But having pledged that for the previous 6 months, can you imagine what Tories and New Labour would have said if the day after the election we had gone back on that.

In my opinion the former was a wrong tactic but the latter was a principled stand.

Erlend

This is quite a way off and in the mean time it does seem odd that a party that presumably aspires to rule the UK should refuse to join a Scottish Government with which it has many policies in common although it might be wise to get out, if it is not forced out by the results of the next election, when the extra powers start to be implemented.

The attitude of Scottish Liberal Democrats does seem a bit immature by refusing to take responsibility, although we do not know what the SNP offered or required in return for their support. Unfortunately the public will see it as sour grapes and give all the credit to the SNP for any successes. They might become like the Parti Quebequois, running the country for ever and occasionally calling a referendum.

Salmond is also fortunate in that he can blame the lack of a referendum on the other parties, while knowing that most Scots aren’t that keen on one anyway.

Why was it right to form a coalition with Labour to provide Scotland with a workable administration but when the arithmetic made that no longer possible after the SNP beat Labour in the election, the party could not make a deal with the SNP or is this standoff just a bargaining manoeuvre ?

I hope this is not an attempt to give Labour another chance in return for some vague and breakable promise of PR by Gordon Brown to Ming Campbell – seems all too likely after his comments on that party.

You are right that the SNP are increasingly similar to us – the reason being that they can see that our policies hold a great deal of appeal to voters North of the Border. As with Cameron’s tories, the devil is in the detail – as Rob Blackie rightly points out, when push comes to shove, they’ll show their nasty side.

Tristan, reducing government power isn’t an aim in itself – it can be a dangerous thing. Whilst I don’t wish to try to teach you to suck eggs, surely freeing people to live their lives without undue interference in general is the ideal? I thought that experience had taught us that sometimes that means that the government must take some control to safeguard those rights? Whilst I don’t approve of the willingness to control and nanny the populace espoused by the “socialist” left, there are two sides to every freedom and two sides to be protected.

I remember – I didn’t believe it then either.

We need to be properly liberal, and understand that our message must be to give people the opportunities to help themselves. That’s a left wing position if ever I heard one, it’s certainly opposed to the established governance tendencies.

I knew this wasn’t by written by Geoff because he never starts sentence with prepositions or conjunctions. You notice things like that about your friends.

Clearly you don’t know Geoff Payne.

The SNP are a social democratic party, not a liberal party.

One of my criticisms of the LibDems in Scotland is they seem to be a social democratic party and don’t offer much different from the other 2 main parties in Scotland.
Perhaps its time to take a step back, look at policies and think will this reduce government power? Will this free people to live their lives as they wish without interference? Will this let people make their own choices about how they live and how they spend their own money?

However, it is important to remember that only one party, the SNP increased their representation. All the others, Labour, Lib Dem, Tories, Greens, Socialists, Independents, all lost out in the nationalist surge.

However, as Liberal Neil points out, there is now a pattern of different voting in Westminster and Holyrood elections.

In Edinburgh South and Edinburgh North & Leith, two of our key parliamentary target seats for the General Election, we polled well, reaffirming our position in both seats as the alternative to Labour.

It was particularly encouraging for me that in the SNP’s best ever election, the Lib Dems overtook the nationalists in Edinburgh North & Leith with an 11% increase in vote.

I suspect there is also a fair amount of differential voting between the Scottish Parliament elections and the Westminster elections and that the Lib Dems are still lined up to take more of their target seats in the general election.