An OurKingdom symposium: see also articles by Gerry Hassan, James Mitchell and Gareth Young

Like any sensible political party confident of electoral victory the UK Conservatives are already preparing for the uncharted territory of sharing power with an SNP minority Scottish Government. The French call it cohabitation, but unlike France the UK lacks a constitution that sets out the rules of the game.  

The Tory challenge, therefore, is largely a tactical one, particularly as the existence of a Scottish Parliament precludes any prospect of a government ‘imposing' domestic policies on a Scotland which voted yellow, red and orange rather than blue. For the SNP too, this is the undiscovered country from which no MSP has yet returned.

Some old SNP battle cries will, however, re-emerge from the mist of the 1980s. Some SNP MPs have already raised the prospect of David Cameron winning a general election with ‘no mandate' north of the border, while the austerity in public spending laid out by the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne at last week's Tory conference is sure to be attacked as ‘anti-Scottish'.

Cameron and his advisers are not stupid. They realize that their biggest challenge on forming a government with only two or three Scottish MPs is to prevent a repeat of the situation the Conservative Party got itself into during the Thatcher years. Exactly how this will be attempted (saying ‘achieved' would be too presumptuous) already seems clear.

An OurKingdom symposium: see also articles by Gerry Hassan, David Torrance and Gareth Young

Scotland must seem like a place apart to readers of many newspapers in England. News that reaches the English public on the activities of the SNP Government often portrays Scotland as almost a foreign country. How else to explain the enduring popularity of a Government hell bent on picking fights with London, tartanising everything that moves led by a megalomaniac?

If this was anywhere approaching an accurate description of the SNP, it would be nowhere near power. So who are the SNP?

In order to begin to answer that question, colleagues in the Universities of Strathclyde and Aberdeen conducted a survey of the party's entire membership and conducted in-depth interviews with around 80 senior party members. The conclusions from this research are not startling, though there are some surprises, to anyone who follows Scottish politics seriously. But the findings are authoritative and shed light on a party that came to power in the Scottish Parliament in 2007 and shares power at local level, with the largest number of councillors, across the length and breadth of Scotland.

An OurKingdom symposium: see also articles by Gerry Hassan, James Mitchell and David Torrance

It seemed unlikely that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling would be hounded out of office by the English mob, like Brown's predecessor Lord Bute, but for a moment in 2006 Alan Duncan looked like he might be a modern day John Wilkes. He was quickly slapped down. Since that time there has been a grumbling English discontent - articulated most forcefully by the likes of Simon Heffer, David Starkey and Kelvin MacKenzie - but the Tories themselves have resisted the temptation to play the English card and have not made an issue of Gordon Brown's Scottishness, or more specifically his lack of mandate on English domestic issues.

Soon though, baring divine intervention, the boot will be on the other foot; soon it will be Scotland that is ruled by a man they have not elected, who is not one of theirs, and who to them has no mandate. Step forward David Cameron to deliver the acid test of devolution. It was the democratic deficit of the Thatcher and Major years that provided the unionist rationale for Scottish devolution: Why should Scotland put up with a right-wing Tory government, and an English one at that, when Scotland consistently voted left-of-centre? If the devolution theorists are correct then the devolved Scottish Parliament should buffer Scotland from the worst excesses of English Conservatism and mollify the nationalist impulse. But there's a fly in the ointment, some Scots, most Scots in fact, are saying that devolution doesn't go far enough. They want a referendum and more powers, especially enhanced fiscal powers, and David Cameron doesn't want that. Respect, yes; powers to tax and spend, no! At least not yet, not now.

David Cameron is English, he's posh, he only has one Scottish MP, and he's a Tory. On paper he's an easier quarry for Alex Salmond than Gordon Brown is. But Salmond is a wily character, and he doesn't want the SNP to be the nasty party, so just as the Tories refrained from attacking Brown on grounds of his Scottishness, the SNP will most likely refrain from attacking Cameron's Englishness and class. This leaves Cameron's 'Tory-ness' and his lack of a Scottish mandate as the best grounds for attack, but then an attack on Cameron's Tory-ness may sound too much like the class-warfare and anti-Englishness of old, and may well alienate the Scottish voters that the SNP most wants to attract - those looking to cast their vote tactically against Labour. So Salmond's best tactic will be to point to Cameron's lack of Scottish support. Taking the best possible Conservative case-scenario that has presented itself so far (YouGov, 8th - 9th October 2009; Lab 34%, SNP 28%, Con 22%, Lib Dem 10%) the Conservatives could capitalise on the collapse of the Labour vote by picking up 7 Scottish MPs in 2010. However, this really is a best-case-scenario, for all their superior resources the Tories will find it tough campaigning in Scotland where they have failed to sanitise the Conservative brand to the extent they have in England and Wales.

George Osborne's proposed cuts in public spending will hit Scotland disproportionately hard, and hard hit too will be Scotland's representation at Westminster, delivered a double whammy of cuts through boundary changes and then enfeebled by English Votes on English Laws. "Vote Tory at the General Election and I won't be able to vote at Westminster" is not necessarily a good election slogan for doorstepping Tory candidates. On English Votes on English Laws the Tories may find that they have an ally in Alex Salmond, a man keen to see Scots side-lined at Westminster, though they may also find that it is Salmond who is the unlikely champion of England's cause. Worst of all, the Tories in Scotland have to explain their position on the Calman Commission, and they're not too sure what that position is. And the Tories in England don't particularly want the English to read in their papers about more Scottish devolution, lest they begin asking their own 'English Question'.

An OurKingdom symposium: see also articles by James Mitchell, David Torrance and Gareth Young

The SNP Annual Conference opens in Inverness on Thursday with the party in good mood: two and a half years into the first SNP administration, seen by most as competent and successful.

The party has a sense of purpose. Alex Salmond is a popular First Minister, leading a talented ministerial team - Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, Fiona Hyslop, Kenny MacAskill, Mike Russell and others.

Underneath this sense of success and progress what has the SNP achieved, what has it not achieved, and what future challenges await it in office?