Lab-SNP: England's Westminster Dream Team?

Plenty of Labour-supporters in England are intrigued. They like the look of Sturgeon. They are impressed by what she has to say. Their esteem for the SNP leader has grown in step with the increasing vehemence of the insults in the right-wing press.

This is especially true in the part of England I know best - the north. Many of these northerners would love the chance to be independent from London too. There's no wave of anti-Scots sentiment here.

Northerners suffer plenty of insults and put-downs. Football matches are instructive when the opposition is from the south. The away supporters' chants invariably refer to scrounging, who's paying for the home supporters' dole, the theft of the visitors' cars and culinary jibes about pie diets. Then of course, there's the positively Shakespearean, "Dirty northern bastards!"

But that's all good, clean fun. And about as meaningful as the 'journalism' which calls Scots 'sweaty Jocks' and 'weevils'. I know Scousers who are very, very upset that Sir John didn't include them as part of the "clear and present danger" to the natural order of things.

To northerners, Scots are Scots, some good, some bad. Heavens, Tony Blair is a Scot. Gordon Brown may be a hero to some up in Scotland. Down south, he's remembered as the Prime Minster who championed rich bankers and financiers just months before the Big Crash. Scotland can keep that kind of Scot. His various Vows have no credibility in England.

In contrast, Sturgeon's exposure in the English media has convinced many of the sincerity of the SNP's pledge to help deliver positive change for the benefit of ordinary people across the UK. Sure, the SNP wants eventual independence for Scotland but that's not what this election is about.

Like Scots, ordinary English people are usually an after-thought in the great Westminster scheme of things. It shouldn't be like this. The Labour Party is supposed to be their party. But New Labour has delivered disappointment after disappointment. Doubts have grown about whether the NHS, the welfare state, education are really safe in its hands. Even so, Labour will easily retain its northern strongholds. The Tories are a lot worse.

Now there's the chance of a genuine anti-austerity majority in the Commons.

Labour and the SNP agree on so much: a mansion tax, a bankers' bonus tax, changes to pension tax relief, the abolition of 'non dom' status, a 50p top rate of income tax and the end of the bedroom tax.

But the SNP offer the English even more. A £8.70 minimum wage. 100,000 affordable new houses across the UK. Public spending increased by 0.5 per cent per year - that's £140 billion extra investment in the UK's economy and public services. An additional £24bn for the NHS across the UK and opposition to privatisation of the health service in England.

If this is what the SNP is about, then stuff EVEL you know where, Mr Cameron.

It's just that Labour-supporters in England doubt whether their party can achieve this on its own. Recent history shows that New Labour can't be trusted. It's still too in awe of the wealthy and the London Establishment, too cowed by the Tory media and too fearful of the City and big business.

But a Labour government, its backbone stiffened by the massed ranks of Alex Salmond's feet warmers, is a different prospect. Shored up by the SNP, it surely will deliver. A Lab-SNP Westminster Dream Team - for England's benefit as well as Scotland's.

Of course, this would mean the sacrifice of fifty Scottish Labour MPs. Fifty erstwhile comrades. But as my English pals say, what have these lobby-fodder, seat warmers ever done for England?

If it's an SNP electoral whitewash, you can be sure many will be dancing in Derby, hooraying in Hull and whooping in Wigan.