SNP spin's got its mojo back

"The SNP's got its mojo back", declares Nationalist Duncan Hamilton in his regular Scotland on Sunday column. It seems that Salmond & Co have in the past few days completely turned around the fortunes of the SNP Government, but it would perhaps be more appropriate to describe the article as a classic triumph of spin over substance, and that it's the former that's been revitalised by Mr Hamilton at the expense of the latter. He says:

"First, there was the announcement by the Scottish Government that the target of having 50 per cent of energy in Scotland coming from wind and wave power by 2020 was to be raised to a hugely ambitious target of 80 per cent."

I can also announce that I've raised my target for a lottery win from £1 million to £5 million. And Planet Politics just won't be in the Top 10 in the Scottish section of next year's Total Politics poll, it'll be numero uno. And I don't just hope to date that nice looking girl who works in Tesco, she'll have to at least have had a Top 10 single or featured in a TV soap opera. 'Hugely ambitious', aren't I?

"That shift followed a report by Scottish Renewables which showed the potential for massive further expansion in the Scottish renewables sector."

Scottish Renewables is an industry representative body and thus what it says should be treated with similar scepticism to the Turkeys' Union claiming massive potential to abolish Christmas.

"It isn't often that you see a government voluntarily making its own targets even harder to achieve."

Oh go on then. My target is to win £20 million on the lottery, usurp Iain Dale as the blogfather and date Cheryl Cole. Perhaps Mr Hamilton's point would have some substance if it could be evaluated within a reasonable time period rather than in ten year's time. Thus as it stands - as a target to be met sometime in the future - it has even less credence than a manifesto commitment.

"It sends a message that the SNP sees Scotland as a potential world leader, that it has big ambitions for the nation."

Indeed, and I'm also a potential blogosphere leader, blah, blah. In fact, why stop at that, what about a newspaper column and a book deal for moi? Thus rather than the SNP having "big ambitions for the nation", like yours truly it's maybe bigger still on delusion and dishonesty.

Mr Hamilton has also by some miracle found merit in the SNP's decision to dump the independence referendum Bill rather than put it to a vote in the Scottish Parliament. But tellingly, he says of the SNP's raison d'être: "If the election campaign to come is about independence, the SNP will lose", and indeed "the power to deliver the key SNP objective is not now, and under PR will never be, solely in the hands of the SNP".

The latter point in particular seems to be saying that an independence referendum will never take place unless an SNP Government wins power at Holyrood under a FPTP electoral system. Which perhaps tells us all we need to know about the SNP's prospects of winning an independence referendum.

Surely if the Scottish people were sufficiently enthusiastic about independence then a majority SNP Government would be attainable under a proportional voting system. As it is, Duncan Hamilton seems to suggest otherwise, thus what's the point of having a referendum? He seems to think it would be lost. Perhaps a bit more than rhetoric about "positive ambition, international leadership on one of the big global issues of the age, nation before party, cross-party consensus and a desire to address the key issues of daily life for ordinary Scots" is required.