Oily Al, listen to reason.

First things first - before reading on, put down anything you might be drinking, swallow, and ensure your mouth is empty. I'm not paying for any monitors, keyboards, or expensively wasted whisky.

Ready?

Al the Oily Fish says his six SNP MPs are ready to form the next UK government.

Well, I did warn you. Any drenched keyboards or sparking monitors are your problem now.

Oily Al says he's willing to sign his MPs' souls over to the Gorgon's Goblins to help keep the eeeevil Tories out of power. He seems to have mysteriously forgotten one thing, failed to realise another and left his scheming hat at home.

He has forgotten who his chief opponents are in Holyrood. Labour hate you, Al. It's nothing personal, they hate everyone, even each other. They are Equal Opportunities Despisers. Remember your minority government, Al, and how Labour and the Lib Dems tried to kill it at birth?

Oily Al, these people are not your friends and never will be. You'd be better off with the Tories. At least you'd see the knife coming with them.

This hung parliament is only going to last for as long as it takes the Tories to amass enough cash for another campaign. Labour are stuffed, the Lib Dems are considerably better off than them but still skint and even those Bullingdon Boys will struggle to find another silly-poster budget. Especially since they have upset their main donor.

If the election rerun is in May next year it will coincide with the Scottish Parliament elections. So the Scots voters will be faced with two ballot papers. We had that before with the EU and local council elections and it confused the hell out of a lot of people. Here, many who vote Labour for Weakminster will vote SNP for Holyrood but if they have to do both at once, well, as SNP Tactical Voting notes, they are going to have trouble deciding.

Al, if you imagine you can strike a deal with Labour, think again. The greatest gift Labour could hope for is a confusing pair of general elections in Scotland. They will use that confusion to kick you out of office.

Okay, you're SNP and socialist so naturally you don't like the Tories. I'm no fan either. But the Tories aren't in Holyrood, are they? They are in Weakminster. And your primary aim is independence from Weakminster, isn't it? Now, how will you persuade the Scots to vote for that if your party is in league with Labour's Scottish MPs in Weakminster?

Oily Al, you know as well as anyone else that if you had a referendum on independence now, the result would be a resounding 'don't care'. As long as those central belt Labour MPs are in power, all the 'See you, pal' brigade are quite happy, thank you.

Those Labour MPs in safe, if somewhat urine-stained seats in the benefit-traps of the central belt, will persuade their voters to vote against independence. Of course they will. They'd all be out of a job if you won it, wouldn't they? They will use the 'benefit money comes from the Labour government in Weakminster' line to crush your referendum.

So, Al, consider this. The Tories form a government, a minority administration like yours. They will immediately make cuts. The Lib Dems will support them because they want cuts too. They will not make the deepest cuts in their own constituencies. They will make most of those cuts in central Scotland where they have only trivial support anyway and no real hope of changing that any time soon.

The Labour MPs in Scotland will howl about Tory cuts in their constituencies, their voters will demand they do something, those MPs will say 'We can't, the Tories are in power. It's all their fault' and you, Oily Al, are suddenly on a winner.

All you need say is 'Look, people, do you want to put up with Tory cuts or would you rather we cut loose from Weakminster and do things ourselves? Tell you what, why don't we put it to a vote?'

The fact is, Oily Al (can I just call you Oily? I mean, we're almost on first name terms here. I did send you a book once, after all) with a Labour government in Weakminster you will never get an overwhelming vote for independence. The Labour MPs here will fight you and the central-belt Labour voters won't see the point. They don't need to be independent from the party they all vote for, now do they?

With a Tory government in Weakminster, cutting those dole-monkeys' beer vouchers, they will be crying out for a saviour.

I know you can't say anything in support of the Tories because your party will tar and feather you if you do. However, if you ever want to win an independence referendum, what you really need is a Tory government down south. Those Labour enclaves will vote to be free of a Tory government. They will never vote to be free of their own Labour party.

So drop that long spoon, Oily, and back away from the devils. Let them fight it out themselves and if you can, hint privately to the Lib Dems that the Tories are their best bet.

I don't know. I thought you were supposed to be a devious politician? Perhaps it is time for me to have a go myself, after all.

I'm sneakier than you.