Tuesday saw the launch of a Scottish Government White Paper on the powers of Scotland’s Parliament. Unveiled by First Minister Alex Salmond, the document sets out 3 potential futures for Scotland: no change, greater devolution or independence.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Labour Minister Frank Field accused Alex Salmond of being ‘rather cheeky’ for so doing, on the grounds that “devolution for Scotland was meant to put an end to any further discussions on the political shape of the United Kingdom”. Oh dear. Naughty us. We’d better just pack up and go home then, hadn’t we?

Actually, the best retort conceivable to Frank Field is printed on the inside cover of the document itself, where it quotes Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell: “No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country, “Thus far shalt thou go and no further”. It’s a declaration of principle which the other parties, which seem to be swithering at present over whether to take part in the conversation if independence remains an option, would do well to take to heart.

Cathy Jamieson, Labour’s acting leader in Scotland, burbled after the launch that: “We do not support independence. Everything in this paper is about independence”. Well actually, it’s nothing of the kind, as she would know if she’d bothered to even glance at it before parading her ignorance in front of the nation’s television cameras. Similarly, the Lib Dems should beware of making the same mistake as they made post election: that of insisting on the SNP’s repudiation of independence as a precondition of political talks.

The more that the other parties try to portray independence as being somehow illegitimate; as some kind of 1984-esque ‘thoughtcrime’, if you like, the more likely it is that they will be swept into irrelevance by the resulting public contempt. It’s also not good enough to say that since the SNP took 1/3 of the vote, that 2/3 therefore oppose independence. People vote for a variety of reasons, and independence, or indeed the ‘more powers’ agenda, deserves to be considered separately from the other issues of the day which might influence how people cast their votes.

Still, the ground has at least shifted. No longer does Labour argue that there should be no more powers for Holyrood. Instead, the debate is about which powers the parliament should now have. In that, the SNP has a clear advantage, in that independence is easy to define. The pressure is now on the other parties to define what their preferred option of ‘more powers’ would actually mean in practice.

In the interim, voters will be able to read the White Paper here (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/08/13103747/0) and give their views online. The most significant part of this, though, is that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories are no longer in charge of the debate. The people are, and that might be what’s terrifying them the most!

To no-one’s great surprise, Jack McConnell has decided to stand down as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. His decision was seen as inevitable following his party’s defeat at the hands of the SNP in May. It is believed that he had decided to stand down several weeks ago, but had taken the summer to ‘reflect’ – something interpreted widely as code for waiting for a Peerage or a similarly prestigious sinecure elsewhere.

Regular readers will know that I have a pretty low regard for Jack McConnell, and it would be hypocritical for me to try and pretend otherwise now. Most politicians, whatever they say about their opponents on the stump, are usually able to sink their differences in private. In my personal experience, McConnell was different. Too often, his seemed to be the demeanor of the small-time party fixer. Despite the periodic purple rhetoric, the role of national leader never seemed to sit particularly comfortably with him.

My own memory of dealing with him is when he rather cack-handedly tried to bully me over the choice of chairman for a debate I was organising between himself and Nicola Sturgeon back in 1996 (prescient or what?), when he was General Secretary of Scottish Labour and Nicola was merely a ‘rising star’. As a student, I wasn’t short of self confidence, so had no hesitation in telling him exactly where he could get off. The arrogance of youth, etc, but it seemed to have the desired effect. More amusing was his assertion at the debate itself that he had once been a member of the SNP, but had seen the light… just seconds before he managed to accidentally hit the light switch and plunge the entire lecture theatre into darkness!

That said, he did manage to sort out the Scottish Qualifications Agency as Education Minister. Having taken over as First Minister at a time when the howls of the anti’s threatened to being the whole project into disrepute, he did managed to restore some stability. ‘Doing less better’ was a sensible aim in the shorter term, but despite laudable initiatives such as tackling sectarianism, the smoking ban and raising Scotland’s overseas profile, somehow the overall package never seemed to catch the public imagination.

