussed everything in the context of the crash - the deficit, the coming public sector squeeze, tax cuts, etc, all are explained by the credit crunch that preceeded them. The point is that the big crash of '08 has become the ground zero of this election campaign. Nothing before it matters a jot. In fact nothing else matters period.

This is good news for Labour, as it is helping them to obscure the main campaigning point of the Tories: that this lot have been in for 13 years, and that therefore we need change. But when October '08 is the base line, they've only been in for one and a bit years, and the change message becomes weakened. It be interesting to see how the Tories are going to challenge this.

NB. There will be a lot of talk no doubt about whether Labour is wise to have wheeled out Blair today, but I get the impression that this isn't so much a calculation, as the fact that all these Labour die-hards just want to be part of their cause's Final Campaign. This, as they will see it, is their life's work now being challenged - not just by the Tories, but by a new, younger, generation of politicians. It is their last hurrah - the final time any of them will get to taste the thrill of the fight, and they want to be here at the End. You can almost picture Blair et all as the characters of a classic war movie where the soon-to-be-defeated heroes rally for one last battle. "Wouldn't want to be anywhere else but right 'ere, sarg......it's been an honour serving with you Corporal....we've 'ad some good times, ain't we, Sarg?....Bloody good times, Corporal." (heads towards gunfire...patriotic music plays....credits roll....The End)

Eddie Barnes: The Gordonator is off

Blimey, Gordon Brown was in his element today. Addressing the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow, he was back on home turf, he had pumped-up Scottish Labour activists in the audience, they had Tories in their sights. That's as good as it gets for Gordon.

The speech he delivered was magnificently brass-necked. Just to remember the context, two days ago the Chancellor Alistair Darling acknowledged that Labour, if it wins in May, will have to cut deeper than Margaret Thatcher in order to bring the deficit under control. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne then confirmed that on Question Time on Thursday night. We are heading for a national debt of 1.4 trillion pounds. But today, in his first stump speech of the campaign, the Gordonator simply blasted all that stuff away, as if it were a bit of collateral damage. Instead, he banged out a speech of classic Brown. Labour would protect middle Britain. The Tories would pull the rug from under the recovery. And, as if the recession had never happened, and the deficit didn't exist, it was back to investment vs cuts. Half way through, Brown declared that, if re-elected, he would create a million new high-skilled jobs. It really was like being in a time warp.

You might find Brown's approach a bit galling but the Prime Minister does have a track record of winning. He is making change look risky. He's making caution sound sensible. He claims he's the one with the experience, and that Cameron and Co have none. Can he really get away with all this? It might just be so. After all, he's telling many people what they would really like to believe: that the public finances aren't that bad really, that the country can recover, that we can still have our cake and eat it.

The speech was littered with the usual Brown mistakes - the badly delivered jokes, the smile in the wrong place. But I don't think I've ever seen Brown looking so confident and so brimming with self-belief. Tories beware.

Eddie Barnes: Salmond having his cake and eating it

Watching BBC's Question Time, broadcast from Glasgow last night, was to marvel once again at Alex Salmond's ability to have it both ways. The First Minister was (no disrespect to Chief Secretary fo the Treasury Liam Byrne) easily the most influential minister on the panel; he is, after all, the First Minister of Scotland. But he did not have to answer a single question about his policies and record in office - not a single one. Instead, he was able to enjoy his usual role as the dis-interested pundit, jovily prodding and mocking the Tory and Labour parties.

He also used the show to make his case against the Prime Ministerial debates, to be shown on the BBC, ITV and Sky during the election campaign. And it's a good case, helped by the fact that these debates are a constitutional anomaly; a Presidential TV show awkwardly stuck onto our own constituency-based electoral system. Salmond made some fair and justified points about how much of the debates, for Scots and Welsh voters, will be entirely meaningless - for example, when Brown, Cameron and Clegg start discussing all their policies on health and education.

In other words, he had it both ways. Salmond used the fact that last night's programme was UK-wide to get away with not answering any questions about his own record - after all the BBC knows that to start asking the Scottish First Minister about his policy on local income tax, or class sizes, is irrelevent to the 90% of viewers from outside Scotland. But, at the same time, when the BBC decides to focus on those 90% of viewers (by going ahead with their TV debate) he was up in arms, complaining about bias and unfairness. Brilliant!

I do hope that Mr Salmond will at least take part in the Scottish TV debates which are also to be broadcast in the coming few weeks. If he were to take part in those, where - let us hope - his own record and policies might come under some light scrutiny, it would make it slightly easier to watch him having his cake and eating it.

Eddie Barnes - David Cameron's masochism strategy

An interesting insight into the likely style of the coming election campaign has emerged in the last couple of days. Viewers of the Ten O'Clock news last night may have seen David Cameron being getting a rough time of it during a visit to apprentices in Lewisham yesterday. One young bloke began heckling Cameron, before piping up a line that could have been dreamt up in Labour HQ, wanting to know why the country should try out someone untried like Cameron, when what they needed was experience.

Homus Spindoctorus (1997 version) would, of course, have done his best to try and crush the tape of this before it came out of the camera. But the 2010 Tory team have done the exact opposite. The heckling can now be seen on YouTube, uploaded by the Conservatives themselves. It is reported they are hoping that the video will go viral. So what's going on?

This is basically a mutation of Tony Blair's masochism strategy, when the Prime Minister deliberately threw himself in front of the public's bullets in the hope of soaking up their fury post-Iraq. Now that we're all so fed up of spin and presentation, the new spin isanti-spin. It looks like, in this election, it is going to take the form of un-cut, potentially embarrassing, but very 'real' incidents along the campaign trail. The calculation will be that while the leader may well get caught out, they will at least (a) be noticed by a disaffected watching public who turn the TV off when politics comes on and (b) get plaudits from the same people for simply engaging in the first place. Sitting up from the sofa, Mr Swing Voter may well turn to Mrs Swing Voter and nod that "at least he has the guts to take it on the chin". The internet becomes the perfect medium for this to spread. Viral video clips spread word of mouth, and are something we actively decide to watch, so the impact it has on us is more substantial than something broadcast which washes over us on the box.

I'm not quite suggesting that Central Office wants Cameron to get hit by eggs and custard tarts over the next few weeks, but when we punters are in such a sour mood, distrusting anything that politicians say, perhaps the only thing that will make us connect with a politician is if he is subjected to an unprovoked bit of the verbals from a fellow member of the great unwashed. This is particularly the case for Old Etonian David Cameron as he attempts to show that he's just like one of us. You never know, it might even seal the deal.

Eddie Barnes - They're now Nicola's games

Steven Purcell now having departed the scene, who is now going to be the public face of Glasgow's Commonwealth games? Step forward Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The Health Secretary pops up in the papers this morning at the promo shot for the Games' new logo (it consists of some circles and a letter 'G', and cost £95,000. Well done!) Why, you might well ask, did the Health Secretary feel it necessary to attend a photo call for a sporting event? Have you see her English counterpart Andy Burnham on the running track at London's Olympic stadium, likewise trying to associate himself with the UK's 2012 fun and games?

No. But then Andy Burnham isn't an MP for the city in which the Olympics is taking place. And nor is Mr Burnham planning on running the country when the games take place. The ambitious Miss Sturgeon, however, has an eye on lots of things. Mr Purcell had, up until last week, ensured that the Games were his own personal baby, warning that there was no way he was going to allow the SNP Government to take the credit for his show. But with Mr Purcell out of the road, and Alex Salmond clearly not all that interested in all that flinging of sticks and running about, Miss Sturgeon has wasted no time in jumping in.

Watch out for expensively produced circles and the letter 'G' on Miss Sturgeon's lapel next time she is seen in public.

Eddie Barnes: The SNP should be grateful for being left out of debates

My views on the rights and wrong of the forthcoming TV debates, and the fact that the SNP aren't going to be involved, are on record but I'm beginning to wonder whether this is really going to be that bad for the Nationalists after all.

On the downside for the SNP, the fact that Messers Clegg, Brown and Cameron will be on our screens vying for our votes - with no sign of the SNP - can only help the other three parties in their efforts to show that the SNP isn't really involved in what is a UK general election.

But, as I read through the 76 (count them!) rules which are going to govern these debates, there are actually going to be some upsides as well. Obviously, the SNP can play the victim card, rousing its support by accusing the Beeb and the other broadcasters of unfairness. But on on top of that, they can join the rest of the country in now royally taking the mick out of the whole affair. Those 76 rules - which will bar applause, booing, hissing or heckling - look set to ensure that the UK debates will follow the example of the US TV debates which, if you've ever had the misfortune to watch them, are almost always bore-fests of titanic proportions. The last interesting thing that happened in a US TV debate was Lloyd Bensten's immortal put-down to Republican VP candidate Dan Quayle ("Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy".) Nowadays, in the era of endless prep work, it can be said with almost total conviction that none of the three combatants will be tripped up by one another. They will have anticipated every single possible line of attack from their opponents. I fear we will simply witness all three playing a conservative game, parroting out their pre-prepared lines, with some rubbish jokes sprinkled here and there in between.

There's a semi-serious point here. The most damaging thing to have happened to any leadership candidate in the election campaign so far has been the accusation of "air-brushing" levelled against David Cameron following his now notorious poster. I suspect air-brushed is what we are going to get in these debates, unless one of the threesome has the guts to ad lib. So, watched by a sour and scunnered electorate, none of them is likely to come out of particularly well. Perhaps the SNP might just benefit from not being part of something which, I suspect, most of the population will resent for getting in the way of their evening viewing.

