Alex Massie

This is, I know, a statement of the obvious but Ed Miliband is no Teddy Roosevelt. There are two reasons to be thankful for this. First, TR was really a ghastly man; secondly, if Ed Miliband were able to muster a quarter of Roosevelt's brio he'd be faring rather better than he is. In the present circumstances, the opposition should be thumping the government every day. Granted, this requires more credibility than either Mr Miliband or Mr Balls can boast but the fact remains that a) George Osborne's economic hopes have been vanquished by events and b) there is little substantive difference between his proposals and those made by Alistair Darling before the general election last year. Events have pushed the government towards accepting a timetable they once thought impossibly timid.

Shockingly, it is possible some of you did not see my appearance on BBC News this afternoon. Thanks to the wonders of Youtube and the baffling enthusiasm some people have for clipping and sharing these things, you can catch up with it now. As is always the case, I forgot half the things I wanted to say. Jon Sopel asked if it was really plausible for David Cameron to "do nothing". Well, of course it is. Indeed when you cannot offer anything useful it is best to offer nothing at all. The time - as a few of us argued back then - for Conservatives to back a referendum came and went in the last parliament. The Tories could have (nay, should have) supported Alex Salmond's referendum bill then.

How bad was the last Labour government? Pretty much as bad as you can imagine says my old friend Peter Oborne. Which leads me to ask if my old friend has gone mad? According to Peter: It is now widely accepted that the years of New Labour government were an almost unalloyed national disaster. Whichever measure you take – moral, social, economic, or the respect in which Britain is held in the world – we went into reverse. Nevertheless, historians may come to judge that these 13 years of Labour misrule served a vital purpose. In retrospect, the Brown/Blair period may be seen as a prolonged experiment which taught the liberal Left that its ideas cannot work, do not work, and have no chance of ever working. It takes time to ruin a country.

There is a good deal of good sense in the magazine's main leader this week. By which I mean of course that a good deal of it is unconvincing and some of it dangerously so. That is, if David Cameron listens to the Spectator he risks assisting the very forces - Alex Salmond and the SNP - the magazine's editors (and the Prime Minister himself) wish to defeat. Of course Alex Salmond is beatable and of course support for UN-member independence is a minority enthusiasm. This is one reason why a referendum seems to scare Scots less than it does politicians and pundits based in London. (Most of those pundits and politicians, incidentally, seem only to care about Scotland's constitutional question; the actual governance of the country is, at best, most often an afterthought.

His ad team* PAC seem to be inspired by Patrick Swayze's finest hour. That's the 1984 classic, Red Dawn. (What else could qualify for that palm?) Anyway, whatever else it is this ain't exactly pandering to the GOP base. Again: it's time for UK parties to emulate the cousins' approach to these things. Granted, the Jerry Bruckheimer style might not work for British political advertising but surely stuff borrrowed from Brief Encounter or the Ealing Comedies might do the trick? *My mistake. Thanks to readers for pointing it out.

A reader asks: What do you think about Johann Lamont winning the Scottish Labour leadership contest? Well, jings, far be it for me to intrude into these matters but it bears noticing that Lamont, doughty as she may be, relied upon the tame votes of Trades Union affiliates to secure her victory. Ken McIntosh - remember him, Mr Miliband? - actually won the most votes from individual party members. All Scottish Labour types now admit the party's "arrogant" belief Scotland would always be there for Labour; all claim to have learned from the chastening experience of this May's election. All say they must be "about" more than just Nat-bashing. All of which is all very well and good but I'll believe the Scottish Labour party has changed when it actually changes its attitudes.