So whose shoes would you prefer to be in?

Johann Lamont’s or Willie Rennie’s? I guess your answer could well be, ‘Neither’. Both leaders certainly face a formidable challenge as their parties gather for their spring conferences in Dundee and Inverness respectively.

The two parties are both in the doldrums.

Three polls conducted this year on average put Labour on 28 per cent in Holyrood constituency voting intentions, trailing the SNP by no less than 20 points. The Liberal Democrats are in even bigger trouble – their average Holyrood rating is just 7 points. Both parties are just as weak now as they were twelve months ago when they received a thorough drubbing at the hands of the electorate.

Yet there is one crucial difference between their respective situations. Scottish Labour’s difficulties stem from sources close to home. The Scottish Liberal Democrats’ problems, in contrast, have been occasioned primarily by developments further afield.

While Holyrood Labour remains becalmed, the party south of the border has recovered relatively quickly from the severe drubbing it suffered in the Westminster election two years ago. True, the Westminster party has yet to establish a clear and consistent poll lead over the Conservatives, but at 38 per cent, its average UK-wide poll rating is as much as eight points up on what Labour secured in the 2010 ballot boxes. Unlike Holyrood Labour, Westminster Labour has at least managed to make itself a serious contender for power once more.

In contrast, the Liberal Democrats’ colleagues at Westminster are in dire straits. At 11 per cent, the party’s average support in UK-wide polls is...

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There is a word that has been in very heavy use since the debate about the independence referendum caught fire last month. That word is “mandate”. Both sides have sought to justify their stance on how the referendum should be conducted by arguing their particular perspective is the one that is consistent with the mandate the electorate supposedly gave the SNP last May. Of course the idea that those who vote for a particular party endorse every one of the promises it has made during the election is little more than a convenient fiction. Nevertheless, it is much easier for a party to lay claim to the legitimate right to take a proposed action if it can show it is fulfilling a campaign promise. Conversely, as the Liberal Democrats have [...]

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