Nicola sturgeon

If the election in England is the political equivalent of trench warfare with Labour and the Tories inching forwards and then back, what’s going on in Scotland is a rout with the SNP driving all before it. What is remarkable is how the Nationalists are even in with a chance of winning seats such as Edinburgh South West that voted No by a more than twenty point margin. At the moment, everything their opponents throw at it seems to bounce off the SNP. The so-called Sturgeon memo, which claimed that she had told the French Ambassador that—contrary to all her public protestations—she would prefer Cameron to Miliband as Prime Minister, was the big story this time last week. But now, it is an irrelevance.

Nicola Sturgeon has been described as a rock star politician. In Tuesday’s STV debate she looked like one who is suffering from second album syndrome. Having impressed a UK-wide audience in the seven-leader ITV debate last week, her reception at the Scottish version was far more muted, with some instant polls suggesting a narrow victory for Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy. A dispassionate observer might place Sturgeon third, behind Murphy and an impressively plucky Ruth Davidson. It takes something to stand before a Scottish audience, where the Tory brand isn’t just toxic but radioactive, and earn applause for making the case to reintroduce prescription charges.

Tonight’s Scottish debate isn’t going to fundamentally alter the dynamics of this general election campaign in Scotland. But it will reverberate through the UK-wide general election campaign. Both Ed Miliband and David Cameron have been left with questions to answer by their Scottish leaders while Nicola Sturgeon has made clear the price she intends to try and extract for supporting a Labour government. In heated exchanges with Sturgeon about the economy, Jim Murphy pointed out that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that Labour would not need to cut further after 2016. Now, the Labour leadership in London has studiously avoided endorsing this idea. But Miliband and Ed Balls can now expect to be put on the spot about it after Murphy’s comments.

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of the campaign unchanged was, to their mind, a result. As Cameron enjoyed a late night drink with Samantha Cameron, George Osborne and his key aides on Thursday, he reflected on how much better he felt than he did after the first debate five years ago when he knew that he had not only underperformed but that he had two more to get through. This time round he’d done fine and was done with debates.

After 15 hours of fascinating and - let’s face it - fairly exciting developments in l’affaire Sturgeon, here’s where I think we are, and I’ll try to stick as much as possible to incontrovertible facts, not political bluster: If this was all a grand misunderstanding, I think the various parties would have come together by now to explain what they think has happened, e.g. perhaps Nicola Sturgeon used the word ‘expect’, that got turned into ‘espoir’ back in the French embassy, and then relayed to the FCO as ‘hope’. That’s pretty plausible, but we’ve heard no such explanation yet.

So who does Nicola Sturgeon really want as Prime Minister? Her official line is that she’d put in anyone but the wicked Tories – indeed, Alex Salmond told me last week that “the SNP approach to a Cameron minority government will be to bring it down”. But that’s not what Strugeon has been saying in private. The Daily Telegraph has just released a leaked diplomatic memo revealing that Ms Sturgeon has confessed to the French ambassador that she would prefer that David Cameron "remains"  Prime Minister - and that she thinks Ed Miliband is too incompetent. The leaked memo - a UK government memo - goes as follows:- "Just had a telephone conversation with Pierre-Alain Coffinier, the French CG [consul-general].

1) Can Natalie Bennett do enough to spark another Green surge? After Natalie Bennett’s infamous ‘brain fade’ the Green surge faded away. The media stopped giving the Greens the attention they had been and without the oxygen of publicity, support for the party fell away; this morning’s YouGov poll has the Greens on 4%, their lowest score since October. But tonight offers Bennett a chance to get her party back into the election frame. If she can deliver a few good answers and the odd zinger, that would be enough to get the media—and, then, the voters—to take a second look at her and the Greens. 2) Will Leanne Wood attack Miliband over the state of the NHS in Labour-run Wales?

I know it's early, but I'd like to tip a winner from Thursday's debate: Nicola Sturgeon. SNP leader. She has just been positioned next to the Prime Minister, who'll be on the far-right. This which will cause relief in Tory HQ who had been worried about his being flanked by Nigel Farage and Sturgeon. The lineup, from left to right, is as follows:- Natalie Bennett - Nick Clegg - Nigel Farage - Ed Miliband - Leanne Wood - Nicola Sturgeon - David Cameron Best Coconut Shy Ever: pic.twitter.com/trYzoqZY5i — Ian Hyland (@HylandIan) March 30, 2015 Sturgeon will be new to an English audience, and is certain to impress.