Our mates the Conservatives.....!!

There are two different sides to the Conservatives portrayed in the news media today, showing the good and bad sides to them.

Prime Minister David Cameron was on The Andrew Marr Show this morning. At this early stage, it has to be said that he comes across well, confident and articulate, answering questions directly and not letting the interviewer (Andrew Marr) dominate the discussion. It became very apparent what the breadth of his ambition for reforming the welfare state was, by progressively replacing a whole host of different benefits by a single universal benefit. The fine details of how that might work will be of great interest to all of us and will require very careful scrutiny to see if it actually lives up to the billing, particularly by us Liberal Democrats, who will of course be able to affect the outcome of this by being part of the coalition government. The outcome will be massively important to Scotland, because social welfare is still a reserved matter.

Irrespective of where this is going, and it is too early yet to really have much of a feel for things, is'nt it refreshing to have the big issues like this actually being debated and analyzed by government? Politics in Scotland has been very stale over the past 4 years with the SNP in office but not really in power, with nothing in the way of substantive political discussion taking place at all.

Many people will welcome these big issues being debated in this way. Hopefully a consensus can be arived at and the better ideas taken forward in a constructive manner.

The Scottish Tories are not nearly as impressive. Scotland on Sunday leads today with their intention now not to veto coalition government here any more. I had never really been fully conscious of this before, but can it really be any surprise that they have never progressed themselves when they have stubbornly refused to even be considered for a position in the administration here in Scotland? "Vote for us and we wont be in power......"

Even more bizzarely, the Scottish Tories are now openly touting the SNP as their favoured coalition partners. The Nats will surely love that. As if Labour in Scotland did'nt have a big enough lead over them as it is. The Tories wont do a deal with Labour on ideological grounds (Such a coalition would be unthinkable anyway), and apparently we are not big or important enough for them in Scotland.

Whatever happened to letting the people cast their votes and then seeing what the overall arithmetric suggests? How does anyone know at this stage how many seats anyone else is going to get?

Anyway, it looks as though in 2011 we will be treated to the sight of Annabel Goldie trying to impress Alex Salmond with her tartan knickers after all. The mind boggles.......


......methinks the Holyrood election strategy for us has suddenly become a whole lot easier.