Eddie Barnes - Scotland in full unemployment crisis

Unemployment figures out this morning are calamitous for Scotland. An extra 10,000 people have joined the dole queue in the three months up to the turn of the year, representing the fastest increase across the whole of the UK. That's 10,000 families deprived of an income and instead reliant on the State - 10,000 more people now facing up to one of the most pyschologically damaging experiences that life can throw up. As the STUC notes this morning: "Beyond serious illness or the loss of a loved one, unemployment (particularly prolonged periods) is about the worst thing that can happen to an individual; increasing as it does susceptibility to mental stress, depression and illness." The usual response from Edinburgh - that. don't worry, unemployment in Scotland is lower than the UK - has become virtually irrelevent; the difference in the rate is now a mere 0.2%.

If this trend of rising unemployment in Scotland continues, it could become one of the dominant themes in the coming general election north of the border. It is a very dangerous story for the SNP. If people see that unemployment is going down across the UK, but going up in Scotland, what conclusions will you draw?

So no surprise that the SNP Government was quick off the mark this morning with Enterprise Minister Jim Mather responding to the figures with an unusually sharpened political message. "Recovery is fragile at UK and Scottish levels, and now is not the time for the Westminster Government to turn off the tap of stimulus measures," he says. It's clear what the message is going to be from the SNP: it's the UK government which is to blame.

Eddie Barnes: McCabe's the man for Swinney

We're informed that the SNP Government will unveil the names if the Three Wise Men who will examine their books next week, as part of the Independent Review into the Scottish Government's finances. As I've written in the Scotsman this morning, I suspect there is a lot of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting going on about who they might be, as the make-up of this review will be crucial in deciding what it eventually comes up with.

If the SNP is smart they'll come up with at least one name who has some association with Labour, in order to deflect the attacks from Andy Kerr et al about how they plan to hack back against the poor defenceless people of Glasgow and surrounding villages. How hilarious would it be if Swinney unveiled his precedessor Tom McCabe as one of his recruits? Mr McCabe has not been backwards in coming forwards so far about the scale of problems to come. And he has been extremely candid about the cheque-book politics which distinguished the previous Labour-Liberal administration, of which he was a part. Clearly Mr McCabe would make himself extremely unpopular among his Labour colleagues if he chose to sit on Mr Swinney's panel. But Lanarkshire's grizzliest politician has never quite given the impression he minds having a few enemies.

I doubt it'll happen but there are other options available for Mr Swinney. This could be fun.

Eddie Barnes - Iraq: yet another question that needs answering

Clare Short gives more tantalising evidence today on one of the most fascinating issues raised by the Iraq inquiry - the process by which the Attorney General ended up changing his mind on the legality of the war. Lord Goldsmith revealed last week that what persuaded him to say the war was legal was his visit to the US, where he met Condaleeza Rice, her legal advisers and Britain's Ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock.

The former International Development Secretary claimed today that Blair "leaned" on Goldsmith to change his mind. Later, she added: "It was suggested to him that he go to the US to get advice about the legal position......I think all that was leaning on – sending him to America....."

We're getting close to something here, but the inquiry has so far failed to nail this down. Who organised Goldsmith's visit? Who "suggested" it? Did Downing Street and the White House discuss the AG's opposition and decide that a trip across the pond would be just the thing to make him agree? Answers to these questions are vital if the Inquiry is going to reveal the full story of what happened.

This isn't just process: just to recap, Blair said last week that had Goldsmith stuck to his guns that the war was illegal, then British troops wouldn't have gone in.

Eddie Barnes - Mundell for the Scotland Office

The McLetchie-for-Scottish Secretary line is running again this morning in the blogosphere. I first heard this story knocking about at the Conservative conference in Manchester when drink may have been taken. The idea played into Cameron's "respect agenda". With McLetchie in post, the Tories could turn round to Alex Salmond and say that a member of the Scottish Parliament was sitting Cameron's cabinet. How Scot-friendly is that? However, I suspect that this excellent yarn is going to remain just that: a good bit of political gossip.

Here is a genuine fact: David Mundell, the shadow Scottish Secretary, has already started having informal private meetings with the main players in Scotland's public sector, to inform them that they may soon have to work with one another and that he is open for business. He may be freelancing, perhaps, but more likely he has been told - along with other shadow secretaries of state - to get out there and start meeting the people he needs to deal with in a few months time. In other words, he is preparing for the job.

The only way Mundell won't get the job is if he is offered a post elsewhere which he prefers (International Development?). Surely it would be a humiliation too far for him to be a shadow for the last few years, and only then to be knocked back. Sorry to prick the gossip, but I reckon it's Mundell for the Scotland Office.

Eddie Barnes: Murray's my mate

In the Scotsman office this morning we were laying bets....which party would win the "I-Want-To-Be-Andy-Murray's-Best-Friend" award?

Labour. Literally less than a minute after he won this morning, this press release landed in the e-mail box.

"Scottish Labour's congratulated Scots tennis ace Andy Murray for his magnificant victory today which secures his place in the final of Australian Open (Murray 3-6 6-4 6-4 6-2 Cilic)

Sports spokesman Frank McAveety is getting behind Murray's bid for his first Grand Slam title.

Mr McAveety said: "This is an outstanding win for Andy Murray against a great opponent Marin Cilic and we hope that he can keep the momentum going in the final. It would be a tremendous and well-deserved achievement for Andy to win his first Grand Slam title. He is a world-class athlete and a great Scottish ambassador for sport and I am sure the whole of Scotland will be cheering him on to victory in the final." "

For the record, Alex Salmond came in with his praise a few minutes later. However, neither the Tories nor the LibDems have yet declared whether they too think Andy Murray winning a tennis match was a good thing.

Meanwhile, in his post-match press conference on the Rod Laver court in Melbourne, Murray reflected: "It couldn't have been better that this. I played really well and to finish Cilic off quickly like that in the fourth set meant I was able to get back into the Locker room in time to watch First Minister's Questions at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Tennis might be entertaining but it just pales in comparison to Holyrood's cut and thrust."

UPDATE: I am now informed that LibDem MSP Iain Smith may have beaten MacAveety to it. He raised Murray's victory in the chamber, having been following the score on his BlackBerry.

Eddie Barnes: Whose recession is it?

Is Scotland out of recession? The Office of National Statistics has revealed this morning that UK plc has - ahem- rocketed out of the economic gloom, surging by a whole 0.1% in the final quarter of 2009. The regional breakdowns won't be collated until April, when we'll find whether or not Scotland has managed to keep pace with the UK's own booming growth. Last week, we reported how Scottish economists had their doubts about whether it would, following some pretty weak findings from the pre-Christmas period.

Assuming Scotland is found in April to still be in recession, the politics become very interesting. If May 6th is confirmed as the election date, that news will hit in the first weeks of the general election campaign. Who will voters blame: the SNP in Edinburgh, or Labour in London? The answer to that could go a long way to dictating the outcome of the election north of the border. The lesson of the Glasgow North-East by election for the SNP was how Labour managed to turn a Westminster election into a referendum on the Scottish Government, and their handling of the economy (in particular the decision to cancel the GARL link). Labour will undoubtedly play the same card going into the general election, aided by the fact that Holyrood has arguably become the focus of attention in recent years. Has the SNP learnt its lesson? Alex Salmond should be laying the ground now to try and shift the emphasis away from his own administration and onto Westminster.

Eddie Barnes - Going for Goldie

Big day for Annabel Goldie today. She's had her fair share of brickbats in recent days, with questions being asked about why the Scots Tories aren't doing any better than, for example,their counterparts in Wales. Goldie is giving a speech this evening, widely trailed in today's papers, in which she is expected to lay out how a Conservative government at Westminster will deal with the SNP Government in Edinburgh.

The pressure is on Goldie and her team to deliver a decent return at the election. If they were to have a bad night and fail to add to their sum of one seat in Scotland - whilst the Tories win in England - it would make life very difficult indeed for her, presenting Alex Salmond with a gift. You can sense that some of the heat is beginning to show; David Mundell, the shadow Scottish Secretary, recently warned Scottish voters that they couldn't rely on the English to kick out Labour. It hinted at the frustration in the Scots Tory camp over the difficulty of translating a general sense of support for change into Tory crosses on the ballot paper.

Mundell also came up with one of the more interesting comments of the election campaign so far. He hopes if and when the Tories win at Westminster, the old lines trotted out by Labour and the SNP about "18 years of hurt" and "we'll take no lessons from the party of the poll tax" will have to be binned, as the reality of the new cuddly Conservative government erases memories of the last nasty Thatcherite one. The parallel is the victory of the SNP in 2007....they won, they got into power, the world didn't actually fall to pieces as opponents claimed, they gained in popularity. Similarly, if Cameron gets in, and isn't seen with a handbag and twinset, eventually Scots will feel more comfortable thinking of themselves as Conservative voters, rather than considering it a badge of shame.

Well, possibly. It rather ignores the fact that Cameron is going to have to hack back at the public sector as soon as he gets in - thereby comforming to type. And even Mundell is right, it won't help them in the coming campaign. Tough times ahead.

Eddie Barnes: Scotland spending more on benefits than the NHS

A predictable Scottish political rammy is underway today. The Labour-run Scotland Office has released a new report - snappily entitled "Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland" - as it seeks to make the case for how well Scotland is doing from the current constitutional arrangement. According to the report, each household would have to cough up £2,700 to pay for welfare spending north of the border if we were reliant solely on domestic tax receipts. Bilge, responds the Scottish Government - what about North Sea oil? What about the UK's whopping deficit which we're soon going to have pay for?

