Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Tom Griffin spent a long time finding Stephen Glenn to write a post about the Lib Dem leadership contest. I'm afraid Tom didn't get as much warm support from me in his search as he should have. Eventually, he found Stephen and we ran this story by him on the battle to lead Lib Dem Scotland. It seemed to me that Tavish Scott was the least interesting of the three candidates, if he is indeed standing for continuity of a forlorn strategy. Today they have announced the outcome of the ballot: it seems that Scottish Lib Dems have voted for the hole into which they are digging. Could this be true?

Tom Griffin (London, OK): It seems the Westminster/Holyrood faultine inside the Scottish Labour Party extends to the question of whether there should be a UK football team at the 2012 Olympics. Gordon Brown held out that prospect during his visit to Beijing at the weekend: 'I think when people are looking at the Olympics in 2012 - Britain, home of football, where football was invented, which we gave to the world - I think people would be very surprised if there is an Olympic tournament in football and we are not part of it.' Scottish Labour leadership candidate Cathy Jamieson has proposed an alternative plan: "One option could be a home nations football tournament with the winners representing the UK at the Olympics." Jamieson added: "Team GB should include a football team but not at the expense of Scotland's football team. It would be wrong to gamble with the identity of Scotland's team."  Read the rest of this post...

Stephen Glenn (Linlithgow, Lib Dems): What next for the Liberal Democrats in Scotland? They're no longer in a coalition administration but just part of the opposition to an SNP minority government. It's a dangerous position with the Tories strengthening and Labour weakening. Three candidates have stepped forward to fill the void left by Nicol Stephen's resignation as leader, by the end of next week one of them will be leader. Tavish Scott, a close ally of Stephen, is seen by many as the continuity candidate. Ross Finnie, served eight years in the cabinet when the party was in coalition with Labour after the Scottish Parliament was created. He says the party needs to find its 'narrative' again. Mike Rumbles, who chaired the Holyrood's Standard's Committee for four years, sees a radical path ahead. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Scottish press is full of speculation this weekend that former First Minister Henry McLeish has been sounded out for the Labour candidacy in the Glenrothes by-election.  The Sunday Times reports: Senior party figures are alarmed that Henry McLeish, the former first minister who resigned in disgrace in 2001, has emerged as a frontrunner for the vacant Glenrothes seat, following the death of John MacDougall, the Labour MP, last week. Some local activists and members of the British government believe McLeish may be the party’s only hope because he is a popular figure locally, having represented the area as an MP and MSP.  Read the rest of this post...

Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): John MacDougall, the Labour MP for Glenrothes, in Fife, died today after a long illness. His death will trigger a by-election in a constituency that borders that of Gordon Brown. He won Glenrothes with a majority of 10,664 at the last General Election in 2005. They are saying that the by-election may not be until October. Just as well, perhaps, as a YouGov poll out today shows Labour in meltdown in Scotland. Its survey on voting intentions for Westminster puts the SNP on 36% (double its support at the last election) whilst backing for Labour has collapsed to 29% (down 11%). The Tories are up 2% to 18% while the Liberals are on 13%. This would mean Labour losing 19 MPs and retaining just 22 seats, while the SNP would move up from 6 to 26. The poll suggests Alistair Darling and Des Browne would both lose their places in the Commons. It looks even worse for Labour when this is translated into a Holyrood context. Applied to the Scottish Parliament the You Gov results mean SNP would win 58 of Scotland's 73 Holyrood first-past-the-post seats. (SNP - 58 constituency seats (plus 37) Labour - 8 constituency seats (minus 29) LibDems - 6 constituency seats (minus 5) Tories - 1 constituency seat (minus 3)) On the basis of these figures all three of the candidates for the Labour leadership, Iain Gray (East Lothian), Andy Kerr (East Kilbride) and Cathy Jamieson (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley), would lose to the SNP. John MacDougall had served Fife for more than 20 years, after being elected to Fife Regional Council in 1982. He later became the leader of the council and also served as the director of Glenrothes Development Corporation and Fife Enterprise before being elected to the House of Commons. The last by-election fought in Fife, in February 2006, saw the Liberal Democrats seize power in a strong Labour seat. It could prove an omen.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): For the first time since the advent of devolution, the Scottish Labour Party is going through a competitive leadership contest, and it's proving to be an invigorating debate. In an incisive analysis in the Sunday Times, former First Minister Henry McLeish argued that the party's Holyrood leader needs greater powers: The current leadership debate in Scotland has given Labour a unique chance to address five key areas: the need for the party in Scotland to have much greater autonomy; the need for the Scottish Labour leader to have more power and a wider authority; the need for a radically reformed and flexible Union fit for the new purposes of the 21st Century; the need, to embrace a coherent, modern post-devolution strategy for the constitutional future of our country; and the need for Labour in Scotland to reconnect with its base with a new narrative of what it stands for in this new era.   Read the rest of this post...