In his more reflective moments, he did seem to have a genuine passion for education, and took up the cause of the people of Malawi with some aplomb. His impending appointment as British High Commissioner to Malawi is a job which will probably suit him quite well. As Alex Salmond has said, McConnell leaves Scotland in a better state than he found it. For that at least, he deserves our thanks.

2 November 2006 - Responding to a Scotsman poll showing 51% support for Independence and 32% support for the SNP, Scottish Office Minister David Cairns asks: "What is it about the SNP that is so unattractive that it has lost 20 per cent of people who say that they actually believe in the SNP's main policy?"

11 August 2007 - Responding to the above Daily Mail poll showing 31% support for Independence and 48% support for the SNP, Scottish Office Minister David Cairns describes the figures as "A massive embarrassment to Alex Salmond".

Oh, well. At least if the Scotland Office does get the heave-ho, there'll always be a job for Mr Cairns with the official news agency of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

There’s been some further flutters in the Scottish Labour doocot over the last week or so. This time, the cause has been the apparent leaking of a memo written by Adrian Colwell, a former Special Adviser to Jack McConnell, in the aftermath of the SNP’s defeat of Labour in May’s elections.

From what I’ve read of Colwell's analysis, it all looks pretty well spot on. Perhaps predictably, though, given their current state of denial, Labour figures are busily dismissing his views, painting him as a ‘peripheral’ figure, somehow ‘distant’ from the campaign.

No-one should underestimate how traumatic an experience the last few months has proved to be for Scottish Labour. Nevertheless, if Colwell’s memo can be dismissed in such a summary fashion; with any campaign post-mortem being held in private; with a simple coronation of Wendy Alexander as leader to follow; it seems to me that Labour is extremely unlikely to experience any kind of recovery any time soon.

Quite simply, their self-inflicted organisational, political and financial problems are far too deep-rooted to be tackled in such a cosmetic fashion. Rather than gloat, though, it did set me thinking, about how people have reacted to the SNP government since May, and how its fortunes might fare as political criticisms, as they almost certainly will over time, begin to build in credibility.

As the above poll perhaps indicates, so far at least, the SNP has been doing well in government. Labour’s criticisms of the SNP prior to the election – over the economy and seeking conflict with Westminster – have been shown to be little more than mendacious, self-interested scaremongering. These pre-election boilerplate criticisms have sapped Labour’s credibility, which means that their post-election critique is falling largely on deaf ears, at least for the moment.

Their discomfort is palpable. After all, Labour’s response to the SNP from the 1960’s onwards has always been to stress its ‘pro-Scottish’ credentials as the real national party of Scotland. But that starts to look like empty posturing when you always have to look over your shoulder to Westminster for guidance. Post-devolution, this became a conjuring trick that was increasingly hard to maintain.

Previously, Labour had the Scottish Establishment so stitched up with members of its own Nomenklatura that most nationalist sympathisers in public life opted for a quiet life, telling only as much truth as the times allowed. However, as it began to look like there might be ‘regime change’ in Scotland, more and more figures in business and public life began to raise their heads above the parapet. Civil servants now relish the opportunities to think more freely – a dynamic which is not necessarily nationalist, but is one which most unionist politicians always tried to keep tightly under control. As Alexander McCall Smith writes here, this change has left us with a ‘politically healthier society’.

How can Labour tackle this? Put simply, they shouldn’t even try. If the spirit of the times is running against you, you need to find a new vocabulary; a new frame of policy references with which to express your values. It took the SNP years to learn this, and despite the periodic explosions from certain donors and frustrated careerists, it’s a lesson which the Tories in England only now look like they are beginning to take on board.

