David Maddox: Murphy's law

You know when the silly season has begun because political parties start sending pictures of their opponents committing parking violations.
But this one is wholly deserved. Labour yesterday released a picture of SNP Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson using disabled parking spots for his electric car test (scroll down to the post two below this one) accompanied by the usual expressions of shock and outrage. So today the SNP have responded.
They found me this picture of Labour Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy with his car parked on double yellow lines near the Palace of Westminster. To make matters worse it actually appears on the Scotland Office website.

I seem to remember that there are some security risk issues about parking in that area too.
But the real lesson here is political parties in glass houses should not throw stones.
I guess we won't be having any games like this off the Lib Dems because we all remember the time when former Scottish leader Nicol Stephen parked his campaign bus on double yellow lines too.

David Maddox: Nicol Stephen returns to his political roots

Amid the turmoil of the SNP's volte face on local income tax a small act of defiance by one of Holyrood's more notable MSPs went largely unreported.

Nicol Stephen (pictured), former Deputy First Minister, ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats but still MSP for Aberdeen South, voted against the local government finance motion. He was the only MSP to do so.

The reason for this was not that he wanted councils to be denied their money (which is what would have happened if a majority had done as he did), but because he wanted to register a protest against Aberdeen's continued chronic under-funding at the bottom of the local authority league in terms of cash per head of population.

As he said in his speech yesterday: "If Aberdeen received the Scottish average funding support, it would get more than £60 million extra per year; if it received the same as the city of Dundee, it would get more than £100 million extra; and if it received as much as Glasgow, it would get more than £160 million extra each and every year."

It is interesting that Mr Stephen's political career was originally built on him being a champion of Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland. This is how he won the Kincardine and Deeside by-election for Westminster in 1991.

But in Holyrood many of his colleagues in the North East felt that he had forgotten what made him. As Deputy First Minister he seemed to do nothing to deal with the imbalance of funds for Aberdeen allowed the Labour dominated Scottish Executive to continue to divert money to the West of Scotland.

There are some who still blame him as Enterprise Minister for failing to make sure the bid for the multi-billion pound Energy Technology Institute was not based in Aberdeen. Eventually the open competition he allowed meant that Glasgow was chosen under an SNP government to lead the ultimately failed Scottish bid instead of the Granite City, the UK's energy capital.

In the last election Mr Stephen's majority was slashed from 8,016 to 2,732 by the SNP's Maureen Watt, even though she spent much of her time helping Alex Salmond win Gordon.

But now free of the fetters of power Mr Stephen is back as a local champion. Yesterday's small act of diefiance may be the first of many and should also confirm that, contrary to rumour, he intends to fight his seat again.

But the question remains - one that may be asked of SNP Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead about Elgin bypass in his Moray constituency - is that why does power obscure an MSP or MP's need to fight for their constituents?

David Maddox: The numbers game (3)

The Yougov poll mentioned in Saturday's posting had some interesting results, as you may have seen in a Sunday publication.

Despite apparently gaining in popularity from the 2007 election, though, on the basis of this poll in a Holyrood election the SNP would stay on their current 47 seats with Labour (44, -2), Lib Dem (13, -3), and Independent (0, -1) losses being taken up by the Tories (18, +1), Greens (5, +3) and Scottish Socialist Party (2, +2).

But, a briefing I have received from a senior SNP strategist shows that gains in pure numbers does not tell the whole picture. What is more important, as far as he and his colleagues are concerned, for long term success is the significant gain of nine constituency of first past the post (FPTP) seats.

This would see defeats for some big names - Labour's finance spokesman Andy Kerr (pictured left, in a different sort of tough race) in East Kilbride along with former Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen in Aberdeen South would both go. Even the poor Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson, would be swept away in Galloway & Upper Nithsdale.

Other SNP gains would be: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; Ross, Skye and Inverness West; Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale; Aberdeen Central; Airdrie & Shotts; and Linlithgow.

As the senior SNP strategist explained: "My point would be that it’s better to win FPTP seats than list seats (although obviously good to win both!) – constituency MSPs are better able to dig in, build the base, etc.
"2003 was interesting – we fell back overall but won more FPTP seats than in 1999 – which was a healthy pointer to the future. And of course we won a pile of FPTP seats in 2007.

"Basically, the SNP used to be good at winning votes, and not good at winning seats (eg. the ’92 election). Now we are good at both – which in turn bodes well for the next Westminster election."