Most of us all know the drill by. And the stale old argument completely misses the most interesting element of this story. The Scotland Office report notes that welfare is now the biggest single item of expenditure in Scotland, at £12.6billion - bigger than the NHS, schools, transport, the lot.

£12.6billion! That's one hell of a safety net. I assume a lot of that will be made up of the public pension, and necessary unemployment benefits. But is it really healthy that our biggest single element of expenditure is on benefits? Not exactly productive is it? Why don't the SNP and Labour have a rammy about who has the best vision for getting that figure down?

Eddie Barnes - Budget predictions

Time for Holyrood to take back some attention from the Westminster pre-election fun. The Scottish Government's budget is laid before parliament today ahead of the first debate next week. Expect stern warnings of non-cooperation and brinksmanship from the opposition parties, and sage words from the Scottish Government about politicians' responsibilities to the public.

I expect the SNP Government to get the budget passed this time round without quite the same fuss as last year, when it was defeated by opposition MSPs amid totally chaotic scenes. My prediction is for both the LibDems and the Conservatives to have come on board once push comes to shove. The deal they cut with the SNP won't be about getting sweeties and pet projects however; rather it'll be about getting the credit for some populist cuts on public sector waste. Meanwhile, I expect Labour to dig their heels in, demand the reinstatement of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, and then - once its been turned down- head straight to the printers for a fresh batch of "SNP anti-Glasgow" leaflets. I doubt the Greens will be given quite as much leverage as they had last year.

This will be the last budget round before the real cutbacks start kicking in this time next year. And leaving aside some token gestures its unlikely that we'll get much debate in this budget round on how the Scottish Government intends to tackle it - particularly as the SNP is about to go into an election promising to protect Scots from the worst of Labour-Tory cuts. Ominously, the same applies with bells on this time next year, when the budget round will take place just a few weeks before the 2011 Holyrood campaign. It all suggests that Scotland is in danger of lagging behind the rest of the UK in preparing for the spending crisis which is assuredly just around the next corner.

PS. A great story emerging this morning - reports that English Health Secretary Andy Burnham is considering minimum pricing on alcohol. This after Iain Gray's Scottish Labour contingent had declared their forthright opposition to such a plan. Oops. Did right hand talk to left hand, we wonder?

Update: Downing Street has declared it would not be "sensible" to go for a minimum pricing scheme. Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy has also told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme that punishing the majority would be "the wrong thing to do."

Eddie Barnes - Lucky Jim

Scotland on Sunday is running an interview with Jim Murphy tomorrow and while he has some harsh words for people in his party who have conceded defeat, the Scottish Secretary was pretty upbeat.

Not surprising when you come to think about it. Murphy, who is running the Scottish Labour campaign, has the best job in the Labour cabinet. The main reason is that he won't be involved in the campaign in London. That will be hell. Defeat is in the air, nobody and everybody will be in charge, and they're going to have to watch as the Conservatives out-spend them by miles. You can just imagine the whole thing collapsing as thoughts turn to casting blame on one another, and the succession to follow.

Murphy on the other hand has it relatively easy. In Scotland, Labour can play at being in opposition, attacking the SNP government for everything (including, as we have seen this week, the weather). Meanwhile the spectre of an Conservative government being elected at Westminster may well spook their substantial core vote back into the polling booths. Labour chiefs are now claiming that this core vote is more motivated than it has been for at least the last five years (there's no way of checking this, I hasten to add).

On top of this, I've picked up distinctly worried tones from senior Scottish Tories in the last few days who fear that the Hoon-Hewitt coup might actually hand Gordon Brown the 'sympathy vote' in Scotland. This seemed to me initially to be the natural paranoia of the front runner, but I wonder. Meanwhile, one thing we don't know yet is whether the SNP is really going to plough that much cash and effort into the coming campaign, particularly when it's got Holyrood to win back next year. Holyrood has to be their priority, if priorities have to be made.

Lucky Jim indeed.

PS: However, are we forgetting the LibDems in all of this? Iain Dale has some drawn some interesting conclusions today on how the Libs could end up with 16 seats in Scotland, with four gains from Labour. His basic point is that we ignore local trends at our peril. Quite. Dale also thinks the SNP won't get anywhere near Alex Salmond's hoped-for 20 seats.

Eddie Barnes: The morning after

David Cameron enjoyed the political equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel this morning as he was interviewed on the Today programme. Usually when an opponent describes his enemy as being "completely divided" as Cameron did this morning, you would take it with a pinch of salt. But after yesterday's coup flop, the Tory leader was guilty only of being a bit behind the news cycle.

If Gordon Brown is not throwing staplers this morning, then he never will. His attempt to re-assert authority over the party and government has been completely de-railed. Just to rub it in, a poll in the Sun today shows that 58% of people would not change their vote even if there was a new Labour leader (19% said it would make them more likely to vote Labour as against 14% who said they'd prefer Brown to stay). It also puts Labour on 31%, to the Tories' 40%, again showing a narrowing of the Conservative lead. But the poll was taken on the 5th and 6th January. What, I wonder, would the gap be if a poll was taken today and tomorrow, now that the public has once again been reminded that the party is totally divided?

As has been pointed out, the coup has put Labour in the worst place possible, having re-exposed both the mistrust the party has in their leader, and also their timidity over their failure to boot him out. It was excessively optimistic of Mr Hoon and Mrs Hewitt to think they could change this - after all, we've known for two years that the cabinet won't do anything. Any prospect of a cabinet minister finally doing the deed appeared to die out on Newsnight last night when Lord Mandelson was categorical in his support for Mr Brown. Mr Hoon then happily conceded that his efforts had failed.

Eddie Barnes: General Election cliche alert pt 1

THE UK parties' general election slogans, which got their first outing earlier this week, have already come in for a bit of criticism from some quarters. But at least they have the merit of being different.

At the weekend, newspapers in Scotland received three different press releases from Labour, the Tories and the SNP. First there was the Conservative Shadow Secretary David Mundell. Releasing flattering polling data on Scots' attitudes to his party, he said this proved the Tories were Labour's main Scottish opponent. "People clearly realise it is a two horse race between David Cameron's strong and united Conservatives and this tired and failing Labour Government," he declared. Not so, declared the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon a few hours later "The reality is that the general election in Scotland will be a two-horse race between the SNP and Labour," she said. Hang on, that's three horses now isn't it? No, shot back Labour a few minutes later. "The next general election is a two horse race between Labour and the Tories." Good, that's settled then.

Please, enough already. Yes, Scotland's political landscape is crowded. Yes, you need to clear the field of parties which might nick your vote. But at the very least, ditch the two-horse cliche. What about "head to head" or "toe to toe"? Or maybe dramatic references to a duel to the death? If Steamie readers have any better ideas, the parties need your help.

Eddie Barnes - Sillars and the SNP

We've uploaded Jim Sillars' new pamphlet "Thoughts on getting to the only sensible choice for Scotland: Independence" onto our website this morning. You can read it here.

Sillars' basic point is that the SNP has to look at some of its policies - for example on Nato, Trident and the EU - and ask a simple quesion: is this harming or helping to build support for independence? If it's the former, then he says it needs to be changed. "The SNP, by itself, cannot win a vote for independence. It has to build a coalition of forces if it is to carry a majority, and that requires re-examining policies which, if adhered to in a dogmatic manner, will prevent the forging of a successful coalition," he declares. Well worth a read.

Eddie Barnes - By-Election 2am

Finally, after a prolonged count, the results for Glasgow North-East have come back in with Labour increasing its percentage share from the 2005 election, claiming 59% of the vote, up from 53% in the 2005 general election. The SNP has remained relatively stagnant - its 20% share of the vote was marginally up on the 17% it got in that same election. That makes it a 3% swing to Labour. After all the hue and cry of the last few weeks, they have won at a canter.

But the drama of the night at the SECC was the battle for the third spot. Up until a few minutes before the count, there was a growing consensus in the hall that the BNP had beaten the Conservatives into third place, handing them what would be a major publicity coup. The BNP candidate Charlie Baillie was already parading around the hall, claiming it was a fantastic night for his party.

But then the results came in, showing that the Tories had beaten the BNP by 62 votes. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that it was the first time in recent political history that a hall full of politicians in Glasgow was united in support of the Conservatives. There followed a dignified protest from the entire group of politicians. As Baillie stood up to the microphone to make his post-result speech, they all simply walked off, as did most of the watching crowd. The BNP's surge in Scotland was over before it had begun. The Conservatives are now breathing a huge sigh of relief.

All that has rather taken away the attention from a good night for Labour. However, the question tonight is whether they can translate that support into less favourable territory.

Eddie Barnes: Kerr throws it away

Is this a moment which David Kerr will come to regret? In the TV debate show last night on STV's Politics Now programme, the SNP candidate had a moment of madness. Click here and scroll forward to five minutes in for the full details. I was among those watching the show in STV's green room, along with all the various party spin doctors and I can assure you that none of them thought it was the greatest moment in by-election history.

But the debate was an excellent format, allowing each candidate to cross-examine one another, with host Bernard Ponsonby offering some light-touch chairmanship from the sidelines. Definitely one for the future. We learnt that Labour candidate Willie Bain opposed the invasion of Iraq (which Labour candidate doesn't these days?) and that Kerr thinks the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link was the right thing to do, in tough economic circumstances.

Ponsonby, who lives in the Glasgow North East seat, said before going on air that he had brought along his postal vote and would decide who to vote for after chairing the debate. Sadly, Bernard was too much of a pro afterwards to let us know what he had decided. But congrats to STV for a well-conceived show.