However, some people will take the right course of action only after trying every possible alternative. So in attempting to counter the present Zeitgeist, we hear Labour continue to accuse the Edinburgh government of stirring it with London. They tried it over the case of the Lockerbie bomber, and fell flat on their faces. Some, like Jim Devine MP, even tried to do the same over the Glasgow Airport attack, blaming the SNP for ‘politicising’ the terrorist threat – a charge spoiled only by the public praise for the Scottish Executive response offered immediately afterwards by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Can they land blows by relying on freelancers? We’ve had Professor Tom Gallagher claiming that by embracing the Moslem community in Scotland the SNP was somehow pandering to extremism. And let’s not forget Professor Arthur ‘Bleak' Midwinter, who now decries the ability of the government at Holyrood to set an annual budget as “profoundly undemocratic” - a constitutional nicety which never appeared to trouble him unduly before now, not even when Jack McConnell first made noises about running a minority Labour administration.

By accusing the SNP of arrogance for wanting to introduce policies for which there does not appear to be a majority in parliament, such as a referendum bill on Independence? Possibly, but didn’t the other parties shun government to allow the SNP to form an administration, and wasn’t it Jack McConnell himself who was arguing recently for parties to bring their forward their manifesto pledges unreformed? How outrageous that those dastardly nats, havng been placed in government, might then actually then try to govern! That wasn’t in the script!

By criticising proposals to alter Scotland’s international role? Well, that would also take some chutzpah, given the determiniation of Jack McConnell to crowbar his way to the fore each year during Tartan Week and to carve out a role for the Scottish Executive in Malawi. And wasn’t it the late Robin Cook who once appeared before the European Committee of the Scottish Parliament to claim that there were ‘no no-go’ areas for the Scottish Executive in the EU?

By accusing Alex Salmond of using power for the financial gain of himself and his party? The accusations about taking ‘two cheques’ always seemed very tawdry and personalised, especially coming as they did from the Labour and Lib Dem parties which drafted between them the Scotland Act, which of course says nothing against having a Westminster/Holyrood dual mandate. The whiff of bitterness from the Lib Dems in particular was exceptionally unpleasant. Surely nothing at all to do with Alex having turfed them out in the Gordon constituency?

And what to make of the latest blusterings of George Foulkes, a man who has never knowingly passed up a free dinner in his life, claiming that Alex Salmond hosted a dinner at Bute House to reward high-profile SNP supporters like Sir Tom Farmer, Sir George Mathewson and Sir Sean Connery? It’s a great theory, I’ll give him that. What a shame, though, that it’s foiled only by the attendance of pro-union tycoon David Murray, and the invitation extended to House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin. Better luck next time, George…

Well, is it then about accusing the SNP of neglecting the ‘bread and butter’ issues, by deploying constantly the coma-inducing, debate-closing mantra that all that matters are ‘the real issues that matter to ordinary hard working families on their doorsteps in their local communities from day to day in their daily lives’ (c. Cathy Jamieson/Nicol Stephen/Annabelle Goldie)? Well, you know, in the long run, actually it might very well be.

All of the above mentioned spats are of themselves exceptionally trivial – most of the headlines have already been used to wrap fish suppers and are now blowing away down the street into someone’s garden. This is just the currency of trying to discredit a so far popular government. And since it’s something the SNP developed to an art form in opposition, it would ill-behove any nationalist to start complaining too vehemently about how unfair it all is now. It comes with the territory, and we’d better get used to it. Fast.

However, the Teflon coating which allows all of this to slide off harmlessly starts to wear down after a time, and can only be replenished by an ongoing perception of competence. People are prepared to indulge the SNP a little just now - most seem quite happy to watch Holyrood spreading its wings a little, and if it eventually flies off to the high veldt of independence, then so be it.

However, this acceptance will wear off pretty quickly if things start to go off the rails domestically. It was SNP figures like Kenny MacAskill and George Reid who previously made the argument that an SNP administration would first have to prove itself in government before any more powers would reach Holyrood. These attacks are bouncing off harmlessly just now, but should serve as a constant reminder of what we need to do and keep on doing if we are to make progress on that higher agenda.