Quoth the leader of the Labour Party: "If the price of having a Labour government is a deal or coalition with the SNP, it’s not going to happen
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1) School playground tribal politics - Miliband knows the Labour backbenchers will destroy any coalition / arrangement with the SNP out of pure spite over the nasty fighting that's been going on in Scotland, so as that's not going to work out anyway, he's hoping to get the tiny bit of political capital available from sinking the Conservative scare message about the SNP tail wagging the dog / privileges for Scotland / breakup of the union.
2) Labour don't actually want the next government because they can see the economy is still so screwed that no-one will ever forgive them for what they are going to have to do, so are clutching any opportunity to look principled while throwing it away...
After that it gets into deep conspiracy theory weirdness where the backers of both main parties somehow are really scared of the SNP.
I really don't understand the fear though. If they don't want to give more powers to Scotland then a tiny party can't force them to do so.
Frankly, I can think of nothing more likely to cause another, successful, Independence referendum than Labour treating the 56% of people who vote SNP as if they have The Plague.
As I said, someone who knows things being afraid of giving more powers to Scotland (as opposed to than The Credulous Electorate, some portion of which probably do) is way down the list.
My leading theory is still schoolyard politics - Labour are pretty bad for that - remember the backbench MPs breaking ranks to give TV interviews about how they would wreck any attempt at a rainbow coalition last time round.
So it seems likely to me that some dangerous minority of Labour MPs have promised to break ranks if Miliband even considers a deal with the SNP, so as that's off the table he is making all the political hay of it that is available (as the Conservatives are definitely targetting Labour with 'the SNP will make them do bad things' messages).
Ah! Now you say that #1, it sounds quite plausible. Politicians do stupid things, but not usually completely gratuitously stupid things. So they idea he's beholden to some constraint he's managed to keep secret is pretty likely.
#2 is also interesting. I'm always too cynical to suppose politicians will deliberately not take power, but it's true, if the economy is still languishing, it may be a time to avoid spending political capital on an election... In fact, it would explain why everyone else is so crap too, except that I'm sure Cameron wants to hang on.
In fact, that's almost another theory: Labour think if they hold back enough Con and LibDem will try to hold the coalition together, and that will be even worse for libdem and labour may gain more from them if there's another election...?
#1 seems quite likely. Even if there had been no particular nastiness about the fight, losing 40 seats or so isn't going to endear them to the party taking them.
#2 seems unconvincing though. Whatever the possible long-term advantage to Labour, it's bad for Ed Miliband who will almost certainly be go for the ritual losing leader seppuku if he doesn't get to be prime minister. So he'd have to be super-principled to go through with it.
My leading theories are:
1) School playground tribal politics - Miliband knows the Labour backbenchers will destroy any coalition / arrangement with the SNP out of pure spite over the nasty fighting that's been going on in Scotland, so as that's not going to work out anyway, he's hoping to get the tiny bit of political capital available from sinking the Conservative scare message about the SNP tail wagging the dog / privileges for Scotland / breakup of the union.
2) Labour don't actually want the next government because they can see the economy is still so screwed that no-one will ever forgive them for what they are going to have to do, so are clutching any opportunity to look principled while throwing it away...
After that it gets into deep conspiracy theory weirdness where the backers of both main parties somehow are really scared of the SNP.
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Frankly, I can think of nothing more likely to cause another, successful, Independence referendum than Labour treating the 56% of people who vote SNP as if they have The Plague.
Reply
My leading theory is still schoolyard politics - Labour are pretty bad for that - remember the backbench MPs breaking ranks to give TV interviews about how they would wreck any attempt at a rainbow coalition last time round.
So it seems likely to me that some dangerous minority of Labour MPs have promised to break ranks if Miliband even considers a deal with the SNP, so as that's off the table he is making all the political hay of it that is available (as the Conservatives are definitely targetting Labour with 'the SNP will make them do bad things' messages).
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#2 is also interesting. I'm always too cynical to suppose politicians will deliberately not take power, but it's true, if the economy is still languishing, it may be a time to avoid spending political capital on an election... In fact, it would explain why everyone else is so crap too, except that I'm sure Cameron wants to hang on.
In fact, that's almost another theory: Labour think if they hold back enough Con and LibDem will try to hold the coalition together, and that will be even worse for libdem and labour may gain more from them if there's another election...?
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#2 seems unconvincing though. Whatever the possible long-term advantage to Labour, it's bad for Ed Miliband who will almost certainly be go for the ritual losing leader seppuku if he doesn't get to be prime minister. So he'd have to be super-principled to go through with it.
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