David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): What is the Union from which Scotland would separate if it voted for independence? Is it the United Kingdom (that is, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: the continuation of the 1801 Union between Great Britain and the whole of Ireland); or is it merely Great Britain (the Kingdom that resulted from the 1707 Union between England & Wales and Scotland)? If it is the former, then I would concede the point that only those living in Scotland should have the automatic right to vote for Scottish independence in a referendum: irrespective of questions of national sovereignty, it satisfies the demands of natural justice that it is the people living in a particular country or region who should decide whether to separate from a larger national or supra-national entity of which that country or region has hitherto been a part. The analogy here would be with the 1995 referendum on independence for Quebec. It was right that only those living in Quebec were entitled to vote; and even if independence had been carried, the rest of Canada would have remained Canada without Quebec. Similarly, the United Kingdom would still be the United Kingdom without Scotland, albeit a continuation of the 1801 Union in which the absence of the southern part of Ireland would now be paralleled by the absence of the northern part of Great Britain. I hope we could then sensibly call it the ‘United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland' rather than what could well be regarded as a ‘logical' alternative in view of this ironic ‘symmetry' of Irish and Scottish independence: the ‘United Kingdom of Southern Britain and Northern Ireland'! Let's at least include England in the name of the state now that Great Britain was no more - even if England did continue to be governed, as it is now, as if it were the UK. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Scotsman brings us news that the SNP is preparing to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats to abolish the council tax in Scotland. As the SNP is running the Scottish Government as a minority administration, it needs the support of one of the other main parties to get its plans through. The Lib Dems support the principle of a local income tax, but are adamant that it must be set locally, by individual councils, rather than by the Scottish Government at 3p in the pound. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In today's Sunday Herald, former Labour Scottish Finance Minister Tom McCabe delivers a brutally frank assessment of Labour's diminished place in Scotland's political landscape, and one of the starkest calls yet for the Scottish Party to set its own agenda: So how can Scottish Labour respond? First, with a leader who is seen to be in charge, taking responsibility and being prepared to say and do what is best for Scots, no matter who it might upset. Read the rest of this post...

Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): One of the problems for Labour in Scotland is that daily civic society experiences some cultural debate about our future. This week those compiling the next Scottish census proposed that people should be asked to choose between Scottish or British in the section on ethnic background. On Wednesday it was announced that, in a cost cutting measure, all Scottish rolling stock would be re-branded in a saltire livery whatever their parent company, to stop expensive makeovers. Read the rest of this post...

The Armchair Socialist (Glasgow): When Wendy Alexander issued her challenge to Scotland's SNP government to 'bring it on' over their plans for a 2010 referendum on the future of Scotland in the UK, she unleashed a political storm the like of which has not been seen north of the border since Blair unilaterally announced that Labour would not consider victory in the 1997 general election as a mandate for devolution, much trumpeted until that point as 'the settled will of the Scottish people', but would instead require a two question referendum on both a parliament and it's fiscal powers.  The current Scottish Labour leadership election in which nominations close today, has already seen the front-runners to follow Alexander say that they will abandon Labour's recently acquired enthusiasm for letting the people decide sooner rather than later. Read the rest of this post...

