Stuart MacLennan's Twitter abuse sacking gives the advantage to SNP

Alex Salmond got a boost on Friday as he fought to establish the SNP as a force in the election campaign after Labour’s Scottish launch was derailed by one of its own candidates.

Stuart MacLennan, the Labour candidate in Moray, was sacked over offensive remarks he posted on Twitter — calling elderly people “coffin dodgers” and being abusive to political rivals and celebrities.

Gordon Brown was forced to disown Mr MacLennan after Labour came under pressure from David Cameron and Mr Salmond. The SNP leader and First Minister seized on the affair to claim that senior Labour figures, including Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, had known about Mr MacLennan’s tweets but had done nothing to stop him.

What made things worse for Labour was that the decision to dismiss Mr MacLennan came after Mr Murphy had said that he should apologise but would continue to stand for Moray, where Labour came third in 2005 behind the SNP and the Conservatives.

The controversy was manna for Mr Salmond. Never a politician knowingly to undersell himself, he must surely be regretting his boast last year that the Nationalists could win 20 out of 59 seats in Scotland at this election.

The SNP is likely to find itself squeezed as UK issues, rather than purely Scottish ones, dominate, leaving the Nationalists open to the charge that they are “irrelevant” in a UK context.

Indeed, being in power in Scotland may also hit the hopes of Mr Salmond, since his minority government has found itself unable to honour the key pledges on education and local taxation that propelled it to victory at Holyrood in 2007.

The other parties have key Nationalist seats in their sights and the SNP will struggle to hold on to Glasgow East (won in spectacular fashion from Labour in a by-election in 2008) as well as seats in North Perthshire and Angus.

While they may be compensated by taking Livingston, Ochil & South Perthshire and Dundee West from Labour, Mr Salmond ultimately may have to settle for a total of seven seats — the same as the SNP currently holds.

Mr Salmond is playing up the chances of the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists holding the balance of power in a hung Parliament when the votes are counted. He knows, though, that even if they can muster 12 or so MPs between them, the Nationalist bloc would be behind the Lib Dems in the post-election pact queue. Realistically, this election for the SNP is a stop on the way to next year’s Holyrood election and the party is clearly holding back resources for that contest.The Scottish Tories also find themselves fending off the “irrelevant” tag since the party has returned only two MPs from Scotland in the past three general elections.

This time round, the Scottish Tories are hopeful of doing better but their ambition is still limited to winning about five Scottish seats. If David Cameron wins the keys to No 10 on May 6, he may well do so with hardly a smidgin of tartan on his blue riband.

So far, there has been precious little evidence of the “Cameron effect” spreading north to Scotland. The party is still struggling to throw off the perception in Scotland that it is the party of Mrs Thatcher and, thus, anti-Scottish. These may be unfair criticisms but they are still pungent ones in Scotland.

Dumfries & Galloway, Edinburgh South and the neighbouring seats of Perth & North Perthshire and Angus are all, though, eminently winnable for the Conservatives but their cherished hopes of unseating two Labour Cabinet ministers — Jim Murphy in East Renfrewshire and Alistair Darling in Edinburgh South West — are probably unrealistic.

The 2005 Westminster poll was the Scottish Lib Dems annus mirabilis, in that they came second to Labour in terms of share of vote (22 per cent) and number of seats (11). There were two factors in that success — Charles Kennedy, a popular and well-known Scot, was UK party leader and they had a popular cause (opposition to the Iraq war).

Neither factor will apply this time, so the Lib Dems could also struggle to hold what they have. Their main worries will be the Labour challenge in Dunfermline & West Fife (which includes Gordon Brown’s constituency home and which the Lib Dems won in a 2006 by-election) and East Dunbartonshire.

Labour remains the big beast in Scotland in Westminster elections. The party presently holds 39 Scottish seats and there has been evidence in recent opinion polls that many of the voters who deserted the party in 2005 and for Holyrood in 2007 are returning to the fold.

Mr Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, is confidently predicting that Labour could add to their present tally of Scottish MPs and, to that end, he has been unashamedly playing up the party’s demonisation of Mrs Thatcher in Scotland, claiming that the present-day Tory leadership in Scotland will plunge Scotland back to the days of high unemployment and industrial closures.