I listened to Jo Swinson's speech to the Liberal Democrats.

[Denzil_DC]

7. I usually try to bite my Tongue when Swinson gets raised here.

Not always successfully! There's not much to hope for electorally at the moment for our English friends, and the Lib Dems currently have some wind behind them, though I suspect it may end up being little more than that in the end.

Swinson's voting record in the coalition government was indeed atrocious. She was also a poor constituency MP during that time who then got voted out in favour of the SNP, then re-won her seat in a hard-fought contest that left serious questions about her campaign spending. Her seat is in East Dunbartonshire (just north of the city of Glasgow), she lives in Wiltshire in southwest England, quite some distance away, and is seldom seen by her constituents (I live in Argyll, some distance to the west of her constituency).

Her seat is one of many that polling suggests may be gained by the SNP in the next general election, so any talk of what she might do in power could be redundant unless she carpetbags to a safer seat (and preferably, for her and her ambitions, one in England, as it would be a strange constitutional setup for a Prime Minister to be unable to speak or vote on England-only legislation in the Commons under "English Votes for English Laws" ).

You might hope she'd learned some lessons from the "mistakes" made while she served in the coalition, but in interview last week she tentatively revived the view that austerity wasn't dead and is necessary. I also wouldn't put it past her to enter into another coalition with the Tories after the next election, not least because she's been keen enough to let some Tories with their own highly questionable records join in recent months.