Neal Ascherson (London and Argyll, author): In Scotland, the utterly un-British spectacle of an effective and popular minority government is still on stage. Bad times for Alex Salmond's SNP government must be ahead somewhere. So far, though, the performance has been dazzling. Predictions that Salmond wold come unstuck over the budget have not come true: typically, he split the opposition by striking a budget policy deal with the Tories at Holyrood. And indeed, the opposition is in astonishing confusion. Labour is still lamed by the looming scandal over leader Wendy Alexander's personal campaign funding, a problem which has been magnified by her numerous enemies within the party. The ex-first Minister Henry McLeish, nominally still Labour, is co-operating busily with Salmond on a government prisons inquiry, and some think he might eventually cross to the SNP ranks.
The opposition has now established an informal 'constitutional commission'. Leaders of Labour, Tory and Lib-Dems in Scotland met on January 15th in London with their British leaders to discuss the future of devolution. The commission is intended to shoot the SNP fox, by urging further transfer of government powers to Edinburgh and demonstrating that independence is unnecessary. But there are two problems here. First, the theory that further autonomy for Scotland reduces the independence vote has always proved false: on the contrary, it tends to build the political self-confidence needed to push the independence case. Secondly, when Scottish Labour argues for 'devolution plus', maybe even the transfer of taxation powers to Scotland, it is up against Gordon Brown's inflexible opposition - up to now - to any tinkering with the 1997 Scotland Act.
That will have to change, surely, in face of the agreement of the three opposition parties that 'devolution- plus' is now unavoidable. Meanwhile, Alex Salmond can smile at the thought that his rivals are doing his work for him. The feeling in Edinburgh is that Gordon Brown has seriously lost control of events, and even of his own party in Scotland. Desmond Browne, the Scottish Secretary, is apparently refusing Salmond's request to give Holyrood control of elections, in case that is used to enable an independence referendum. But in fact the 'devolution plus' schemes of the opposition may lead to a referendum anyway. Support for independence in Scotland still hovers around its usual 30 per cent or so. But opinion polls show the sense of 'Britishness' steadily bleeding away - now down to about 21 per cent. Salmond would lose an independence referendum today, as he knows. But his long game is to change the landscape by a combination of SNP political success, good governance, and Westminster obstruction of 'reasonable' Scottish demands. A few years on, the prospect of a Scottish nation-state within the EU, no longer dependent on London, could look much more persuasive.
