By-election night 10

Not a lot of interest from last week's results - particularly as the Lib Dems only stood in three of the eight contests - with all the elections being held by the incumbents.  The Lib Dems did poorly polling just 44 votes in Manchester and falling back slightly in Tweedale West in Michael Moore's constituency.  The remaining contest saw the Lib Dems actually increase their first preference share in Govan Glasgow to 1.5%, where the most interesting electoral stat of the night were the 23 transfers the 'No to the bedroom tax candidate' received from the eliminated Tory!

This week's six contests see for the first time in months the Lib Dems fielding more candidates than UKIP (5:4) and a tricky defence for the party in Luton's split Barnfield Ward which in 2011 elected one Labour and one Lib Dem in a previously safe Lib Dem ward (with Labour third).  The other interseting contest is in Carlisle's Dalston ward where the Conservatives are defending a vacancy in a ward with one Lib Dem councillor who has been unable to transfer his clear personal vote to fellow lib Dem candidates when he doesn't stand. 

So farewell Michael Moore...

The replacement of Michael Moore as Scottish Secretary with Alasdair Carmichael is being promoted by the party as a toughening of the party's stance against Alex Salmond.

If this is indeed the case then it is a mistake.  Taking a tougher line against the most popular politician north of the border is self defeating and futile.  As I have written previously, Moore's and the party's constitutional conservatism on independence has marginalised the party in Scotland and given it nothing distinctive to say on the major issue in Scottish politics.

I hope Carmichael uses the opportunity before him to take a more nuanced stance on independence - perhaps working with the Scottish government to define more clearly how the relationships with a post independence Scotland might work - rather than parroting the simple scaremongering of the Labour dominated 'Better Together' campaign. 

Scotland deserves a grown up debate on the real pros and cons of independence, not more sloganeering and name calling.

Time for Moore to stop digging

Despite Michael Moore's (no doubt) best intentions the Lib Dem response to the Scots referendum question just digs a deeper hole for the party whose very existence north of the border is hanging on a shoogly peg.

The table on this report from the Beeb shows how the party has allowed itself to be painted into a unionist hole into which Alex Salmond is shovelling JCB loads of seperatist rubble. The Liberal Democrats as a party that has always backed home rule should not be seen to be impeding the properly expressed wish of a democratically mandated Scots government.

A period of silence from Moore, Cameron and Osborne on the constitutional question would be welcome - and might buy the Scottish party some breathing space to remove itself from the unionist hook it has impaled itself on.