Listen to us for once: SNP can speak to all Britain with authority

For starters, he said, Labour is getting a lot of resistance from its English MPs and supporters to an accommodation with the Scots. I don’t doubt that is true, though I suspect it reflects a misguided view that relying on SNP parliamentary support – on a confidence and supply arrangement – implies giving Scotland unfair concessions. On the contrary, the SNP’s resistance to more austerity and Nicola Sturgeon’s demand for a modest rise in UK public spending over the life of the next parliament, should be more than acceptable to the ordinary English Labour voter.

However, the central reason Ed Miliband seeks to avoid associating himself with the progressive SNP agenda is that it undermines Labour’s desperate, Pavlovian argument that voting for the Nats in Scotland automatically helps the Tories. As in: vote SNP, get David Cameron – a tired mantra that was repeated ad nauseam from the platform last weekend’s Labour conference. Few readers of this newspaper will be taken in by this blatant attempt to emotionally blackmail the Scottish electorate.

All the reputable analysts are forecasting a hung parliament, though there is a consensus that the Conservatives will have more seats that Labour – but only by a smidgeon. Two analysts, Elections Etc and Election Forecast, have the Tories 6-8 seats ahead of Labour, while May 2015 and the Guardian put the Tory lead at 4-5. Constitutionally, that would see the Queen invite David Cameron to see if he could form a government. But the parliamentary maths suggest he would find that very difficult, leaving the door to Number 10 wide open to Ed Miliband, provided Labour is willing to reach out to progressive forces to its left. Current polling sees the Tories with seats in the range 276-286 and Labour with circa 271-280. You can see instantly that if the SNP sends 40 or more MPs to Westminster, it makes it mathematically impossible for David Cameron to kiss the Queen’s gloved hand. Even if a strong SNP showing reduces the overall Labour tally, it only stacks up Celtic anti-Tory seats to Labour’s left.

There is a broad consensus that the Lib Dems will limp back into Westminster with 22-26 seats, though Nick Clegg will collect his P45. If so, I’d expect Labour to try and do a deal with grumpy Vince Cable. However, Mr Cable is unlikely to sign on the dotted line without a significant Cabinet post. More importantly, he will play hard to get and is quite capable of opening negotiations with Mr Cameron.

In which case, Labour MPs are deluding themselves that an accommodation with the Lib Dems will free them of having to talk to the SNP. More to the point, relying on left-of-centre SNP support – in return for assurances on Home Rule, public spending and opposition to nuclear weapons – would give any Labour government a more radical agenda than at any time in the past 50 years. Why is Labour so adamantly opposed to exploring such an option?

Behind the “vote SNP, get Tories” refrain lies a dark secret. Both right and left wings of the Labour Party fear they can never win a majority of seats in England ever again. As a result, of this political despair, they are bent on dragooning Scots to stay in the Union, and to use Scottish votes at Westminster to make up for Labour’s secular demise in its English heartlands. South of the border, Labour knows it faces a new enemy – newly populist Ukip. Like Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Ukip has done a political U-turn to attract disillusioned, former Labour voters. Ukip’s support in the north of England has trebled since the last general election. In last year’s English local elections – largely ignored in Scotland – Ukip hoovered up votes in Labour areas. In Miliband’s Doncaster backyard, Ukip came second to Labour in 15 wards and won one, scooping over 1,000 votes in the pit villages of Askern, Hatfield and Conisborough. In Hull, they came second to Labour in 10 wards, winning one. In Leeds, Ukip was second in 12 seats and another 13 in Sheffield.

What gives Ukip force, of course, is its anti-immigrant rhetoric. Sadly, the Labour leadership has often retreated in the face of Ukip’s economic nonsense immigrants are responsible for pushing down wages – working class incomes are actually static in the UK and US because of the demise of strong union bargaining. The only way to undermine Ukip long-term is to abandon austerity and raise real living standards – but Ed Balls and Mr Miliband remain in thrall to the City, so will continue to “balance the books”. One reason that Nigel Farage has started to agitate against alleged unfairness of the Barnett Formula to England is to make it difficult for Labour to form a progressive alliance with the SNP, and so undermine Ukip’s bogus appeal to English working class voters.

In the end I suspect Labour’s turkeys will vote for an early Christmas. Under pressure from Jim Murphy, Miliband will most likely seek a deal with the Lib Dems, and try and tough it out as a minority administration, daring the SNP to withdraw support. Meanwhile, a steady trickle of English Labour and Tory MPs will start defecting to Ukip. Result: chaos. Alternatively, Miliband might let Cameron form a minority government – Labour’s own choice and not Scotland’s – calculating the Tories will get the blame for the resulting instability. Both these alternatives would be short-lived and point to an early election. If Cameron and Miliband calculate that a fresh election will result in even more seats going to the SNP in Scotland, and Ukip in England, we could even see a “grand coalition” of the two main Unionist parties for the duration of the “national emergency”.

However, that will solve absolutely nothing because the true “national emergency” lies in the public loss of confidence in the Westminster system, in the over-centralisation and lack of democracy in the British state, and in the perennial economic instability of our casino economy. Until there is genuine political and economic reform of the whole UK model – ultimately embracing self-government for the constituent nations of these islands and a new partnership between them, the crisis will continue. In these circumstances, the SNP contingent at Westminster will have to negotiate a political minefield. Unless the SNP leadership keeps an eye on the strategic goal, we risk being caught off guard by this or that late-night vote – and out enemies will be setting traps. My guess is in the present imbroglio, the Unionist parties will seek to call a constitutional convention, putting the Vow and the Smith project into political limbo. In these circumstances, the SNP should take the initiative in calling for a new constitutional settlement across the whole UK. With a likely majority of Scottish seats represented by the party after May, the SNP will speak with the voice of authority to all of Britain.