David Cameron's manoeuvrings in Northern Ireland give the lie to this though. He has been wooing the Ulster Unionists assiduously and has entered into a pact with them. It's caused him a number of headaches but the hassle can't be for no reason.

Analysts say it is because the next Parliament is going to be tight. How many UUP MPs are there? One.

And she's not happy with the alliance. Lady Hermon is now standing as an independent meaning it's even possible there won't be any UUP MPs in the next parliament.

Make no mistake about it, any number of SNP MPs is going to have a major effect. The larger the number, the more beneficial that will be for Scotland.

The £7bn plan will cut journey times from the current 1hour 20min to just under one hour. Meanwhile there are only vague commitments towards the substantial shortening of distance that would be achieved by the line coming to Scotland. It may happen, say the UK government, at some stage but they are not examining the detail on this in the same way as with Birmingham.

UK transport minister Lord Adonis has said if HSR is to come north of the border then the Scottish Government would need to pay for the tracks from Carlisle. This would be at least one quarter of the distance from London and would cost a likely unaffordable £7bn. Even that would depend on the munificence of the UK government building the similar 100 miles north of Manchester.

Jim Murphy, Scotland’s man in the cabinet apparently, has backed this up. Except this is not the devolution settlement we have. The Scotland Act states that the Scottish Government is responsible for:

“The promotion and construction of railways which start, end and remain in Scotland.”

Cross-border rail remained reserved to Westminster. If we are going to have this constitutional morass where one government can borrow for major infrastructure projects while denying the other that ability, and that one government is also to take all the revenue from the other government’s oil, can they not at least stick to their obligations as laid out?

Inspired by that I now offer you the chance to vote on this. This is not just for the sake of it - the five with the most votes will go on my election leaflets.

The UK is the only G7 country not to have a stimulus package this year. Out of the G20, the UK's only company is Argentina.

The UK bosom that Labour and Tory politicans say that Scotland relies on is being shown more and more to have been made of cheap implants that have now been removed.

Meanwhile, over 60 leading economists have come out strongly against cuts in public spending. The media have for some reason portrayed this as backing the Labour position. This is the same Labour government that have imposed an £814m cut on the Scottish Government this coming year.

Public spending is needed now more than ever to replace reduced private spending in the economy. Cuts will only increase unemployment and therefore increase welfare spending i.e. increasing the deficit. Investing in jobs gets unemployment payments down and brings in tax - decreasing the deficit in a proper manner. Labour's cuts will make a double-dip out of their recession - if we're even out of it at the moment.

Have you heard any Scottish Labour MPs talking about this? The way they've danced to the Tory tune on cuts shows they cannot be trusted. This is why they need replaced.

Last November in Glasgow they were seen off by 3000 ordinary people drawn from trade unions, churches and political parties marching under the umbrella of Scotland United. It was led by the great and good from Scottish society and was an exemplar to the rest of the country in how to deal with the situation. I hope it’s a case of same again tomorrow.

Inbetween November and now though there has been little discussion of what has prompted Islamophobia to reach such a level whereby far-right hooligans are feeling emboldened enough to come out of their pubs and onto the streets.

At that extreme end, we’ve had a stream of cases in recent months of individuals even stockpiling explosives and weapons for what they see as an impending civil war. In England these include the cases of Robert Cottage, Martin Gilleard, and Neil Lewington. In Northern Ireland, arrests involving ricin have been made, while in Scotland, Neil MacGregor threatened to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque and behead a Muslim a week.

Mosques are regularly being attacked, but it is the human casualties that are more troubling. Last Ramadan, Ekram Haque was killed outside a Tooting mosque by a gang in front of his three-year-old granddaughter. He is not the first such fatality.

The danger is that grievances are likely to escalate in the coming years. The far-right obviously hope they can stoke this further in an atmosphere is rising unemployment and tightening finances. They want to recruit from the pool of Scots, half of whom see Muslims as a “threat”, and 42% of whom see there being “serious conflict” between Muslims and the rest of society.

Ask most Muslims what they think is the cause of rising Islamophobia, the reply is invariably “the media”. Every little incident is sensationalised as a major national catastrophe by right-wing tabloids based in England in particular. Sometimes it is even made up. Often they say they are legitimately covering the utterances of right-wing commentators. This has been going on relentlessly for a decade and has undoubtedly fed the grievances of the far-right who just hold up the front pages of these newspapers without comment. The Nazis on our streets are their sons, their ugly spawn.

I am not saying that Muslims are beyond criticism. Just that reporting should be true and proportionate. Politicians who want to have “debate” should, if they are sincere, talk to Muslims, not at them. Talk with Muslims, not about them.

All of this needs investigation. I will then, if elected this year, work across the House of Commons to establish an all-party inquiry into Islamophobia. We have precedent in this from the similar committee looking into anti-semitism which examined the causes and made recommendations on the way forward. Rigourous investigation needs to be brought to the phenomenon of Islamophobia to stop the hate spiralling further in the tough years to come.

New use for The Sun's front page image from 2007?

We may quibble with such descriptions, and we may question exactly how many Labour MPs could be so described. For now though, a smitten Gordon described how Sarwar Jr is at every Asian wedding going shaking hands. The journalist has listened to and bought into the Sarwar narrative of the campaign, as if voters are gullible enough to think that it is still 1997 and all we need is some handshakes on the street to the themetune of "Things can only get better".