Eddie Barnes: Strictly nonsense

So Gordon Brown prefers the X-Factor on Saturday night. Whereas Lord Mandelson likes Strictly Come Dancing. TV news presenters declare with a wry grin how there is a split at the heart of the cabinet. Oh my, I nearly laughed.

I was told a salutary story the other day involving one highly capable political adviser within Downing Street. Managing to escape work one Saturday morning for a game of golf, and a chance to clear his head of political wonkery, the publicly-funded adviser had his game ruined as he was dragged into a conference call about how to deal with the political fall-out from "Biscuitgate". Brown had not seen a question in a web-chat for a woman's magazine asking him to name his favourite biscuit; now the story had got legs and Brown was being mocked for dithering over his choice. And so well-paid, well-informed special advisers were called upon at the weekend to manage 'the crisis'.

Are similar conference calls taking place now over the cabinet "split" on Saturday night viewing habits? Please God, let it not be so. I am beginning to wonder whether Armando Ianucci's brilliant series "the Thick of It" is actually a documentary. This has to stop.

Eddie Barnes - SNP has it all to do in Glasgow NE

ALEX Salmond has raised some speculation about an SNP surge by announcing he is to head back to Glasgow North East on Monday, having just left there yesterday. This after saying he was going to play a low key role. A year and a bit after they won in Glasgow East, is there about to be another shock on the same streets?

Having lowered expectations over the summer and early autumn about their chances, the SNP is now casting itself in the role of the plucky underdog, gaining ground on the tiring front-runner. They are hoping to time their run-in like they did in Glasgow East when they similarly came from behind on the final straight.

But there is a big difference between Glasgow East and Glasgow North East. When the campaign bus arrived in Glasgow East last summer, Labour activsts discovered that they had precisely no information whatsoever about the local electorate. So instead of knocking up their own support, or offering prepared messages to swing voters, the party had to spend ages simply going out to find the people who might vote for them. It was a mess. In North-East, however, I'm told that the campaign apparently already knows the voting behaviour of more than 40% of the local residents. So they know where their support is and they can target them and get them out.

Still all to play for, but Labour has a much stronger base position than it had last summer.

Eddie Barnes - Griffin's brief encounter

Just back from having finally tracked down Nick Griffin who came to Scotland today to take part in the Glasgow North-east by election, taking in a hithero unknown bit of the seat known as Hamilton. For more details see tomorrow's paper.

Griffin is loving every minute of his new found fame, following his appearance on Question Time last week. The programme and - perhaps more importantly- the media reaction to it, has played perfectly into his victimisation agenda. He was heading off to north-west England to give a couple of speeches this evening, and you can almost script the speech for him ("....arrogant liberal elites.....won't let the common man have his say....out of touch with decent British values.....")

He was asked about the views of his parliamentary candidate, Charlie Baillie, who said at the weekend that he would "go to his grave" wanting the BNP to stay white-only. Griffin has said he'll change the BNP's constitution so that it no longer discriminates on grounds of race, under the threat of legal action. The concession has allowed BNP members to say they aren't racist. But would he, like Baillie, prefer it if the BNP stayed all-white? First, he wouldn't answer the question properly. Then, on being pressed to say simply whether or not he would like the BNP to remain all-white, he said he thought there should be one party which "stuck up" for the country's biggest ethnic minority, "which is my people." That sounded to me like a yes. Griffin then claimed it was us in the media who were fixated on race, not him. Which is a bit rich when you read the BNP's constitution.

Eddie Barnes - Megrahi latest

Sky News reported about an about ago that according to "sources", the Lockerbie bomber has died. But Tony Kelly, his lawyer is now saying that Megrahi is alive and that he has spoken to him since the Sky report went out. East Renfrewshire Council - which is in charge of monitoring Megrahi's health - is also saying they know nothing about his death, and are pointing out that they'd be the first to know.

So it appears, for now, that nothing has changed. Will update if the situation moves on.

Eddie Barnes - Getting nasty

Labour MP Tom Harris has kicked up a stink on his always interesting blog by referring to the SNP conference in Inverness as "a hate-fest". He also declares that the SNP is "the nasty party" of Scottish politics, pointing to "the poison" which drips from the keyboards of Scotland's army of anonymous 'cybernats'.

Certainly, there were a few incidents at the conference which will give succour to those who feel nationalism is animated by "hate". Most people picked up on the comments by Plaid Cymru's Helen Jones, who described Gordon Brown as "a sorry excuse for a Scotsman" before asking "do you ever as a nation wonder what you will do with the likes of him after independence?" But as someone who spent three days in Inverness, I would say that the tone of the conference was basically very similar to those which I attended in Brighton and Manchester this year. In other words, for a few days, lots of active, interested, interesting people all got together to listen, talk and drink too much. Rather than a hate fest, Labour should be considering the more worrying reality- for them- that the SNP conference has become a venue to do business. Inverness was filled not with much fierce fist-pumping but rather with public affairs consultants and lobbyists all clammering for their few minutes chat with SNP Ministers.

While Tom concedes that the modern SNP may have changed, he still feels able to conclude that they are a 'nasty party' because of the undoubtedly unpleasant missives written by some of Scotland's 'cybernats'. But can we conclude that the 'poison' which leaks from their pens is representative of the party as a whole (or, indeed, even among those Nationalists who blog)? Or is it just a case of a few kids who don't sleep enough?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Eddie Barnes: Salmond's speech, the morning after

Scotland on Sunday has plenty of coverage of Alex Salmond's speech and the SNP conference today, focusing predominantly on the SNP leader's decision to pitch himself against the cuts in public services. But there were some other bits of the speech which we didn't manage to analyse in the body of the paper. Here are three that are worthy of some scrutiny.

"In all 63 of our 94 headline manifesto commitments have already been achieved - two thirds at just over half way through our term."

Sounds good but the SNP won't say what those 94 commitments are, making the pledge completely meaningless. How can you base your own rate of success on an entirely made-up measure?

"Ed Miliband gave the game away when he said there was no difference between the Tories and Labour. Quoted in the Daily Telegraph - where else for a new Labour minister?- he said....."

This got a laugh from the audience for suggesting that New Labour ministers' first port of call was the English-based Tory-loving Telegraph.....but which paper was last granted an interview with our First Minister, after other Scottish based papers had been turned down?....er yes, the Daily Telegraph (last Saturday)

"Delegates, today Labour says no to Scotland at Westminster - no to our calls for a further acceleration of capital spending that would protect and provide thousands of jobs."

I thought this was a news line when I heard it yesterday. Had the Treasury said no to Salmond's request for a fresh advance of capital spending? In fact, Alastair Darling has yet to say, and won't until his Pre-Budget Report in the next few weeks. So, in this case, 'no' is defined as the current absence of the word 'yes'.

All a bit fly.....there must be an election coming.

Eddie Barnes: The Great Debate: Barnes v Maddox (3)

Fair enough David, I think you've proven that there is no easy alternative to the straight Cameron/Brown/Clegg debate being proposed by the TV networks. I would agree with that. But I haven't changed my mind on the fundamental wrong-ness of the proposed debate.

However, having read some of the streams on this debate on the Steamie, particularly those of "DougtheDug", it also seems that whatever you and I think is right or wrong is pretty irrelevant. As he says, this is a legal matter now, and it's a question for the courts to decide. So the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday will be looking into this over the coming days to find out what the legal views are. We'll also be asking the main broadcasters for some more details as to how they think they can square this circle. So far all we've had are some vague assurances that consideration will be given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And from the conversations I've had with the broadcaster's press offices, it seems pretty clear that that is about as far as they've thought about it. The BBC admitted it was "complicated" but then was unable to say anything more.

Answers need to be forthcoming, and we'll try and get some.

Eddie Barnes: 9 votes for Tommy

Tommy Sheridan held a press conference this morning to launch his campaign for the Glasgow North-East by election. Of most interest was the former SSP MSP's impending court case with the News of the World, but Sheridan was as unfazed as usual, arguing that he stood a fair chance of winning the by-election, which takes place on November 12th.

And he got his campaign off to a good start. Leaving the press conference, held at the Petershill Leisure centre in Springburn, he was approached by a local man, dressed in his football kit, who was preparing to play a five-a-side game on the centre's astroturf pitch. They only had 9 - would Tommy mind making up the numbers? Sheridan, a mad-keen footballer, quickly dashed off to his car, got his kit from the boot, and headed straight out onto the pitch.

Eddie Barnes - Osborne's lack of ankle room

Did George Osborne show too much ankle last week? Gordon Brown is out of the stocks this morning, using an interview to proclaim that Osborne's doom-mongering of last week, and the tough policy prescriptions he said would be required were over the top. One well-placed Labour contact yesterday, who has taken defeat for granted for the last few months, yesterday told me that the possibility of victory is now back on. Osborne and Cameron are now tied into their stark plans for how to deal with the public sector crunch for the next nine months. This is based on their stark predictions for just how deep UKplc is in trouble. But what if, as Brown claims today, the economy improves, that gaping deficit suddenly begins to fall, and the UK's credit rating actually goes up?

Labour strategists think that the Tories have got carried away by polling, which both of them have, showing that people want to hear it straight, and want to be told up-front how bad things are going to get. That gamble appears to have paid off, according to a new poll released today, which suggests people approve of Osborne's approach. But what people say to pollsters might not be what they think in the privacy of their own home (or ballot station).

In other words, what if people are basically liars? It's all very well being honest with the voters. But what if the voters aren't being honest with you?