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. Winning a vote in the Scottish Parliament authorising a referendum. Winning a referendum to authorise independence negotiations. Negotiating terms with the British Government and with the European Union. 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, OK): Former Europe Minister Denis McShane made a particularly interesting contribution to the post-mortem on Glasgow East in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday: "After Glasgow," he wrote, "Labour has to do more than debate its leadership and see off excited calls by union leaders for challenges to Gordon Brown. Instead the party has to confront an existential problem of its own making: the question of England."  Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Compass have just issued a Neal Lawson inspired statement on the Glasgow East result with some ideas about what a Labour government they approve of would do. A taste of the argument is, the coalition that brought Labour to power in 1997 has been shattered. Between 1997 and 2005, the party lost 4 million voters - and this time we saw a further pulling-away of the working-class vote that New Labour has always ill-advisedly taken for granted. Meanwhile, people across all classes and social groups are turning away from the party. Particularly in England the Tories are on the march; partly thanks to the sense that they are engaging with concerns that lie at the centre of people's lives. Needless to say, Gordon Brown's stiff, remote style of leadership doesn't help. But there is a more fundamental political problem that is destroying the Labour Party. Even at a time when the credit crunch and rising prices mean that the post-Thatcher settlement is being questioned as never before, a supposedly progressive government refuses to address the way that the unrestrained free-market is damaging people's lives in no end of areas: from housing and rising fuel bills, to crippling consumer debt and insecurity at work, and on to the dysfunctional inequality that defines so many of the UK's current problems. Others may be distracted by New Labour kremlinology, and the question of whether one of Brown's cabinet colleagues might somehow be persuaded to replace him. For us, there is no point in talking about such changes if the conversation isn't fundamentally about a change of direction...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The SNP has tonight won the Glasgow East by-election by the narrowest of margins, 365 votes, following a recount. Underlying the narrow victory, however, was a huge swing of 22.54 per cent, which according to to Professor John Curtice would leave Labour with only 1 MP if it were projected across Scotland. This is not unique in by-election terms, but what is unprecedented is that was achieved by a party that is itself an incumbent Government. Curtice suggested that the result confirms the SNP's position as the major challenger to Labour in Scotland at the next general election. Although the Conservatives took third place ahead of the Liberal Democrats, who continued their recent run of poor by-election results, the Tory share of the vote actually fell by one per cent.    

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): On a day when the Conservatives are expected to be also-rans in Scotland, David Cameron has delivered the clearest possible signal of his commitment to the union. In a joint Telegraph article with Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey, he calls for a renewal of the historic alliance between the two parties. As leaders we met at Westminster last week and agreed to set up a joint working group to explore the possibilities of closer cooperation leading to the creation of a new political and electoral force in Northern Ireland. That working group will report to us in the autumn Read the rest of this post...

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'. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a meditation on the fate of "Big Player" Unionism in Scotland, in today's FT, John Lloyd fails to register that this is now an argument taking place in England - the really big change from ten years ago. He looks forward cautiously to a Labour win in Glasgow on Thursday and at the same time considers what the argument for the Union needs to be now in Scotland. He asks, "And what, indeed, would a renewed Unionism look and sound like? Mr Brown has sought to equate Britishness with "a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to fair play", as he put it three years ago, when still chancellor of the exchequer." Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon):November 30, 2010 is the day to mark in your diary, according to the Sunday Times. Kenneth Gibson, the MSP for Cunninghame North has apparently let slip details of the SNP's heavily symbolic timetable for Scottish independence. The plan calls for a referendum bill to be introduced on 25 January, Burns Day, ahead of a vote in November on St Andrews Day. That will only happen, of course, if the SNP minority government can get a majority for the bill. The outcome of the current Labour and Liberal Democrat leadership debates may tell us a lot about how likely that is. Read the rest of this post...

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.   Read the rest of this post...