So, David Cameron accuses the SNP of being a one-party state and says the Conservatives are the people to stop them. The BBC reports:

Only the Tories can challenge the SNP and prevent Scotland becoming a “one party state”, David Cameron has said.

In a speech to the Scottish Conservative conference, the prime minister insisted his party was the only one that could challenge the Nationalists.

How he said that with a straight face, I’ll never know. These comments come from the man who is doing his damnedest to stitch up the political system for himself. He blocks any attempts at electoral reform. He changes the rules the boundaries with the result that his party has an advantage. He does everything he can to avoid parliamentary scrutiny, limiting the power of the Lords and Scottish MPs. The changes he pushed for on electoral registration mean that a million fewer people can vote. Then there’s the denial of the vote to 16 year olds at every level and trying to limit opposition funds through the Trade Union Bill.

Don’t get me wrong, the SNP’s power-grabbing, authoritarian tendencies deserve criticism. They stitched up all the Holyrood committees to ensure that their legislation does not receive the rigorous scrutiny it should have, they want the BBC to report to a Holyrood committee. Given that the SNP has criticised the BBC’s coverage, you don’t need me to tell you how sinister that would be.

As Willie Rennie said in his Conference speech last week, the SNP and the Conservatives are two peas in a pod. They are pretty similar in attitudes to governing and they are using the same playbook which helps the other. As I wrote last week, a massive Tory direct mail campaign is attacking not the SNP, but Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Cameron tries to suggest that the Conservatives would be the most effective opposition to the SNP. That would be all well and good if they didn’t vote with them so often. As Willie pointed out last week in his speech, John Swinney even described the Tories as lobby fodder for the SNP:

Working together to stop our Penny for Education.

Murdo Fraser told Holyrood he’d formed a taxpayers’ alliance with the SNP.

John Swinney said the Tories were the lobby fodder for the SNP.

This week they laughed and clapped together as they cut £500million from local councils.

The SNP song book used to only have one song in it: “If we only had the power”.

But now they do have the powers and they still won’t use them.

They have picked up the Tory song book.

What have we got in that?

“The First Cut Is The Deepest. But the second, third and fourth aren’t bad either”;

“I fought the Lawson and the Lawson won”;

Same tunes about “taxation is theft”, and “cuts are a price worth paying”, and “colleges – the more we cut the more they do”.

John Swinney might even be singing in the bath like Norman Lamont – Je dinnae regret hee haw.

If people are looking for a decent opposition to the SNP, they might want to look to the party who has forced them to change their policy on stop and search, armed police, the super ID database that puts Labour’s to shame (although that one is still only kicked into the post election grass), college places and nursery education. That would be Willie and the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings