SNP's 54% poll gives Ed the jitters!

Three things yesterday badly spooked Ed Miliband:

1. the polls showing Labour would be virtually wiped out in Scotland, 
2. the Scottish Sun splashing its support for the SNP over its front page
3. every TV and radio news program reporting both of above

So panicked was he that we saw him rage against the SNP machine last night like an angry schoolboy desperately trying to show the adults that's he's hard enough to be a man.

If you missed it, he was on the BBC's Question Time: Election Leaders Special. When asked by an audience member about working with the SNP in the event of a Labour minority government, he fumed that he'd rather not be in government than go into coalition or 'do a deal' with the SNP.

It's the most forcibly we've ever seen him spin this line.

Of course, David Dimbleby asked what he meant by 'deal' and he simply replied "confidence and supply."

So what have we found out? Actually, nothing new. He's simply said that in the event of a Labour minority government, there'd be no SNP cabinet ministers and there'd be no up-front 5-year deal with the SNP.

Well, we knew all that anyway. Nicola Sturgeon has said all along that she thought either a coalition or a confidence-and-supply arrangement was unlikely and she repeated that last night in the BBC's Election 2015: Ask Nicola Sturgeon program. Labour has also been saying it for long enough.

What was new was the anger and directness with which Ed said it. However, it rather lost its punch when Dimbleby drew out from him what exactly he meant by a 'deal' (so well done Dimbleby), which we then found out did not exclude SNP support on a vote-by-vote basis.

Dimbleby destroys Miliband's anti-SNP rhetoric

Nothing has changed except the acceptance by just about everyone in the nation that Labour's lost in Scotland to the SNP. What we did learn tonight was just how angry and panicked that makes Ed Miliband feel.