James Forsyth

By 524 votes to 43, the House of Commons has voted to support air-strikes against Islamic State in Iraq. The margin of victory is not surprising given how limited the motion was, it rules out ground troops and makes clear there’ll be another vote before any action in Syria. But in a sign of the unease of some on the Labour side, Rushanara Ali, who represents George Galloway’s old seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, has resigned from the front bench over Labour’s support for the motion. Indeed, the first estimates are that 24 Labour MPs voted against while just five Tories opposed. The question now is whether, and when, Cameron might return to the Commons to try and gain approval for action in Syria.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Freddy Gray, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth on Cameron's radicalism" startat=70] Listen [/audioplayer]No one goes to Birmingham to revive a marriage. But that is what David Cameron and the Conservative party must do next week at conference. They must find a way to put the passion back into their relationship, to learn to trust each other again ahead of the general election. For neither can win without the other next May. That election is there to be won. The Labour gathering in Manchester this week was not one of a party convinced that it is going to surge to victory in a few months. The atmosphere was subdued, bordering on depressed.

Ed Miliband is not having much luck this conference. First, there’s the fact that it has come straight after the Scottish referendum, making it feel a bit small. Second, other stories have kept intruding on and overshadowing conference. Finally, Miliband’s managed to forget two of the most important sections of his speech, the parts on the deficit and immigration. The missing paragraphs dominated, to Miliband’s audible irritation, his interview on the Today Programme. Miliband explained that he hadn’t meant to cut them out from the speech, but that they had just got lost as he delivered it. Now, to some extent, this is a process story.

No notes speech have been Ed Miliband’s political party trick. His One Nation speech two years ago ended speculation about his leadership and last year’s energy price freeze effort knocked the Tories off their stride for months. But today, the no notes speech hurt Miliband rather than helped him. Without an autocue, Miliband skipped bits of the speech. This has happened to him before, one year he missed out the section on the environment. But this year, Miliband missed out the bits he could least afford to: forgetting the sections on the deficit and immigration.

Chuka Umunna is the last disciple of the third way standing. At a Times fringe earlier, he was full of praise for centre-left European reformers such as the Italian PM Matteo Renzi and French PM Manuel Valls. Indeed, when Umunna spoke approvingly of the battle that Valls is having with his own party one sensed that it was something that Umunna would like to do himself. Umunna sought to portray himself as the reasonable outsider. He said that the biggest challenge in politics was to make compromise fashionable again. He urged the Labour party to embrace entrepreneurs and his tone about business and technology was unremittingly hopeful. His desire to command as much political space as possible was reminiscent of New Labour in its pomp.

Ed Miliband wouldn’t have wanted to spend his big, pre-conference interview talking about English votes for English law but that’s what he had to do on Marr this morning. Miliband was prepared to concede more English scrutiny for English legislation. But it is clear he won’t back English votes for English laws. He even argued that it was hard to describe tuition fees, which don’t apply in Scotland, as an issue just for the rest of the UK. listen to ‘Ed Miliband: 'In favour of greater scrutiny' of English issues by English MPs’ on Audioboo Miliband was much happier when the interview turned to the minimum wage and Labour’s plan to increase it to £8 by 2020.

The referendum campaign was a mixed experience for the Scottish Tories. On the one hand, it was a reminder of how much they are still hated in Scotland: End Tory rule forever, was one of the more frequently heard Nationalist battle cries. On the other, they had one of the campaign’s most effective advocates, Ruth Davidson and were accepted in as part of the cross party campaign. Indeed, it was telling that the Better Together campaign together rather than hiding Davidson away used her more and more as the campaign went on. In his Scotsman column today, the former Labour spin doctor John McTernan declares that ‘Ruth Davidson’s campaign has detoxified’ the Scottish Conservatives. This is a particularly striking statement coming from a former Labour partisan.

As the political nation waits with bated breath for the Scottish referendum result, the polls are dictating the mood. One showing Yes in the lead led to the abandonment of PMQs and all three party leaders heading to Scotland. Recent ones showing No back in the lead, have steadied nerves and reassured the No camp that they have halted Alex Salmond’s momentum and begun to turn the tide. But there are several reasons why the polls might not be as reliable a guide as usual in this referendum. First, as Mike Smithson notes, there hasn’t been a Scottish independence referendum before so. This means that the pollsters don’t have a previous model to work from and improve. Second, there is the question of whether people are being honest about how they’ll vote.

At times in the last few months, it has seemed that if no one was making the case for Britain in Scotland. Too often it seemed that Better Together knew the price of separation but not the value of Britishness. But that is changing. Yes closing the gap, and taking the lead in a couple of polls, has prompting an outpouring of emotion about the United Kingdom from those on the No side. At a pro-Union event in Edinburgh on Friday night, I was struck by how speakers from Gordon Brown to Danny Alexander to George Galloway all talked about Britishness in raw, emotional terms. This focus on Britishness is long over-due. The Guardian’s ICM poll finds that among No voters the most popular reason for voting No is their feelings about the UK.

George Galloway announced his support for Gordon Brown as First Minister of Scotland last night. Galloway’s endorsement came as Brown turned up at an event at Usher Hall in Edinburgh that Galloway was compering. The endorsement was met with a broad grin by Brown. But behind the humour, there is a serious point, Scottish Labour knows that it has given Salmond and the SNP far too easy a ride at Holyrood. As the former Labour Minister Brian Wilson acknowledged at last night's event, this referendum is happening because the SNP managed to win a majority in the Scottish Parliament and Labour must take some of the blame for that. That this referendum is so close is also because so many traditional Labour voters are now backing independence.

Tonight will bring another YouGov poll on the Scottish referendum and this may change the mood again. But right now, the pro-Union side is in far better cheer than it was. It feels that it has not only held the line in the last few days but begun to turn the tables on Salmond. There is a sense in the No camp that they have disrupted Alex Salmond’s momentum and prevented him from turning the final week of the campaign into a procession towards independence. They feel that the economic warnings from various business mean that the consequences of the choice are becoming more apparent. While the promise of a quick move towards further devolution has shown that the choice isn’t between things staying as they are and independence.