Jim Murphy has made the obvious point that it makes no sense for the SNP to ask English voters to vote against Labour if they really want to see a Labour government. The public position of Nicola Sturgeon is that she thinks English voters should vote Green, but anyone who considers that for few moments knows that the effect of that suggestion is to maximise the possibility of a Tory government.
I suspect that is precisely what Nicola Sturgeon wants. Her more minor reason for the move is to sideline the Green Party in Scotland, something that the English Greens seem all too eager to help the SNP with. If I were a Scots Green I would feel utterly betrayed by my colleagues south of the border.
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The most obvious outcome of s major success by the SNP is that Labour might not have the greatest number of seats in the House of Commons, nor the greatest number of votes. That would give the Conservatives a spurious lead in the jostling for coalition making post-election or of governing as a minority government and seeking support issue by issue. And even if both the Tories and the LibDems lost seats, it would entitle them to remain in power provided they could, on their own or with support from say the Democratic Unionist Party, form an overall majority.
The Tories might drop or not drop the LibDems as their coalition partners, but either way the LibDems reduced to half their pre-dissolution Parliamentary representation will have nowhere else to turn, having now so firmly embraced the Victorian liberal economic strategies that Clegg, Laws and Alexander have locked them into as to make them indistinguishable from the Tories on core economic policy.
So it really boils down to whether Labour on its own, or with Plaid Cymru and if necessary SNP support, can command an overall majority in the House of Commons. How Welsh and Scottish voters cast their vote is out of their hands, but I really hope in England voters firmly reject both of the current coalition partners and the poisonous Ukip and give Labour a substantial platform of seats and votes to which can be added the seats and votes won inWales and Scotland.
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