After weeks of speculation that he would say it, he finally has.
Speaking at a campaign event in Leeds, the Labour leader Ed Miliband has announced that Labour will not go into coalition with the SNP if there is a hung parliament after the General Election in May. It brings some clarity to Labour's position after the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls refused to rule out a deal with the SNP, but it also raises multiple questions.
The first is: why has Mr Miliband ruled out something that was never really on the cards in the first place? Nobody was seriously talking about a formal Labour/SNP coalition as an option; instead, the SNP had made it clear that they prefer one of two options: either an informal arrangement under which they would vote on Labour proposals issue by issue, or a confidence and supply deal in which they would agree to support the government on budgets and in any no-confidence motion. The SNP could have significant influence on policy and the direction of government under either arrangement and from the moment the polls started showing strong support for the nationalists, they were always more likely than a formal coalition.
So why has Mr Miliband now ruled it out? Partly, it is because he is looking to possible Labour voters south of the Border. The Tories have been flaunting giant posters of Alex Salmond with Mr Miliband in his top pocket and Labour strategists want to defuse that Tory weapon by saying there will be no coalition with the SNP. If the prospect of a deal with the SNP is doing damage to Labour in England, the gamble is that Mr Miliband's pronouncement will undo it.
But how will it play in Scotland? One of the reasons Labour have been shying away from ruling out a coalition with the SNP is that they did not want to antagonise the voters they need to win back: men and women who voted Labour in 2010 but voted yes in the referendum last year. In the face of those yes-voting Labour supporters, ruling out a coalition with the SNP when they are at 45 per cent in the polls could look like arrogance. But with the SNP now campaigning hard on full fiscal autonomy for Scotland, the Labour leadership believes there is simply too much difference on the fundamentals between it and the SNP for a coalition to be possible.
Ruling out any formal coalition does not, of course, rule out some kind of deal with the SNP, and it is certain that Tories strategists will make the most of that nuance, but it remains unlikely that the general election will be won or lost over narrow calculations over possible coalition permutations. Voters are much more interested in Labour's programme for government and on this, the party is still not as clear and inspiring as it must be if there is to be any kind of late rise in its support, particularly in Scotland. In ruling out a coalition with the SNP, Mr Miliband has now told us, clearly, what he will not do after the General Election. Now, perhaps he could tell us what he will do.
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