The Tory Trojan Horse

Todays launch of the Tory manifesto was pretty much what you would expect.

But one item in particular managed to unite both Jim Murphy & the SNP.

It was of course the English MP's right of veto over the budget.

Now I won't go into the rights and wrongs of this policy because there is something far more interesting about this than the actual policy, and that it Tory election tactics.

Labour have made numerous claims that the Tories want the SNP to win in Scotland to give David Cameron a chance at staying in power.

And here's the thing, Labour are right.

But it's not that the Tories want the SNP, they hate the SNP just as much as Labour, but they want to destroy Labours safe Scottish heartland.

On the face of it this seems like a good tactic, you've already lost Scotland yourself, so you weaken your opponent and you leave them competing with you for middle England on similar policies, so that even if you lose power you end up with a government that is implementing broadly the same policies as you would.

So in order to achieve this all you have to do is have policies which are unfair to Scotland and the SNP support will grow and Labour having been your partners in crime in Better Together will be decimated.

But this demonstrates a core problem is UK politics and that is short term strategic thinking.

It comes from the desire to win, and the idea that a win at any cost is a victory,

But as we know in Scotland this isn't necessarily the case.

David Cameron having got away with the referendum by the skin of his teeth, and not going down in history as the PM that saw the breakup of the union, thinks it is safe to provoke the nationalists for personal gain.

In the event that this goes badly wrong and leads to independence, in his version of history, this will be the fault of Labour for losing Scotland.

And that' a narrative he can sell to middle England to further damage Labour amongst these same voters.

As much as I hate David Cameron, I have to hand it to him, he has played Labour, just as he played the Lib-Dems.

That's not that he's some kind of tactical genius - it's just Labour and the Lib-Dems have been tactical numpties.

But they have only been able to be played like this because they are so readily prepared to abandon all their principles for power and play the game of winning at all costs.

Quite simply, when you abandon principles for personal gain, you create weaknesses that will one day come back to haunt you and you will have nobody but yourself to blame.