DAVID CAMERON assures us that he is worried that Labour will not recover electoral fortunes in Scotland unless it rules out any deal with the SNP.

He voices his fear that Ed Miliband might be “not strong enough” to stand up to the Scottish nationalists’ “transitional demands.”

Branding the SNP as people who “want to break up our country,” Cameron insists that Labour should avoid being taken hostage by aping the Tories in having nothing to do with it.

Given that the SNP has already rejected any co-operation with his party, the Prime Minister is merely making a virtue of reality.

Miliband has stressed that there will be no formal alliance with the SNP, but he must know that there is a strong possibility of a hung Parliament in May in which minority parties could sustain him as PM on an ad hoc basis.

The fact that Labour finds itself running virtually neck and neck with the Tories after five years of systematic attacks on working people’s living standards provides a sad commentary on its woeful response to the austerity agenda.

Cameron in opposition sought to make his party electable through a new softer image after the Tories were identified by Theresa May of all people as the nasty party.

With the enthusiastic collaboration of the Liberal Democrats, Cameron shed his mask post-election and has put the boot in, preferring to hack benefits, freeze public-service workers’ pay and starve public services of finance to give tax breaks to his own class.

Labour’s weakness has been the albatross of “responsibility” hung round its neck, fearful of any policy commitment that could be savaged as anti-business or anti-aspirational by the City and the Tory mass media.

It’s a self-defeating approach that won’t win corporate support while failing to enthuse Labour’s missing millions.

Miliband’s main concern should not be fear of being taken hostage politically by the SNP but by the new Labour remnants in his own party who remain committed to a Tory-lite programme.

FIX THE SYSTEM

Possibly the last thing that Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood needed as she launched her party’s election manifesto was her predecessor Dafydd Elis Thomas opening his heart to the media.

On one level, declaring that he has “no issue” with voters backing Labour may be a recognition of democracy, just as saying that Plaid has yet to convince most people in Wales is stating the bleeding obvious.

However, his lordship’s caution against Wood seeking “additional funding which is not available” identifies him as having swallowed the austerity agenda poison.

Unionist parties promised during the Scottish independence referendum campaign to maintain and even extend the Barnett formula, which disadvantages Wales.

If Plaid, like Labour and the Communist Party, believes that there should be a financial rebalancing across Britain, based on need and funded by the wealthy minority enriched before, during and after the economic crisis, what is wrong with that?

Additionally, Wood pledged opposition to the £100bn Trident-replacement white elephant, backed by all three major Westminster parties.

Alternative progressive propositions favoured to varying degrees of consistency by Plaid Cymru, the SNP, Greens, Respect, left parties unrepresented at Westminster such as the Communists and Left Unity, together with many Labour backbenchers, accentuate the undemocratic nature of our voting system.

Ongoing splintering of the two-party model must be followed by proportional representation, based on the single transferable vote, as practised in Ireland.