I'm a Scot who classes himself as a social democrat/democratic socialist and to me the snp are not social democrats at all. They are vacuous centrists who believe more in the Blair idea of 'we are whatever you want us to be' than any real set of core beliefs. The party advocates an Irish tiger style low tax policy on big companies which is barely social democratic. In fact they subsidized amazon's corporation tax so they paid 0% on their scottish depot/offices. Salmond and Swinney are more pro-big business than some scottish tories with their party backed by Tom Farmer and Brian Souter (Souter in fact has a huge degree of influence over snp policy, you only need to look at the sudden dropping of bus re-regulation in Scotland post-2008). Not only that but when true centre leftists opted not to cross the civil service picket lines (inc labour and the grees ) the snp strode past it. In fact the Scotsman reported that Swinney was happy to see cuts in the civil service budget as it reduced his spending on the scottish home service . Whilst Russell (the education secretary) also has said he supports English/Welsh teacher pension cuts. Which allies them with Con-Dem policies. The snp has long argued under salmond for a smaller independent Scottish defence force and yer plays tartan populism with scots at every round of defence cuts. In fact the future UK defence footprint suits the snp more. Whilst the Scottish Labour party has a long way to go tp being what it was in the 1990s it is right, under Darling at Better Together and Lament in Holyrood to expose the fact that Salmond and his Cabinet are vacuous populists. The snp has conviction politicians like Jamie Hepburn and Gordon Wilson but the leadership are centrist and unprincipled. The cult of Salmond in the snp has effectively made it a one man party. There's no counter to him. Jim Sillars and Margo DonAld have bee chased out years ago, and she was forced out by the Salmond backers for being too out spoken, and now even Alex Neil (a man who made speeches against the basic notion of britishness) who challenged Salmon and criticised hinm regularly after the 1999 Scottish elections, now sits in cabinet saying we Nats are all British too. For a party to be so narrow and obedient to one man is a worry. Not even Blair and Thatcher, Attlee or Churchill commanded such obedience. Darling is right. The SNP is a party created for winning independence. Yet over the last 2 years they refused to bring their bill on it before Hollyrood despite it being told by labour they'd let it stand and past. They then switched a manifesto commitment in a leaders debate from a Yes/no to multi option referendum. Salmon did so on the BBC leaders debate in 2011, arguing that althoughugh the 2011 and 2007 manifesto stated a yes/no vote he would make it multi option. And since then have heard the snp talk more of the equally vacuous idea of devo max rather than outline the policy on independence. The SNP under Salmond lacks a clear commitment or policy on what it actually now wants for Scotland. They hope to use the 2014 Commonwealth games as a spring board to independence. Show some facets of Scotland off, fly the saltire and hope for the best. It is a symptom of their future downfall, a lack of true political core principles which guide them.

I'm sick of his stinking attitude towards independence. He's a Labour party hack pretending to be a social democrat. People like him are keen to protect their cush little corner of westminister comfort.
Scotland could become a genuine social democratic nation of independent. But no, Darling would rather we were governed by vicious right wingers. When you find yourself on the same side as Tories and Lib Dems you have to sart asking yourself some hard questions.