Alex Salmond

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It's now official. The Scottish Government will bring forward plans for a vote on independence in 2010. Alex Salmond announced the Referendum Bill in Holyrood today as the centrepiece of the SNP's new programme for government.

On the face of it, this was something  of an empty gesture, as Salmond's minority government does not have the votes to get the bill through the Scottish Parliament. Yet wise heads like the BBC's Brian Taylor and Slugger's Brian Walker believe there is more to the story than that.

Even if it falls, the referendum bill is likely to keep the constitutional issue on the agenda until the next Holyrood election.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Could victory in the Glenrothes by-election set the seal on Gordon Brown's political comeback? Labour pollsters have told the Prime Minister that they will win on the back of his handling of the banking crisis, according to the BBC.

As the Sunday Times noted at the weekend, the credit crunch has prompted a reassessment of the viability of Scottish independence. Brown himself has not been afraid to make the argument, citing the UK bailout of HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland:

"We were able to act decisively with £37bn. That would not have been possible for a Scottish administration.

"We've seen the problems in Iceland, we've seen the problems in Ireland, we were able to put the whole strength of the United Kingdom's resources behind these two banks and I think it's important because I value the Scottish banking tradition, I think that everybody does." 

Whether it is Brown's interests to preserve the Scottish banking tradition is open to question. Many now believe that the Downing Street-arranged merger of HBOS with Lloyds-TSB is unnecessary. The deal will inevitably weaken Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, and thereby, incidentally, the case for Scottish independence. One cannot help but wonder whether this was a factor in Brown's pursuit of this option.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The credit crunch has shaken the political kaleidoscope at Holyrood as well as at Westminster. In both cases, somewhat counter-intuitively perhaps, Labour has been the initial beneficiary.

The shotgun merger between HBOS and Lloyds may have seemed like an open goal for Alex Salmond, but many feel he overplayed his hand, not least with his suggestion that an independent Scotland could have bailed out HBOS.

Former Scottish Lib Dem leader Jim Wallace argues that the episode has highlighted unanswered questions about monetary policy and financial regulation in an independent Scotland.

In his latest contribution to OurKingdom's debate about the future of the UK, Gerry Hassan points to the limits of nationalism as a response to neo-liberalism. Scotland's nationalist leader Alex Salmond has inadvertently whipped up a media storm by arguing that Scots 'didn't mind the economic side of' Thatcherism. The furure has exposed the contradictions of a country where mainstream politicians are as united in tacitly accepting Thatcher's legacy as in publicly abominating her policies.

David Marquand (Oxford, oD author): From 600 miles away, British politics seem more than usually dismal, and more than usually petty. The sight of Labour MPs running around complaining about Brown's faults only a year after they gave him the leadership on a plate is deeply unedifying, to put it at its lowest. Nothing new has happened to his character or style since he became leader. He is still the person he has been for the last 20 years and more. If his MPs have now changed their minds about him that tells us more about their gutlessness than about his inadequacies. If he's unfit for the job now, he was unfit a year ago. If he was fit then, he's fit now.

But Brown's personality is not the real issue in any case. The first and most obvious point to make about Glasgow East is that it happened in Scotland, and that the Scottish National Party won! I don't think it was a vote against the Union, but I do think it was a vote against the way in which the devolution legislation was framed. New Labour was trying to have its cake and eat it - to appease the manifest Scottish demand for Home Rule, while maintaining the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament and the inequitable absurdities of the Barnett formula on finance. It was always likely that this would blow up in Labour's face sooner or later; and in Glasgow East it did so with an almighty bang.

Fair Deal (Slugger O'Toole): The Barnett formula has fundamental flaws and failed in its aim of equalisation. The IPPR report Fair Shares attempts to offer a new way forward for the UK, but the alternative has its own flaws, key questions are sidestepped and it will probably be Alex Salmond who determines whether Barnett reaches 40 years of age.

Tom Griffin (London, OK):In the wake of the Glasgow East by-election, commentators such as Iain MacWhirter, Peter Oborne and Simon Jenkins, have been examining the prospect of Scottish independence with increasing seriousness.

The Constitution Unit's Professor Robert Hazell provides a useful counterpoint over at Comment is Free. He suggests that there are four major obstacles the SNP must overcome to achieve its goal.

1. Winning a vote in the Scottish Parliament authorising a referendum.
2. Winning a referendum to authorise independence negotiations.
3. Negotiating terms with the British Government and with the European Union.
4. Winning a second referendum on the agreed terms.

The final hurdle is Hazell's most distinctive contribution, as Guy Aitchison noted back in May, and may be the most contentious. Some might equate insisting on a second referendum with a eurocrat-style refusal to accept the result of the first.

