Election 2015: It’s a win-win situation for the SNP’s 'Scotweiler'

Not since the Jacobite rising of 1745 has there been "such hysteria in England about the Scots", says Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian. David Cameron is not that far behind The Sun's depiction of SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon as the "Scotweiler" with his insistence that the SNP "does not want our country to succeed".

Ed Miliband has ruled out any deal with the SNP, even, apparently, if it means the Conservatives holding onto power. The fact is, the SNP wins regardless of who becomes prime minister. If the Tories emerge as the biggest party and put together a coalition, SNP MPs will "engage in guerrilla tactics" against unpopular Tory policies.

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Actually, Cameron's claim that it would hold a minority Labour government hostage is "a great big lie", says Robin Lustig in The Guardian. The SNP is "perfectly happy" for all of us to buy the Tory line that a minority Miliband government would be forced to "abandon its fiscal responsibility programme, scrapTrident and rain goodies galore" on Scottish voters. It allows them to say to Scottish Labour voters: switch your vote to us to "give those pesky southerners a bloody nose" and you'll still get a Labour government without any of that "wishy-washy Blairite stuff".

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The truth is, that on each and every occasion that the SNP threatens to bring down a minority Labour government, it will be within the Tories' power to prevent them. For example, if a minority Labour government proposes a budget that includes public spending cuts that the SNP doesn't like and it threatens to vote against it unless Miliband backs down, what do the Tories do? Vote against a budget with cuts they would have introduced themselves? Or vote for them, with Labour, neutralising the SNP? "If you were feeling mischievous, you could call it a de facto grand coalition in all but name."

You have to hand it to Sturgeon, says Tim Bale in the Financial Times. With "supreme sleight of hand and breathtaking chutzpah", she has entered into an "unspoken alliance" with the Tories that "massively overstates" the SNP's probable influence over a Labour minority, all "in the hope that, by helping... Cameron to secure a second term, an SNP victory in 2016 and a second independence referendum will become more likely."

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.