The opposition ran a highly professional election campaign. Out went beards and amateurism: in came a catchy theme tune, slick manifesto launch and aggressive poster advertising. The party leader, whose decency exceeded his charisma, worked his socks off to convince voters it was time for a change.

Labour's attempt to oust John Major in 1992? No, this is the Scottish National Party in 2003, with John Swinney cast in Neil [...]

To the discomfort of Jack McConnell, the First Minister, the Scottish parliamentary election on 1 May is in danger of turning into a referendum on war with Iraq. Tony Blair, secure in his Westminster majority, can weather dissent from angry ex-ministers, MPs and trade unionists. McConnell cannot afford to be so sanguine.

McConnell, who leads a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, was expecting to trundle back to Holyrood and resume business as [...]

A friend confides that he gave up smoking dope when he went into politics, for fear the News of the World would search through his dustbins for discarded roaches.

Perhaps it was not such a sacrifice. But it illustrates the extent to which British politics has turned into one continuous episode of Big Brother. That house in east London is a palace of freedom compared to the prison in which [...]

The Scottish National Party celebrated the first anniversary of the Scottish Parliament by martyring one of the earliest Nationalist icons. Margo MacDonald, the winner of the 1973 Govan by-election, has been disciplined by colleagues for breaching party rules.

The plain-speaking MacDonald has transformed herself from a mascot of the past to the Mother Courage of independence. Notwithstanding her past hostility to devolution, which she saw as a distraction from the [...]

When William Hague returns, tanned and cheerful, from teaching Ffion to sail off the coast of Maine, he will find the Central Office pointyheads in a tizz. There they are, toiling to rebuild Conservative credibility. They nurse a policy review. They set up "Listening to Britain" meetings from Bradford to Torbay. They plot for Hague to present his millennium vision to an enraptured party conference.

And what happens? Arriving [...]

You know that Scottish politics have arrived when you see the Press Association reporter running - yes, running - down Edinburgh's historic Mound. When you stroll down the High Street and see camera crews entrenched on George IV Bridge. When you take a turn round St Giles' Cathedral and find Channel 4's correspondent Sarah Smith, one of John Smith's daughters, leaning on the parapet updating her notes.

Welcome to PR [...]

In Llandeilo, a Carmarthenshire town where cream and smoke-blue houses stack up above the river Towy, an elderly man in a flat cap is inspecting vegetables at the weekly market. He mutters an inquiry. "Welsh? Welsh? Yes, they're all Welsh," says the stallholder, a red dragon on his sweatshirt. "No," says the old man irritably. "What I said is, are they any good?"

As devolution gets closer and closer, that [...]

You should bring: stout walking shoes, thick sweaters (for April snow). Petrol money (the "top-up" PR element of the new voting system means canvassing entire regions). Willingness to shuttle between Glasgow - home of the People's Party - and Edinburgh, where the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Tories have their headquarters. Capacious holdall to contain the vast, picture-book Labour manifesto.

You may see: Charlie Whelan, the Chancellor's former press aide, masquerading [...]

The Provost of Clackmannanshire suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder. A week of rain and he yearns for the Mediterranean sun. "I get very depressed and my wife can hardly put up with it," he told the local press, who were inquiring why he spent so much time on holidays abroad.

Rain is common in Clackmannanshire. It sluices in sheets off the brown Ochil Hills, sending old ladies scurrying for shelter. [...]

If you turn off the microphones, lock the doors and guarantee eternal anonymity, some of Scottish Labour's brightest hopes will confess a guilty secret. They sympathise with the SNP.

Not that they want an independent Scotland: that remains a heresy. But when the cameras are gone and the curtains are drawn, Labour's younger modernisers swap their ritualised "Nat-bashing" for something more measured and forward-looking. They might acknowledge that there are [...]