It is, intriguingly, an analysis that has entered some top Whitehall brains as well, as they try to game what government might land on their desks.
Talking to the SNP – deals and mini deals
Ed Miliband‘s team has always been clear. The SNP, it argues, has nowhere else to go in a hung parliament, when it comes to votes that could bring in or vote out a Labour minority government. The SNP, Labour aides to the leader argue, lost its negotiating hand when it ruled out propping up the Tories. It would have to vote to keep Labour in (at least for a while).