Such tactics look increasingly unlikely to save the Lisbon Treaty, and they would not necessarily save the union.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon):Today is the final day of campaigning in the Glasgow East by-election. Initial speculation about a Labour meltdown that could spell the end for Gordon Brown has largely died away, but Alex Salmond has refused to back away from predictions that the vote would be a 'political earthquake'.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Labour finally selected its candidate for the Glasgow East by-election last night, former Holyrood Minister Margaret Curran

Conservatives should be hoping that Curran succeeds in holding off the SNP, according to former Telegraph leader writer Richard Ehrman. 

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Crewe and Nantwich by-election will be concentrating many minds on the prospect of a Conservative government, not least in Scotland , where the Tories have only one MP.

That position has led some to suggest that the Conservatives would be better off conceding the SNP's case and hiving off Scotland altogether. In a speech to the party's Scottish Conference, Cameron set his face against that approach:

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Is Alex Salmond banking on a hung Parliament after the next general election? That's the 'cunning plan' that Brian Taylor believes he's uncovered in his interview with the Scottish First Minister at the SNP spring conference yesterday.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon) The Telegraph's Damian Thompson has a theory about why Gordon Brown is considering ditching the Act of Settlement.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon) Constitutional reformers are spoilt for choice in Scotland at the moment. A day after the Labour /Lib Dem /Tory announcement that Sir Kenneth Calman will head the Commission to Review the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government has unveiled the second phase of its National Conversation.

Gareth Young reviews Where Stands the Union now? Lessons from the 2007 Scottish Parliament election by John Curtice, ippr.

(ippr, February 2008, 13pp)

New ippr report's use of polling data underplays Scottish and English dissatisfaction with the current Union settlement.

To begin Professor Curtice looks at Scotland's position in the Union, and he casts a critical eye over commercial polls that indicate significant support for independence. What is understood by 'independence' is crucial and he suggests that for many respondents 'independence' means greater autonomy within the Union, rather than separation.

Anthony Barnett (Edinburgh, OK): I'm up in Edinburgh where I went to hear Tom Nairn deliver last night's 16th Edinburgh Lecture Globalization and Nationalism: The New Deal? (Republished in openDemocracy.) He was introduced by the government's First Minister Alex Salmond who hosted a reception afterwards. Here is a picture of the two of them, the First Minister is just sitting down after lauding the speaker. I think I need a new camera but it is the only picture there is.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just able to reflect on interview with Alex Salmond towards the close of this morning Today programme. While Iain Dale went away thinking about life in the Tory shadow cabinet as Cameron creates a hostage to fortune, I can't shake off the echoes of Scotland's first minister being interviewed about his New Year's message by Sarah Montague. He was patronised from the opening "good morning to you". He delightfully wrong-footed the BBC whose poll information on "outright" independence was as out of date as their information on what he actually said. But it was the tone, the "do we have to interview him again, can he really matter?" which he patiently dealt with, wisely refusing to go on about when Brown last talked with him on the phone as, unable to expose him as unimportant, Montague tried to stir up a personal fight and make it all about personalities. Unlike the interview with Cameron  it struck me there was no respect for a serious leader, who is, after all, in office.

Christopher Harvie (Fife, author and MSP): 'Don't mention the Woman!' could have been the silent sentence in David Cameron's 'ugly stain of separation' speech of Tuesday 11 December in Edinburgh. The days when 'TBW' was a Conservative-generated acronym for 'That Bloody Woman' are long past, but the Scottish Tory party is polling under a third of the UK level. Little improvement in its fortunes will result from Cameron's initiative.

Jon Bright (London, OK): Internal contradictions, anomalies and unfairnesses, like those which characterise Britain's current constitutional makeup, need not necessarily be fatal to a system, if people are willing to ignore. But they do create weak spots - whose presence will only be felt when pressure is put upon them. The unfinished devolution settlement which Labour served up post 1997 therefore doesn't put the Union in trouble by the mere fact of its existence - but the West Lothian question and all the other questions it threw up provide points of weakness that can be exploited by those who want more (eg federalism) or want to break up Britain.

Gavin Yates (Edinburgh, GYMedia): The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has taken the unprecedented step of writing to all 189 signatories of the International Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in an attempt to get all nuclear weapons out of Scotland.Salmond is asking them to back his bid for Scotland to have observer status at future treaty talks. The countries that the FM has contacted include Iran and Zimbabwe, causing one Scottish Labour MSP to say: "He has written to some very despotic and dangerous individuals, which we have very sensitive and complex relationships with, and treated it like a weekly political football. It is potentially very damaging to our national security."

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As Cameron prepares for the 'speech of his life' it seems to me that the national question looms as the defining issue. It was not mentioned at all in the discussion about the coming speech on this morning's Today programme, But this absence is evidence of political class unease: the repression below the media 'frankness'. As the tide recedes from the Labour Conference what stands out is the number of times Gordon Brown mentioned Britain and Britishness. I have heard that in the closed NEC meeting afterwards there was considerable unease over this theme with Irish, Welsh and ethnic minority members feeling uncomfortable and excluded. Some asked how British values differed from the values of other democratic countries. So it may not be going down well with Labour's own supporters, councillors and activists.