Why battles over NHS play differently on separate sides of the border

We'll leave aside for the moment that the SNP came out of the research rather well. For the next UK General Election, in spite of the whipped cream of interest in the notion of Salmond-as-kingmaker, Scotland is going to be largely irrelevant. As is the coming debate on the NHS going to be irrelevant to Scotland except as mood music. Effie, brace yourself, as Mrs Doubtfire once said.

In the blue word cloud we see poor, uncaring, sell it off, rubbish, trying and reforming, but the stand out word is privatisation. In the yellow one there's improve it, caring, unsure, non-existent and the biggie, same as Conservatives. The purple one is a horror show with clueless, uninterested, non-existent, no policy, low priority and that big word again, privatisation.

No wonder Labour will be purring down the line to the Tory Peer. The red word cloud has spend, caring and throw money at it, but also improve it, committed and, above all, protective. Hmm, privatise versus protect. Who's going to win that one?

The fact that Andy Burnham, the Shadow Health Secretary, has long been a huge fan of health service privatisation will hardly feature in the big debate to come, since it's one the Conservatives don't want to go near. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that the latest Ashcroft report probably drives the last nail into the coffin of the prospects of televised debates during this General Election campaign. Objections from pesky Greens and nationalists will just make it all too difficult, I predict.

As Ashcroft writes in his foreword: "The Conservatives are reluctant to talk any more than they have to about the NHS for the more obvious reason that they feel no such conversation would end well for them."

His focus groups found fewer than three in ten voters thought his own party had the best approach to the NHS, putting the Tories a stonking 18 points adrift. Voters thought that the latest Lansley reforms were more about privatising than reforming health,

"In the absence of any clear explanation of how the changes were supposed to benefit patients, people fell back on their assumptions about Tory motivations," said his lordship. Indeed.

So, it's all fine and dandy for Labour. Run the NHS flag up the pole and await the call to Mr Miliband from Buckingham Palace. Not really, I'm afraid. It's the economy, stupid. This will trump the NHS. Or the EU, or immigration, or other pandering to the absurd Nigel Farage. The purring may have been interrupted by the headline figures from Ashcroft this week - the Tories with their biggest headline lead over Labour for a long time.

And while playing the NHS card in England is pay dirt for Labour, it is devalued currency elsewhere. "The Tories are thought less likely to regard the NHS as a priority than Labour, the LibDems or (in Scotland and Wales) the SNP and Plaid Cymru," reported Ashcroft. So playing the NHS card will help Labour against the Conservatives in England, but it may do little good on the celtic fringe.

There is a common myth that the UK has a National Health Service magicked into existence in 1948. The health service was run separately and along different lines before then and since, but more so since political devolution. Last year this fact was abused by both sides in the course of the independence debate, with the Yes campaign "weaponising" the NHS as an issue, which Ed Miliband has now copied. Labour furiously condemned the Yes campaign for its conduct. The ironies abound.

The Scottish Health Service, as we should always have called it, does not have its problems to seek, as this newspaper has pointed out in our Time for Change campaign. But the Ashcroft research shows that the most trusted party in these islands to deal with health is the SNP.

Mr Miliband can "weaponise" the NHS all he likes in the battle with the Tories, and Jim Murphy can promise to recruit as many nurses as he likes, but this won't win back lost Labour votes in Scotland.