Eddie Barnes - The Great Debate....Barnes v Maddox

In series 5 of the Wire there's a great comment from the news editor at the Baltimore Post that, at their best, newspapers "are places where people constanly disagree with one another". In that spirit, I'm going to go head-to-head with my esteemed colleague David Maddox (and this is risky; he sits behind me) on the subject of the general election TV debate debate, as he calls it.

The story so far.....the broadcasters have said they want a debate, and the Conservatives, the Liberals and Labour have all agreed. Last weekend, the SNP - which will not get a podium place - said it would be taking legal action. In a previous post, David declared with typical panache that the SNP was getting its knickers in a twist. He said it was hubristic of that SNP to insist that they got involved, and that it would be absurd for non-Scottish viewers to have to watch the views of Alex Salmond being aired when none of them had the chance to vote for his party.

Well, clearly that would be strange. But I don't see how you can argue that having a debate screened in Scotland involving only Messers Brown, Cameron and Clegg is anything other than anti-democratic. If these debates do go ahead, let no-one be in any doubt about the importance they would hold (there will be 3 of them under the plans being considered by the BBC, ITV and Sky). We in the media would go predictably nuts and they would become easily the most important part of the election schedule. Ofcom recognises the SNP as one of the a main party in Scotland, along with Labour, the Tories and the Liberals. Are we seriously suggesting that in Scotland one of the main parties is going to be excluded? Why not exclude the Liberals instead? Or the Conservatives? Or Labour?

I've spoken to broadcasters in Scotland about this debate idea and they are pretty sceptical about the whole thing meeting the strict rules which cover election coverage. Frankly, the SNP seem to me to have a hard and fast case. Labour has suggested that we have a kind of Division Two clash involving all the leaders of each party's Scottish Westminster group. But would you dash home from work for the chance to watch David Mundell take on Alastair Carmichael? Thought not.

Personally, I would like to watch a TV debate take place. So what to do? I have no idea. Maybe there should be three more debates, to be broadcast in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - in which the UK party leaders stand alongside the leaders of the SNP, Plaid and Ulster parties respectively. It's not exactly likely to happen, I admit. Incidentally, I'm not at all convinced that Alex Salmond should be the person representing the SNP, given that he isn't standing for the General Election.

But I'm not here to provide answers. I just think that to exclude one party which represents the views of a substantial part of the electorate from such a high-profile occasion -an occasion which could decide the votes of thousands - is plain wrong.

Over to you David.

Eddie Barnes - Tories claim the moral high ground

A few initial thoughts having just left the conference hall in Manchester.

1. The most significant moment was Cameron's riposte to Labour on poverty. "Don't you are lecture us about poverty," he said. "You have failed us and it falls to us, the modern Conservative party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down." A great cheer and standing ovation followed. After decades of ceding the moral high ground to Labour and being cast as the nasty party, Cameron is trying to claim it back. The hall loved it - two decades of feeling like social pariahs is fast disappearing.

2. Shadow Ministers can rest easy.....Cameron effectively used the speech to confirm that they are going to get the jobs they currently occupy, which must have come as a particular relief to people like Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Teresa May.

3. Iain Duncan Smith looks like he's going to get some new kind of job as the Minister for Social Justice, although the party has confirmed following the speech that there won't be a new post created. No doubt he will soon be renamed the Minister for Easterhouse - the place where the former leader's conversion to poverty issues first began.

4. Can we leave Bono alone now? Or is he going to pop up at the SNP conference next week to say how great they are as well? Having now appeared on a giant screen at both Labour and Tory conferences, it now seems no party feels complete with a commendation. This needs to stop. Tories, the detoxification thing....we get it.

5. The recession didn't get much of a show. Cameron gave it a distinctly cursory mention at the beginning of the speech before moving onto his favourite topics of social responsibility and poverty. Look out for negative reaction from the City about the Tories still not getting the financial crisis.

Eddie Barnes: Exc: Watch Dave sitting in hotel room!

FORGET The Speech, now we have the Official Build Up To The Speech. The Conservatives have posted a video on YouTube this morning in which David Cameron is seen in the comfort of his hotel room preparing for his big moment at the Manchester conference later today. In the course of a searching interview with a Tory staffer, viewers can learn that Cameron is worried his voice is sounding "a little bit reedy" and that he is having to do some "trimming" to keep the speech down below an hour.

Cameron also declares that The Speech will seek to focus on the "other side" of the coming recession in an effort to lift the gloom-mongering mood of the conference. In other words, with George Osborne having spent Tuesday telling everyone that there were black clouds coming, Dave today will show how he can see a day when the sun will shine. Let's hope he doesn't break out into song.

Just in case we haven't got the message I've just got back from watching William Hague in the conference hall and I can report that the backdrop to the platform has changed. For the last three days there have been a series of apparently random moving images of British streets, which bring to mind one of those bizarre pieces of installation art you find at modern art galleries which just show a video loop of something over and over again. But the street scenes have now gone, the camera has tilted upwards, and the screen simply shows blue sky and white fluffy clouds. The Messiah cometh.

Eddie Barnes: Battle of the Booze

The Tories have announced their plans for a booze crackdown here in Manchester today. They aim to substantially increase the price of lager, cider and alco-pops through a new tax.

As tax is reserved, the plans will apply in Scotland where, as has been well publicised, the SNP administration is planning to introduce its own minimum pricing policy. This would mean that cheap high-strength drinks - lager, cider, and alcopops for example - would have a price floor under which they could not be sold.

But if the Tory plan might end up increasing the price of those drinks above that floor anyway, making the minimum pricing scheme superfluous, on all but cut-price spirits.

Which makes me wonder whether the entire SNP alcohol strategy should now be re-named as the "Glen's Vodka price increase (Scotland) Act" and have done with it.

Eddie Barnes - Cameron's European nightmare

David Cameron must be wondering this afternoon whether the political Gods vote Labour. On the eve of a party conference which has been months in the planning, and which will be watched intensely by voters across the country as they weigh up the look of their next likely government, the toxic issue of Europe suddenly blows up in his face.

With the news emerging that Ireland has backed the Lisbon treaty, it now looks as the matter will be ratified before the General Election. Cameron is committed to holding a pre-ratification referendum, but still won't say what he'll do if it's ratified by the time he gets in. Ken Clarke says this morning it would be a "disaster" if that issue became the dominant theme of the conference. Disaster? Who mentioned disaster?

Cameron has now issued a statement, repeating his position. "If the Treaty is ratified and in force in all Member States, we have repeatedly said we would not let matters rest there. But we have one policy at a time, and we will set out how we would proceed in those circumstances if, and only if, they happen," he says.

The Cameron position pre-conference appears to be along the lines of "I've yet to make up my mind, and that position is final". Not for the first time, Europe is causing the party a nasty headache. Not what Team Cameron wanted.

Eddie Barnes: Brown vs the media

Fresh from his combative performance at the party conference yesterday, Gordon Brown appears to have decided that along with the Conservatives, he is going to take on the media as well. The Prime Minister was in an unusually confrontational mood during an interview with Sky's Adam Boulton this morning, describing Boulton as "a political propagandist" and repeatedly accusing Sky's political editor of getting his facts wrong, and failing to ask the right questions.

Coming on the morning that Sky's Murdoch stablemate The Sun officially declared for the Conservatives, you can imagine why Brown might be a little sore at the media coverage he is receiving. It's all so unfair isn't it?....last week, he is lauded as World Statesman of the Year by Bono....this week, all the British press pack want to know is whether he's definitely going to cling on until the election date.

The Brown's are said to be furious about whay they see as the bias of the UK press pack. Newly self-cast as official underdog, it now looks as if the PM is preparing to cast the media as part of the great conspiracy trying to force a Conservative government upon the country. It's another of Brown's dividing lines: on the one side, there's him and the silent majority, who want to talk about the "issues that matter"; on the other, there's the media elite who are only interested in froth and personality.

Dangerous ground. It was never an either/or situation. The truth is that both personality and issues matter. Brown could take a leaf out of Lord Mandelson's book who has managed to turn the media's fascination with his own personality to his considerable political advantage.

None of this is that easy to take on board when you're facing the pummelling that Brown is getting at present. But it would be Prime Ministerial to try.

Eddie Barnes: Brown's last stand

GORDON Brown has just arrived in Brighton for the last Labour conference before the general election, and he brings with him a new secret weapon in his bid to beat David Cameron at the next General Election. The secret weapon is called....David Cameron.

Having spoken to Labour contacts today, it appears the entire aim of this conference is to try and shift all the attention away from Brown and instead focus it firmly onto the Conservative leadership. Yes, there will be plenty on the plans Labour has for its next term in office but the main aim will be to put a rocket up the Tories. The message will be along the lines of "you think we're bad? Just wait until the next lot get in." Crucially, this has the advantage of uniting the fractious party faithful, seeing as hating Tories is just about the only thing they can agree on any more. So focussed is the attack that even Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, whose day job up till now has been to shadow the SNP administration, will devote his entire speech on Monday to the Conservative threat. Those on cliche-watch this week should look out for the phrase "elections aren't referendums, they are choices". Count the number of times you hear it.

Rift? What rift? - Eddie Barnes

Gordon Brown has clarified that, contrary to reports this morning claiming that President Obama had ignored his requests for some face time while in New York, in fact they have never stopped talking since he arrived there.

Following widespread reports in this morning's press that the White House snubbed Brown over a meeting, Brown says today: "I talked to President Obama."

For good measure, he adds: "I talked to him at the meetings."

Just in case we hadn't got the message, he goes on: "I talked to him before I came to the meetings here."

