The Glenrothes election is for Westminster and the only connection with the Scottish Parliament is that the SNP government would like to encourage voters to believe that one more SNP MP at Westminster is worth voting for because his party colleages in a differently organised parliament are more popular and successful.

The SNP will not win in Glenrothes, Labour will lose, and sombody else has to get the votes. Scottish voters will not vote Conservative, and where the LibDems don’t appear to be the best buy for the negative voters they use the SNP.

The SNP don’t mind being used, but they must be wondering how they can turn negative voting which favours of their candidates into support for their referendum.

Recent financial melodramas won’t make much difference by themselves, but inasmuch that they draw attention to the obscene rewards for some whose talents are only average (as they must be) and because some of them must be the Non-Doms that a little while ago the party of the left told us made such a contribution to the economy that they could not be taxed lest they went elsewhere, then they may think that a government so bemused by the perceived success of the very rich that it allows them greater influence over government policy than the wider party needs some time in opposition to connect with its roots and the lives of its supporters.

Spoil Sport.

Peter.

Please tell me: wasn’t there a need for a broader range of views around the boardroom table beyond the parochial Scottish mafia headed by Goodwin and Matthewson?

Do you think it is realistic to claim that RBS could have been bailed out by the proceeds of North Sea oil when this was already allocated to cover the SNP’s proposed budget deficit (and wouldn’t have been sufficient in any case)?

So how else except by English money are all those jobs at the lavish new RBS HQ in Gogarburn to be saved?

Even with independence Scottish monetary policy would still be decided de facto by the Bank of England until it was to be transferred to Frankfurt because you have no plans for a central bank and integration into the Eurozone can’t be expected to be immediate, so in the SNP vision independence actually means greater dependence PLUS less influence – “play our part” is empty rhetoric in default of a real plan or any real ideas.

The Herald article you cite appears to be basing its naive conclusions on entirely subjective identity politics, and not objective brass tacks. The issue here is not any constitutional settlement, but the market structure and the regulatory regime – and with the example of RBS to back up the SNP’s case it’s clear that the former and the latter are completely separate.

But I guess we will have to wait until the Glenrothes referendum on the SNP’s inadequate shambles to prove how the public calculate their judgement. I agree that the public might answer that you’ve done nothing wrong, but they may equally say you’ve done nothing.