Jim Murphy is put in his place over no cuts pledge

No wonder Jim "Spud" Murphy looks even more puzzled than usual. He spent the weekend telling us that there would be no cuts and the Labour manifesto out today gives us more than a few. Now it is true that I still think people in England should vote Labour, but that is against a backdrop of a strong vote for the SNP in Scotland to make sure that the cuts are kept to a minimum or dropped altogether.

In a BBC interview, Chuka Umunna who is the Labour business spokesman, felt constrained to put Spud in his place and remind him that Labour is led from London, and not Edinburgh:

I think we can fairly easily conclude from this exchange, which admittedly was forced out of Umunna, that Labour has pretty much given up on Scotland.

That does not mean that people in England should go off and vote for the Monster Raving Loonies, or the Greens, as a protest. Labour manifesto has enough in it to justify a vote south of the River Tweed, but smoothie-chops like young Chuka here are motivated by a desire to get their snouts in the Westminster troughs more than they are by socialist ideology, or indeed any ideology at all. 

So they may try for cuts, but will probably not go down to the wire over them, because at the end of the day, staying in office is all that matters to people like this.

So a vote for the SNP in Scotland makes more and more sense, even to people who do not support the idea of Scottish independence. If you want to ensure that Labour does not implement cuts, then make sure that there is a large SNP cohort who will allow Labour's placemen and troughers to keep their place at the trough, in return to avoiding cuts to our services.