He continues: "I had a long talk with him after Monday’s meeting."

And just so as it's crystal clear, he concludes: "We are meeting today, we are chairing two meetings."

Got that? President Obama had better make sure he keeps his bedroom door locked tonight.

Eddie Barnes: Love-bombing the LibDems - Scottish version

The LibDems can hardly move at present without some supposed political opponents attempting to hug them close. With David Cameron trying down south to become Nick Clegg's new best friend, now it is Alex Salmond's turn this morning to suck up close to the men in yellow.

At a conference on devolution this morning, the First Minister has declared that he is "minded" to propose putting a so-called 'multi-option' question to voters in his proposed referendum so that, along with the status quo and independence, voters would be asked whether they would like the Scottish parliament to have more powers. "That seems to me to be an entirely reasonable, consensual and democratic way forward," he declares. The development this morning appears to be that the multi-option referendum is now the SNP's preferred choice of question.

Labour and the Tories won't buy it, but - as we have been reporting over the last two days - the Liberals are swithering all over the place about whether to back the referendum or not. On the one hand, they don't want to help out the SNP by handing them their referendum. On the other, they are not happy at all about being cast by the SNP as part of an arrogant Unionist alliance, denying the people a say. Now Salmond is effectively offering to meet them half-way - if you won't go for dinner, at least let me buy you a drink, he suggests.

Canny politics.....now let's see if Scottish LibDem leader Tavish Scott pukkers up. The lean Shetlander is insistent that he will not back the bill under any circumstances, but the pressure is mounting from within his party. Interesting times.

Eddie Barnes - Brown still unclear on Megrahi

Gordon Brown has just issued another statement on the release of the Lockerbie bomber. He repeated his point that this was a matter for Scottish Ministers. He said he had told Colonel Gaddafi of this point when he met his recently. He pointed out that it was in the wider interests of the UK and the wider world to welcome Libya back into the international community. He insisted there was no double-dealing with regard to Mr Megrahi's release.

"There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, no double-dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to influence Scottish ministers."

But so far as I could tell, he still didn't say whether or not he believed freeing Mr Megrahi was a good thing or not. As a result, the statement will have failed to lay the issue to rest.

Eddie Barnes - Brown butts in on Burma, so why not Scotland?

GORDON Brown is "both saddened and angry" at the decision. He believes that it showed that the authorities were "determined to act with total disregard for accepted standards of the rule of law and in defiance of international opinion".

Has the Prime Minister finally broken his silence over the fate of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi? No. That was the Prime Minister talking earlier this month about the sentencing of Burma's opposition leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi. It seems that when the Burmese judicial system acts, it's the PM's business to make his views known. But when the Scots system does, it isn't.

Amid all the conspiracies about why Brown is refusing to say what he thinks about the decision to release Al-Megrahi, could the truth be a little more mundane? What if, as with Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Brown agrees that Al-Megrahi should indeed be allowed home? Prezza thinks so. The Church of Scotland thinks so. So might the PM also believe in a "compassionte" decision? Not that he can say so, seeing as Scottish Labour has come out four-square against it.

All idle speculation, but until Brown makes his views known, that's all we're left with.

Eddie Barnes: Al-Megrahi and Glasgow North-East

In my column in the Scotsman this morning, I look at how the release of the Lockerbie bomber is going to play out electorally ahead of the Holyrood vote. I forgot to mention the small matter of the Glasgow North-East by election, to be held in November, as well.

According to gleeful Labour canvassers on the streets, Kenny MacAskill's decision to release Mr Al-Megrahi is going down like the proverbial lead balloon - adding to the theory that while the decision will go down well in Glasgow's West End and Edinburgh's Morningside, it won't get quite such a tolerant response in Shettleston and Wester Hailes.

Then last night, the SNP apropos nothing released a statement from their Glasgow North-East candidate David Kerr.

Declares Kerr: "When I first heard of Kenny MacAskill's decision last week, I confess I was sceptical, and my initial thought was that he could perhaps be released into the care of a hospice in Scotland."

"However, like everyone else, I have now had the opportunity to hear the arguments. I watched the Justice Secretary's parliamentary statement on Monday very carefully, and it is obvious that this option would have been totally impractical on the basis of the unacceptable level of security required. In light of all the information and arguments that have come forward, it is now quite clear to me, and I believe a growing number of people in Scotland - of all parties and none - that the Justice Secretary took the right decision, and above all he took it for the right reasons."

What an odd statement. Why bother admitting that you initially disagreed with the idea? Why?

Let's imagine a scene from the Glasgow doorsteps.

Knock on the door. "Good morning. My name is David Kerr. I'm the SNP candidate. Can I count on your vote?"

"Whit? SNP? You tell that ****in' Kenny MacAskill and that ****in' Alex Salmond I'd vote fae ma' dug before I'd vote fae you ***tards. Letting oot criminals! Have ye' lost your mind?"

Kerr shuffles feet, looks over shoulder. "Well of course, between the two of us. I had my doubts as well. In fact, if you read my statement......"

Eddie Barnes - The 2011 election campaign begins

All the Scottish papers today carry the story about Labour's plans for a new Property tax to replace the Council tax.
I was struck by the Daily Record's coverage of the tale, under the headline "Vote For Us and We Will Axe the Council Tax." Do I detect the first shot of the 2011 Scottish election campaign here?
Steamie readers will recall that it was the SNP which went into the 2007 campaign with billboards plastered across Scotland pledging to "axe the tax". But after opting to dump their plans for a Local Income tax, and stick with the Council tax for now, that has now been downgraded to a pledge to freeze the fees.
Now Iain Gray looks like he's going to try and steal Alex Salmond's clothes, and will head into the next campaign pledging to do what Alex didn't.
Only another two years until we actually get to vote......

Eddie Barnes: That nice man, Mr Balls

Education Secretary Ed Balls gives an interview today in which he accuses his fellow Labour MP James Purnell of having a mid-life crisis. This is in response to the fact that Purnell is setting up a think-tank on the future of the Labour party, after quitting the cabinet last month.

Says Balls: "There are times when individuals in their early 40s have crises. They buy motorbikes or go off and travel round the world and have a gap year. Sometimes people do that. I don’t think for political parties to have those kinds of moments is very sensible, especially when you are at your moment of greatest clarity and vision.”

Adds Balls, now is not the time “to be going off to think tanks to find out what your identity really is”.

Those interviewing Balls have little doubt what he is up to: he wants to chop Purnell's legs off now, so that he is seen as the top man post-election defeat.

There was me thinking that the public jockeying for the leadership began after you had actually lost an election and when your leader quit......how naive of me.

Eddie Barnes: Malloch-Brown on Mr Brown

Most of the focus on former Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown's interview in the Telegraph today has rightly focussed on his claim that "we definitely don't have enough helicopters" in Afghanistan (which he is now rowing back on, incidentally).



But the interview contains several other gems from a man who, in the parlance, has hinterland. Malloch-Brown earned his straps as one of the "alpha dogs" in the legendary Sawyer Miller political consultancy in New York - the firm which effectively wrote the rule book in the 1980s and 9os on How to Win Elections. It's fair to say he knows a thing or two about politics.



In the interview, he provides a fascinating insight into the strengths and weaknesses of Gordon Brown. Asked by Mary Riddell whether Gordon Brown has grasped the notion of losing next year, he declares......



"No I don't. That's one reason why, for all the criticism, he is a remarkable leader. He has this Churchillian faith in his belief that he can persuade the British public he's the one."



And whilst admitting that Labour's chances look "incredibly bleak", he nevertheless backs Brown as the man to lead them onwards.



"He'll be the candidate. He's got something no other politician in the Labour party has. He thinks he can win."



Riddell comments: "It is possible to detech in Lord Malloch-Brown's voice more than a hint of disbelief".



Brown won't be giving up, in other words, even when everyone else has thrown in the towel. It might make him delusional. It also means he's a stayer.

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.

Eddie Barnes - By-election for November?

Update.....The SNP has just moved a motion to mandate the Speaker to set a date for the by-election. The Labour chief whip has objected and there will be a vote at 3:30pm. The SNP MP Stewart Hosie is taking great pleasure in accusing Labour MPs of denying puters in Glasgow North East an immediate vote.

More later.....

Eddie Barnes - By-election for November

Unless Labour changes its mind in the next few hours, the Glasgow North East by-election won't be taking place until November. The rules of the House of Commons bar a party from calling a by-election during recess, meaning that - once the House rises for the summer this evening - it won't be until October until the writ can be moved. The by-election must then be held within 21 days.

Labour says it is delaying because it doesn't want to hold a by-election in early August when many people in Glasgow are still on holiday. Seeing as it is only a year ago that Labour held a by-election in Glasgow in midsummer (July 24th to be exact; they lost Glasgow East) this explanation is being taken with a pinch of salt. Conspiracist SNP strategists are muttering darkly that the real reason for Labour's delay is because it wants the by-election in early November so that it clashes with the Nationalists' annual conference, in Inverness, which is being held just beforehand.

Whatever the truth, the SNP isn't complaining. After all, if the delay really was so bad, they could move the writ themselves. In fact, the delay helps them. Following the tortuous selection process which saw two candidates drop out, before former BBC journalist David Kerr was given the post last week, the SNP will welcome the time he now has to get round the constituency.

Despite Kerr's various difficulties thus far (see previous posts), there is little doubt that he is the candidate that many Labour high-ups didn't want. Which - to my mind - makes it all the more puzzling as to why Labour has now given him time to set up an operation. Hesitation is fatal after all....

