A look at the landscape of Scottish Politics after 10 months of SNP minority control…

Scotland is a very different place right now. Oh the lochs are still there, you can still drink your way from lowlands to highlands on the whisky trail (at a slightly higher premium thanks to the Chancellor) and the haggis hunting season is about to start once again in earnest, but the old order changeth.

Following the introduction, by Liberal Democrat MSPs, of STV for local government elections, Labour lost control of many fiefdoms that it had ruled with an Iron fist for a generation. The roll back of Labour dominance extended from urban to rural regions across the country and there is a genuine recognition that they haven’t yet come to terms with this. Coalition administrations are the order of the day and some strange bedfellows have been brought together in the process.

But the biggest changes to have been wrought are undoubtedly within the Scottish Parliament itself. On its best ever night and floated on the momentum of six figure donations from across corporate Scotland, the SNP came to power with a single seat advantage over Labour. That solitary seat cost Labour their grip on power and Jack McConnell his job. In a demonstration of principles over hunger for power, the Liberal Democrat group in the Scottish Parliament resisted the overtures of the SNP and elected to go into opposition leaving the nationalists to govern alone.

To give them their due, they’ve had a pretty good year so far, with some easy wins based on the delivery of populist promises such as the freezing of the council tax and the removal of bridge tolls over the Forth and Tay rivers.

But even now the wheels appear to be coming off the nationalist wagon. It started on the day that the SNP brought their first budget to Parliament. It took just 18 seconds for the SNP to ditch the first of their landmark promises when they decided to abandon their key pledge to repay all Scottish graduate student loan debt in full. Many commentators have remarked that their wafer thin majority may have actually been delivered by students voting for this exact promise. Many more policy u-turns like this one and the SNP experience of minority government may indeed turn out to be a short one.

* Alex Cole-Hamilton headed up the Lib Dem List of candidates for the Mid Scotland and Fife region in the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections, and stood against Gordon Brown in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in the 2005 general election. Alex has kindly agreed to write a monthly column on Scottish politics for Lib Dem Voice. We are currently looking for someone from Wales to do the same. If you’d like to volunteer, please contact our commissioning editor, Stephen Tall at .

No, not me – it’s the Lib Dems’ Scottish leader Nicol Stephen who has been earning plaudits from The Scotsman’s Hamish MacDonnell:

A couple of weeks ago, Wendy Alexander held a dinner for some members of the Holyrood political press corps. Her aim was to explain her thinking on the constitutional convention but, in the course of the evening, the Scottish Labour leader was told – quite bluntly – that she was pretty awful at First Minister’s Questions. She was informed that not only was she being beaten by Alex Salmond every week, but that Nicol Stephen was doing a much better job for the Liberal Democrats than she was for Labour.

That dinner happened just after one of Ms Alexander’s worst ever performances: she started by asking a question about SportScotland, went on to talk about the Budget and ended on police pensions, failing to score a point with any of her efforts. At the same session, Mr Stephen asked three pointed and direct questions about SportScotland and had the First Minister riled, angry and unable to answer clearly.

Read more »

From today’s Scotland on Sunday:

THE businessman at the centre of the Wendy Alexander donation scandal was backed for an honour by senior figures in the Labour Party, it emerged last night.

MSP Charlie Gordon, who resigned last week as Labour’s transport spokesman after it emerged he arranged an illegal donation from Jersey tycoon Paul Green, has now admitted he earlier supported the same businessman for an unspecified honour.

Oops. There’s more in the full story.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Herald (who have been leading the way in investigating the Wendy Alexander donation story) reports evidence that questions over Paul Green’s donations were covered-up: Read more »

Rather overshadowed in the (English) media has been the news in Scotland that Scottish Parliament Labour frontbencher Charles Gordon has quit his post after it was revealed that Wendy Alexander’s Scottish Labour leadership campaign accepted an illegal donation:

The Labour Party in Scotland is facing the prospect of a wounding criminal inquiry after one of its most senior figures admitted illegally securing funds for Wendy Alexander’s leadership campaign.

Charles Gordon quit as Labour transport spokesman at Holyrood just hours after an investigation by The Herald revealed his involvement in securing a payment from a multi-millionaire tax exile.

Yesterday, he admitted approaching Paul Green to ask for a donation. Mr Green said he was asked for £950, just below the level which would have to be declared publicly. As a Jersey resident, Mr Green is barred by UK law from giving money to political parties or politicians.

Tom McCabe MSP, Ms Alexander’s campaign manager, conceded said there had been “clearly a breach of the law”.

Read the full story in The Herald here.

Former Liberal leader Lord Steel is one of the panellists on tonight’s edition of Question Time (broadcast on BBC1 and online from 10.35 pm GMT).

He’ll be alongside Scotland’s Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP, Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander, Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie, and David Aaronovitch columnist for The Times.

If you’re watching, and want to sound-off, please feel free to use the comments thread.