Sunday Herald, The: Gulf War 2; Holyrood faces mother of all battles to keep voters'

By Iain So, a war election it is to be. But please: don't mention the war. That was the message from the First Minister Jack McConnell and his deputy Jim Wallace at their joint press conference at Bute House on Thursday. Both leaders called on all the Scottish parties to observe "caution" and refrain from exploiting the war as a campaign issue. They then proceeded to do precisely that.

By calling for the resignation of Tommy Sheridan's press officer, Hugh Kerr, for telling The Scotsman that the war was "bad for the Iraqis but good for our votes", the First Minister ensured that the war would become the key issue at the start of the campaign. Tommy Sheridan, the SSP leader, was grinning from ear to ear. The Scottish Socialists would be quite happy for this to be a single-issue campaign. Though some of the SSP fellow travellers, like the Greens, are becoming alarmed at Sheridan's rhetoric about British soldiers "laying down their arms". A deep split is emerging in the anti-war protest alliance between the Trots and the peaceniks.

But in a sense, the SSP cannot lose. Sheridan can already rely on a large number of people, especially young voters, who are resolutely opposed to the war and will vote for an anti-war party whatever happens. But Sheridan also knows he could win the electoral jackpot if there were to be some disastrous event at a key moment in the campaign. What if a bomb were to hit a shopping centre or a school on the eve of polling day? A wave of popular revulsion could deliver an unprecedented vote for Sheridan's party which would have absolutely nothing to do with their manifesto for the Scottish parliament. Instead of four SSP MSPs we could be looking at six or even eight.

This is the danger of holding an election campaign during a war. At a moment of acute national crisis it is very difficult to expect people to behave as they do in a normal peacetime election. Of course, as the Presiding Officer Sir David Steel has argued, we should not allow a dictator like Saddam Hussein to dictate the democratic timetable in Scotland. Of course, people ought to cast all thoughts of the war to the backs of their minds and make a mature and considered choice of which party should be entrusted to run the Scottish Executive for four years. The war is a reserved matter, and the Scottish elections are about Scottish issues - health, education, transport - not foreign affairs and defence.

But we all know that's not how it goes. It is impossible for people to ignore something as all-encompassing as a war. Scottish politicians certainly haven't. Jack McConnell has himself repeatedly given vocal and unequivocal support to his leader Tony Blair's conduct of the war. That, if you like, provides the electoral casus belli. If Scottish politicians seek to make capital out of the war then they can hardly complain if the voters respond in like manner. A lot of first-time voters in Scotland will be voting on precisely this issue because it is the only one that has made them overcome their apathy. The SNP are also opposed to the war, but they are forced to act with restraint.

We've been here before, of course, in the Kosovo War in 1999. (The Scottish parliamentary elections seem fated to be upstaged by events on the field of human conflict.) The SNP were severely damaged in that campaign by their leader Alex Salmond's remark that the bombing of Belgrade was "unpardonable folly". Labour were quite happy to make political capital out of that in the 1999 election campaign, claiming the SNP leader was giving comfort to the enemy. The foreign secretary Robin Cook said Mr Salmond was "the toast of Belgrade".

Kosovo was a problem for the nationalists because there was a broad measure of public support for it. The polls rose steadily as the war against Slobodan Milosevic got underway until some 75% of Scots supported the allied intervention. But this time around the figures aren't so good for the war party. In February and early March, three quarters of the country was opposed to any war against Iraq not sanctioned by a second UN resolution. As the war began, support for the war began to climb over the 50% level. But just like the American army, it appears now to have stalled. YouGov has shown support for the war frozen at 56% in its last three polls and, according to Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde, "It's stopped dead".

It seems as if Tony Blair and George W Bush are preparing us for a war which will still be raging by polling day on May 1. This means the Scottish election could turn into a kind of Russian roulette. Anything could happen, and probably will.

The streets of Baghdad could be piling high with the bodies of British and American soldiers as they try desperately to get close enough to Saddam's regime to decapitate it. As the toll of so-called "friendly fire" incidents grows and more Iraqi civilians get hit by stray ordinance, the narrow support for the war could fade. Scotland is not so susceptible to appeals to national chauvinism as Middle England.

On the other hand, the war may effectively be over by May 1 and the liberation of Iraq underway. The streets of Baghdad and Basra may be filled with joyful children receiving UN aid. Saddam Hussein may be dead in his bunker. This would be a vindication of Tony Blair's conduct of the war - especially if weapons of mass destruction are discovered - and could lead to a renewal of support for Labour even in Scotland. Nothing succeeds like success.

This is what the First Minister Jack McConnell must be hoping for. He doesn't seem to be putting out very much in the way of distinctive Labour policies for the campaign, and is going to the country on a platform of "more of the same" in education, health and jobs. The trouble with a war election is that domestic policy seems trivial by comparison. Who can get worked up about fiscal freedom when there is a war of liberation (or not) going on abroad? Do class sizes, the Borders rail link, waiting lists and business rates really matter at a time like this? The answer, of course, is: yes, they do, even though they are not matters of life and death. And we just have to hope that the Scottish people don't vote in haste, to repent at leisure.

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