Labour does have one other option. If parliament is recalled this summer because of the Swine flu crisis, the writ could be moved then, meaning a by-election in late August or early September. Party sources say this would is their most favoured option.

Not that they actually want the flu pandemic to get worse, I should add.

Eddie Barnes: The Thick of It, for real

Who needs Armando Ianucci when the real thing is twice as funny......I've been e-mailed the transcript of Andrew Neil's interview with Tory shadow chief secretary to the treasury Phillip Hammond earlier this week on the Conservative plans for a "bonfire of the quangos". Its quite long but it's a hoot. Read on......


Speakers: Andrew Neil
Phillip Hammond


Andrew Neil: So how many do you think you’ll get rid of?

Phillip Hammond: Well this isn’t a crude bonfire of the quangos. What David has said this morning is there are some quangos which we will need to keep because they do jobs which are properly at arms’ length from government. There are others which will need to be radically reformed and there are some which can be scrapped altogether..

AN: So how many will you get rid of?

PH: We’re working our way through that process.

AN: So how many will you get rid of?

PH: I don’t have a total number, we don’t know yet at this stage…

AN: You’ve been in opposition 12 years. Has it only just dawned on you to cut quangos?

PH: All my spending departmental colleagues are looking at the quangos that answer to their departments and categorising them into these three categories.

AN: How many will you create?

PH: Well we haven’t said that we won’t create any new bodies, for example the Office of Budget Responsibility…

AN: So that’s a new one you will create.

PH: It’s a key part of our plan to create a fiscal…

AN: No I understand the purpose, but it’s a quango. Office of Tax Simplification?

PH: Er, the Office of Tax Simplification also a key part of our plans.

AN: So that’s two. An Australian-style sports commission?

PH: An Australian-style sports commission?

AN: You promised that too.

PH: Er, ok. But…

AN: So that’s three.

PH: OK, but Andrew but the point is every body whether existing or proposed will have to pass the test that David has set out this morning…

AN: Yeah but you propose them. A Skills Advisory Service?

PH: They will have to pass the test that David has set out…

AN: So that’s another quango.

PH: …this morning. Do they perform a technical function that happens to be done at arms-length from government, do they perform an allocation function which needs to be politically impartial or do they perform a transparency function like the Office of National Statistics…

AN: A Defence Export Services organisation, that’s another one you’re going to create?

PH: Well that’s a body frankly that existed that existed until very recently…

AN: So you’ll create another quango?

PH: the government has folded it in to another body and we’re saying that it needs to continue to operate in order to support our…

AN: I’m sure there’s good reasons for it all, creating these 17 new quangos that you promised…

PH: Andrew we’re talking about 1,100 quangos in total…

AN: Yeah but you can’t…I’ve got 17 here you’re going to create if you get into power. You can’t give me 17 you’re going to get rid of.

PH: I can promise you it will be a lot more than 17.

AN: Well give me 17?

PH: Well David’s announced two this morning…

AN: Right, so far you’ve got net 15?

PH: I can’t promise you about the Potato Board because we haven’t looked in detail at that yet but we all know there are hundreds of quangos that we know no longer need to operate independently, at arms-length from government.


.....wonderful stuff.

Eddie Barnes - Brown falls into the trap again

The exchanges at PMQs today perfectly highlighted the Conservative trap which Brown obligingly keeps falling into. Cameron repeatedly asked Brown to correct his assertion last week that capital spending will increase until the Olympics in 2012 (the figures, from the 2009 budget, are actually as follows: 2009: £44bn; 2010, £36 billion; 2011, £29 billion; 2012, £26bn).

Pretty bang to rights you might think. But Brown wouldn't admit it. Instead he laboured on about the increase in spending between 2007-08 and 2009-10. OK, but unless the Olympics is being moved forward by two years, this doesn't explain his claim from last week.

The actual numbers game here is a side show. The Conservatives' real aim is to expose Brown's evasive behaviour. The tactic is simple. The Tories know that Brown will never ever concede anything to them, so deep is his hatred for them. So they simply ask him to do something reasonable - like admitting to his little porkie over spending last week - and then sit back, happy in the knowledge that, once he has turned down their request, his unreasonableness will have been exposed for all to see.

Imagine if Brown had just admitting to his mistake about spending going up right until the Olympics in 2012. He might have said something like "you know what, I'm glad you raised that because the truth is I got that bit wrong. I'd like to apologise to the House about that. But I'd also like to point out that at least we've brought forward capital spending until 2010."

Yes, he would have had 160 Tory MPs screeching at him. But so what? The sound of Tory MPs screeching is guaranteed to turn off swing voters. And the public watching the exchanges on the telly would have admired Brown for his honesty. But it's not Brown's style, is it? Keep digging......

Eddie Barnes - Trapped in Summit Land

Sometimes the closer you get to something, the less you see.

Welcome to the vast hermetically sealed aircraft hangar at the ExCel Centre in East London where the world's media are gathered to cover the G20 summit in London. All signs of normal humanity disappeared as we arrived this morning, as we entered Summit Land - like an aircraft departure lounge without the charm. Now, trapped inside, with not even a window to see the outside world, the media is hanging around waiting for something to happen. The only contact with the real planet are the 24-hour news channels which everyone can watch at home - although at least here you can actually wander up to the cameras and watch them live.

Updates so far: there are some very tasty granny smith apples being handed out. The leaders apparently are able to sit on red sofas if they so choose in order to get comfortable. They have just posed for a nice photo. Er, that's it.

You heard it here first.

Eddie barnes - Griffiths' stock rises

Labour MP Nigel Griffiths will not lose his job as a result of his indiscretions in the House of Commons, as revealed in the News of the World at the weekend. Griffiths declared he was "deeply sorry" and "ashamed" after the Screws published details of the Edinburgh MP's alleged sex session within the parliamentary grounds, but Labour sources inform me that there is no likelihood of one of Gordon Brown's mates being deselected as the next election. He has already been named as the Labour candidate in Edinburgh South.

Indeed, there is some speculation that the revelations might end up actually helping Griffiths' bid to cling onto his seat, which he held last time round with a majority of barely 400. The assumption that philandering politicians are punished by the electorate isn't borne out by the evidence, they point out; indeed, in some cases (see John Major) juicy revelations of sexual indiscretions may actually serve to boost their grey image.

Or as one old hand put it to me today: "Trousers down, majority up."

Eddie Barnes - Swinney needs to up the pace

John Swinney was perfectly within his rights yesterday to complain to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper about the extent of public sector spending cuts which are heading our way soon. The extent of those cutbacks will continue to be disputed by the two sides but there is little doubt that belts are going have to be tightened drastically in public sector Scotland at a time when costs (see pensions, equal pay settlements, you name it) are going to keep rising. If Swinney can wring some extra cash out of the Treasury by making life politically uncomfortable for them, all well and good.

But the quid quo pro has to be that Swinney starts focussing more on getting a bigger bang for his buck in the money he already controls. I am getting worrying reports from contacts within the public finance field who fear that whilst the Finance Secretary is talking a good game, he hasn't yet grasped the nettle about the scale of the task ahead of him. There is no doubt that Swinney has to tighten the purse strings and has about a year in which to do it before the cuts kick in. But where is the methodology and the timescale? Has he brought in some advisers to run the rule through his balance sheet? Does he have some drastic solutions up his sleeve - which will undoubtedly be required - and, if so, isn't it time he started preparing the ground for them? Or is he happy simply to see services go to the wall and blame Westminster?

Lots of questions, and people are beginning to wonder whether Swinney's got the answers.

Eddie Barnes - The Ivan effect

Speaking to a well-connected Labour party contact the other day, he suddenly raised the political effect of the sad death of Ivan Cameron. My contact was pretty adamant. "I think it will seal the deal for Cameron," he said.

This might be viewed by many people as a pretty tasteless conversation but I am guessing my friend was only airing what is on the minds of many in the Labour and Tory parties. Ivan Cameron's death will have humanised his father in the eyes of the public more than anything that has happened since he took over the job. Few people feel a natural empathy for the priveliged class which Cameron represents but it is hard to feel antipathy for a man who has lost his treasured first-born son. That is one more barrier to voting for Cameron well and truly obliterated. There is an emotional connection between people and the Tory leader now that wasn't there before - and as has been shown time and time before, people generally don't vote with their heads, but with their hearts.

I raise this now because we're due a few polls, which will have assessed public opinion in the light of the events of the last few weeks. It will be fascinating, if ghoullish, to see what they say.

Eddie Barnes - Pension Scandal

The pack are out in force against Sir Fred Goodwin this morning, following the news that he is already drawing a £650,000 a year pension, despite being only 50.

My e-mail basket is filling up with politicians jumping on the bandwagon. Alastair Darling says it can't be justified, bearing in mind Sir Fred's failures. Labour MSP John Park says the pension should, at the very least, be stopped until Sir Fred reaches normal retirement age (I wonder if he extends the same view towards former Labour First Ministers who also got their pensions the moment they quit).

Coincidentally, an e-mail from the Taxpayers Alliance also dropped into my e-mail basket this morning. The Alliance has produced new research showing that local government pensions, excluding teachers and firemen, have now reached £4.5bn, or equivalent to every £1 in every £5 of council tax raised.

Somehow, I doubt Messers Darling and Park will summon up quite the same level of outrage towards their Local Government friends as they are doing against Sir Fred. It is shoot-a-banker month after all....

Eddie Barnes - Habeus Papam. Maybe.

The Pope might be coming to Scotland next year. Or the year after. Or he might not be.