Sitting in Edinburgh, Gordon tried to characterise my campaign as somehow being behind that of that of the Sarwar dynasty because Anas had given up his job last year to be a 'professional candidate', while I have a fulltime job (as do the vast majority of election candidates).

The other side to that particular story is that Sarwar Jr worked only for a year or two after doing the second most expensive university course there is in dentistry. He then left the NHS in the lurch by packing it in to live off his father's dollars because they were worried about losing an election they thought would be a cakewalk. Voters are right to ask what experience of life he has got, and how he can identify with them during these tough times. 

His father, in the very week that Tom Gordon wrote about his charm, was named as the UK's most expensive MP, with a whole series of questions about that state of affairs. He is mired in illegal immigration scandal, while he has one more son who is out of jail on bail pending trial. Gordon still writes about how well his campaign is going.

The Herald have got very touchy about their apparent anti-SNP bias lately. Some fair play would be the best remedy to that.

Every little thing about me is reported on negatively by Gordon. I've written in more detail about the number of recent articles he's written on me here. He claims I was "nervously pacing up and down the room" before last week's fundraiser because of how late Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were. Reality is we knew exactly what time they'd be arriving, and if I was walking around it simply because there were things to organise.

A fortnight ago he wrote about how long it apparently took SIF to return an underspend cheque, when officials were actually expressing thanks for the "quick response". He ignored my emailed response to that effect, while in another story the following week he even printed that I had not responded to him when I had.

Gordon has a keen interest in Glasgow Central. He got the 'Lunchgate' story from this obsession so it has worked well for him. Last year he took me aside at the Sunday Herald's 10th anniversary bash and asked me to keep him informed of any stories in the constituency. He only really seems interested in one side though.

The party is throwing itself behind this campaign and the public are responding. As has been widely reported, there was a fundraiser for the Glasgow Central campaign held this week which was packed out and raised much needed funds given we're up against multi-millionaire opponents.

The event sent shockwaves through the Labour ranks. The natural order of things was troubled. It is Labour who are meant to organise big dinners with the Asian community. There was a layer of people there hungry for change and willing to put the time and money into making it happen. They weren't the usual "community leaders" and chuntering classes.

The news coverage came from Labour's feeling of "How dare the SNP come onto our patch and raise sums of money too"! They even demanded to know whether diners knew they were donating to the SNP. Our donors have been phoned by the Sarwar family with demands to know why they are supporting us. Politics is rarely simple in the Asian community, typified by how the owners of the restaurant where the dinner was held, the Kabana, made a video of the event which is the one that was leaked to the media.

In the ensuing press coverage it has been hard to assess what the issue is. In the small print, issue has been made about food being consumed at the Scottish Parliament. Clarification has been sought from the authorities, and it has been made clear that the lunches can move elsewhere. Donors were not hung up on the Scottish Parliament aspect of it, and in fact were possibly even going to be put out having to go to Edinburgh.

We've then got the 'cash for access' aspect which apart from on the headlines, only a few have tentatively put forward because of the absurdity and hypocrisy of it. The donors/auction winners didn't need to win the auction to make whatever points they may or may not have. They were sitting a few yards away from Alex Salmond all evening. We're also talking about the most accessible First Minister we've had. I know all sorts of people, often of no real substance, who have successfully held meetings with him and Nicola Sturgeon just because they requested it. Some have tried to deride the comparison the SNP have made with charity auctions, but the principle is the same if you see it as 'cash for access'.

This takes us back to two points here - the first is that the opposition don't like the SNP raising money. And those donating to the campaign were an indication of the desire for change in Glasgow Central, and no amount of shenanigans of the type we've seen over the last few days from Labour is going to change that - in fact it's likely to harden it.

The uncomfortable fact for them though is that their manifesto back in 2003 promised us a Glasgow Airport Rail Link and they didn't produce it in the next four years. After the election, "delivering" the rail link was also in their coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats.

It followed the previous parliamentary session where Iain Gray, then transport minister, announced in the Scottish Parliament on 9 October 2002 that it was one of the then Scottish Executive's "top priorities" (col 14500), and the plan was for work to begin in 2005. They didn't end up presenting a bill before Parliament till 2006.

Labour were in power till 2007. If GARL was such a top priority for them, why hasn't it been completed already? They like to harp on about manifesto commitments. Fact is that they didn't get round to GARL during the times of plenty.

On first glance it may appear relatively simple. It is the UK government which has signed up to the relevant international treaties, so theoretically they run the show. They are not likely to be advocating withdrawing from international treaties though.

What the proposal from London is expected to be is that magistrates can no longer issue arrest warrants, and instead the Attorney General has veto, so that he can take into account political interests. Her equivalent in Scotland is the Lord Advocate who could take a different view on these matters.

Arrest warrants till now have been issued under the Criminal Justice Act 1988. This only though applies in England and Wales. What may be relevant in this regard instead in Scotland is Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act:

"observing and implementing international obligations, obligations under the Human Rights Convention, and obligations under community law."

If this is not considered encompassing though, the Scottish Parliament could theoretically legislate for it as criminal justice is a devolved matter. There then is the question of whether Scottish courts could bear the universal jursidiction of a war crimes trial. My understanding is that the position on this is unclear.

I'm not a lawyer, and my aim here is to kickstart a debate and get people thinking. If my analysis is correct, the Scottish position could do with tightening up on war crimes and it would be good to see that happen.

UPDATE: Craig Murray calls for the Lord Advocate to publish her opinion on the legality of the Iraq war, while Bill Wilson and a group of SNP MSPs begin action to have Tony Blair prosecuted in Scotland.