The latest opinion polls in Scotland show Nationalists leading Labour by around 20 points, with other parties trailing way behind.  If these voting intentions for May’s General Election were realised, the SNP would hold between forty and fifty of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats. Most of these gains would be at the expense of Labour, giving that party very little chance of an overall majority in the UK. 

         The SNP’s share of the UK national vote is less than 4%. But that could enable it to displace the Liberal Democrats as the third largest parliamentary group, and hold the balance of power in the UK. parliament. On the other hand, Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party could easily poll 15% of votes across the country and win no seats at all. There could hardly be a more striking illustration of the vagaries of a first past the post voting system  The logic, or illogic, of an electoral system that rewards concentrations of support was how the Irish question came to dominate British politics – and rarely in a constructive way – for half a century:  and there is now a possibility that the Scottish question will have similar consequence,

When David Cameron and Alex Salmond agreed the terms of an independence referendum, both believed, from different perspectives, that the vote which took place in September would settle the issue for a generation. It  did nothing of the sort.  Both sides both won and lost:  the no campaign won the vote but lost the campaign, with a traditional 25% – 30% support for independence turning into a 45% electoral outcome:  the yes campaign failed to gain independence, but affirmed the SNP as the dominant political force in Scotland.

And anyone who thinks that the Smith Commission proposals on further devolution for Scotland will defuse the remaining issues lives in a political bubble distant from the interests of ordinary voters.  When the pollsters asked Scots what they thought of the Smith recommendations, they encountered the predictable result that people had very little idea which these recommendations were, but thought that whatever they were, they did not go far enough.

Dealing with these proposals is one of the first problems whatever government is in power after May will face.  The essentially intractable ‘West Lothian question’ – the illegitimacy of the authority of the UK Parliament on matters which are of relevance to England alone because relevant powers in Scotland (and perhaps Wales and Northern Ireland) have been devolved to assemblies there – is no longer a minor anomaly of interest to constitutional theorists, but a campaign issue of  ‘English votes for English laws’. It is a matter on which Labour and Conservatives are  unlikely to agree:  now add to the mix a substantial bloc of Scottish nationalist MPs with every incentive to make mischief.

Alex Salmond, having resigned as First Minister in Scotland, plans to return to Westminster as leader of these mischief makers.  He has floated the possibility of a coalition with Labour, but such an outcome is hard to imagine:  such an agreement would probably destroy any chance of Labour’s own recovery in Scotland. And which cabinet posts could be given to Scottish Nationalist members ?  Only UK wide functions, and while a Scottish Nationalist Minister for Pensions is possible  a tartan waving Foreign or Defence Secretary is another matter.

       Tacit SNP support for a minority Labour government is more likely.  But consider  the potential for resentment in England against a Labour government sustained in office only by Scottish support, especially when that government becomes unpopular,  And it is more likely to be UKIP than the Conservative Party which benefit from that resentment.

Within Scotland itself, the new leaders of the main parties – SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Labour’s Jim Murphy – are vying with each other to proclaim their commitment to social justice.  Admirable though this sentiment is, what it means in practice is  less clear:  No one can doubt the seriousness of deprivation in some depressed areas of Scotland, and this has been one of the factors behind the strength of the independence movement.  But the persistence of the problem is not the result of lack of will; it will remain easier to put blame on insufficient powers and  cash than to identify solutions.

Two weeks of September panic,  in which Westminster politicians  revealed themselves as alien figures in the streets of Glasgow, followed by a narrow defeat for the independence campaign, represented about as bad a result as could have been imagined.  British politics will live with the consequences for some time.