We hear that Gordon Brown, visiting the Vatican earlier this week, extended an invitation to Benedict XVI to come to the UK, potentially to mark the beatification of the famous 19th century Catholic convert, Cardinal Newman. Number Ten suggested that such a visit might include a trip up to Scotland.

The Vatican has declared that there are no plans whatsoever for a trip to Britain, and the PM's invite has been met with derision by some, including Scotland on Sunday columnist Gerald Warner. Certainly, as this particular Pope has not exactly clocked up the air miles since his election, it's unlikely at present.

If he does, I wonder if I might drop in on Iona. I understand that Brown's gift to the Pope was a small Iona cross, brought from the tiny island off Mull from where St Columba spread Christianity to these shores. Might Brown have planted a seed? This Pope likes to remind people that Europe is a Christian continent - I wonder if he'll be heading for the Oban ferry?

Eddie Barnes - Hazel tells it like it is.

Finally, somebody in the Labour cabinet has had the guts to say something on-the-record on the great "What-do-we-do-with-Gordon" dilemma. Step forward human dynamo, leather-clad motocyclist Hazel Blears.

In a speech to constituents, the Communities Secretary declares today: "My message to my colleagues is simple: get a grip. Our first loyalty is to the British people. If they think we are more interested in our own jobs than theirs, they will not forgive us."

She adds: "If the mindset is all about what happens after some future election defeat, then the game's up. All this political positioning just helps the Tories."

Hi Ed! Hi Harriet!

Blears's comments will not be welcomed in Number 10 because they finally stand up what everyone knows to be true but which up till now could be dismissed as media tittle-tattle; that with Labour's poll ratings doing even worse than the FTSE and with defeat looming, Cabinet ministers are indeed trying to position themselves as the successor to Brown. It's hilarious to see the petty machinations of these ambitious ministers outed by Blears' guileless honesty.

Two points to make. One, I suspect that the public will respond very well to Blears' kind of straight-talking. Two, I bet plenty that David Cameron would absolutely hate to face her at the next general election.

Just a thought....

Eddie Barnes - TB GBs lives on

Essential reading for all political junkies is an article in this morning's Times by Tony Blair's former speechwriter Phil Collins (of SW1, not Genesis). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5754901.ece

The piece dissects the Brown leadership style from someone who has seen it on the inside. Collins' central point is that the PM's obsession with political positioning - with finding clear water between him and the hated Conservatives - has ensured that Labour has vacated the centre-ground to David Cameron. "Labour defined itself against what the Tories said. So it is that Labour now finds itself just to the left of sensible on everything," Collins declares. Blairite education reforms from the dog days of TB's empire were dumped to satisfy a few backbenchers and merrily nicked by the Conservatives, he points out. Now, the government has got "bogged down in guidelines for rhubarb crumble recipes and instructions for playgrounds to be painted". The "crumbling empire" of the Home Office has "no policy to speak of" because "the government thinks of crime as a political event....the strategy is clear; close down the topic, stop talking about it, somehow it will go away." It's damning stuff, personal stuff: "He (Brown) doesn't like equality because it's a good idea. He doesn't like it because it's right. He likes it because it's political useful." Ouch.

Damning stuff, and Collins doesn't even sugar the pill with a closing "of-course-he-could-still-turn-it-around" paragraph. The message is that, under Brown, all is lost. I guess the piece might well be written off as a predictable attack from an uber-Blairite (who now is a full-time writer for the Times), but the fact that such a senior former member of Team Blair has chosen to speak out like this is fascinating for tea-leaf readers like me. The constant feuding between Brown and Blair were known as the "TB-GBs" - as of this morning, it appears the feud lives on.

Eddie Barnes - Labour's power is draining away

David Freud, the former government welfare adviser on whose transfer to the Tories we reported at the weekend, explains today why he chose to go. "I got on incredibly well with (Work and Pensions Secretary) James Purnell, but you have to assess where you can make the most impact."

So, it wasn't a difference in policy which made him go. It wasn't a clash of personalities. The reason is far worse for Labour than that. It was that Freud decided to head over to where the action was (or will soon be). Once that kind of thing starts happening, it usually spells curtains for the government.

You can be pretty confident that there are lots of people right now - civil servants, donors, celebrities -who are also assessing where they can make the most impact, and deciding that they too, like Freud, should throw in their lot with the Conservatives. You wouldn't want to be a Johnny-come-lately to the party after all would you?

Just when it looked like it couldn't get any worse, it's been announed today that Tony Blair - fresh from beating Brown to an audience with Barack Obama - has won $1m for his leadership on the world stage. He won the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University in respect of his "foresight", "exceptional intelligence" and "steadfast determination" to end conflicts.

It looks increasingly the case that Teflon Tony got out at the right time.

Eddie Barnes: Mea culpa, mea culpa

THE gang of four who presented themselves to the Commons Treasury Select Committee this morning - Sir Fred Goodwin, Sir Tom McKillop, Lord Stevenson and Andy Hornby - were falling over themselves to say sorry during their grilling by MPs. There wasn't the usual mealy-mouthed formulation you tend to hear at this occasions ("if people feel that we have done something out of place, then of course we are sorry about that") but full-frontal, no-nonsense embarrassed apologies for getting everything so horribly wrong.

Good. But now the mob want more. David Cameron hit the airwaves this afternoon to declare that, now that the banks have said sorry, it is time Gordon Brown did so as well. "I think it is now time we had some apologies and admitting to mistakes from the Government," he declared.

Don't hold your breath. Despite efforts from within Downing Street - where aides are said to be eager for Brown to show some humility- Brown has so far resisted the urge to offer up his own mea culpa. The closest he came was his statement last week that plans to toughen up banking regulations could be seen as "an acceptance that it wasn't strong enough" beforehand. Not exactly crystal clear is it? I very much doubt Brown is capable of standing up and simply saying sorry; he is hard-wired to resist giving such presents to his hated political opponents.

This is all very well, but, in this scenario, it won't wash. Something truly enormous has gone wrong and to simply blame it on America or the global banking system -as Brown has tried - will not convince people. To press on in this way, is to put the short-term political game before the far-greater prize of restoring some trust between him and the public.

So rather than jerking his knee in response to Cameron's words this afternoon, Brown should ask himself this: Why is Cameron demanding his apology? Might it be because the Tory leader know it is the one sure fire way to ensure Brown won't make one? Might Cameron actually want Brown to carry on in this manner? Why does Cameron continually bangs on about Brown "not being straight with people"? Because it works?

The PM should give Cameron what he asks for. The Banking chiefs have shown the way. Time to 'fess up.

Next Year's Budget - Eddie Barnes

I realise everyone has had read quite enough about the SNP budget negotiations, but here's one final word as the parties look ahead to next year's round.

As Alex Salmond said in the chamber yesterday, the budget for 2009-10 is going to involve real cuts in the Scottish Government's coffers. This is an entirely new development for our MSPs who have only had to decide since 1999 on how exactly they are going to eat their way through an ever-bigger cake. It means that the focus of opposition parties needs to change from what they can get from the SNP government to what they can the SNP Government to save.

The LibDems look signed up for this, and it is clearly fertile territory for the Tories (if they are prepared to risk looking nasty). Who knows, even Labour might have the courage to do what it knew it had to in government but lacked the political will.

They should start work now on what bureacracy and waste can be hacked off in the next 12 months so that, when the axe falls this time next year, it isn't our schools and hospitals that suffer.

Eddie Barnes - Local Income Tax row...round 237.

The main Scottish political story of the day is the revelation in this morning's Times that the boss of HM Revenue and Customs, David Hartnett, is claiming there is "no legal basis" for the SNP's local income tax proposal and that his organisation would refuse to collect it. This rather scuppers things. The SNP was already on the offensive yesterday, accusing the Treasury of "bullying", etc. Cue Holyrood vs Westminster war Round 237.

Who gains from all this custard pie throwing? For the SNP, there are plenty of upsides. First off, the fact that the LIT is unlikely to be enacted will not trouble them too much seeing as a consultation revealed that a large majority of public Scotland is against it. And if it does collapse, they can (a) blame Westminster and the other parties for having blocked it and (b) stress how, as a back-stop, they've managed to freeze Council tax.

For Labour and the Tories, the hope will be that the constant stream of stories about the SNP's LIT plans will keep forcing the SNP to continually defend an unpopular policy, whilst giving them an opportunity to point out how bad it is.

However, as stated above, the SNP can always fall back on that highly popular Council tax freeze as the joker in their pack. There's an argument for saying that opposition leaders such as Iain Gray should respond with his own council tax reform package to blunt the SNP's counter-offensive, but opposition strategists say they want to keep the SNP where they want them - defending LIT. Nor would they want to give the SNP a sighter of their own council tax reforms so long before the next Scottish elections.

Expect a few more rounds in this one before a knockout blow is landed.

Brown Speaks to The One - Eddie Barnes

So Gordon Brown has finally got his prized phone call from Barack Obama, 72 hours after The One's inauguration. An event with the Prime Minister in Glasgow this afternoon was delayed while Brown waited for his phone to ring. We are told Brown got a full 45 minutes with Obama . "They spoke about the economy, the Middle East and other international issues. The tone of the conversation was friendly and substantive," says a spokesman. To quote David Cameron, presumably Brown didn't tell Obama that this was "no time for a novice".

It now seems increasingly the case that Brown is going to lose out in the race to become the first foreign guest to the Obama White House, with Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel seen as the most likely first footers.
The consolation prize - being Obama's first host - is still up for grabs for Brown however - Obama is due in London in early April for the G20 economic summit.