Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the twice weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thanks so much for tuning in. And today we are going to reflect on, well, many things actually,

but with a big focus on Scotland. Do you remember last

year, you know, it seems a long time ago now, where virtually every week Westminster politics

via this crazy government seemed to be imploding. The Johnson collapse, then the trust

collapse and so on. And Nicholas Sturgeon, then

First Minister, must have been watching in Scotland, thinking, wow, this is great material for us.

And now, from, well, I'm in London, looking at what is happening with the SMP, you kind of, each day there's a twist or turn,

which is quite hard to grasp. There's an ongoing police investigation, so none of us know

what the outcome of that will be. But there is this sense of a party that has been mighty, is in trouble on lots of different levels,

how it manages itself obviously, but a kind of identity crisis. And politics is partly about

casting a spell, a party, a governing party or a party that aspires to govern,

has to appear almost self-confident without qualification and with an absolute clear,

exciting sense of momentum.

And when that spell is broken, there are consequences. Now, it's

impossible to work out what they will be in Scotland with huge implications for the rest of the UK yet.

But somebody who is watching this with great interest, and of course, subjective interest is Douglas Alexander.

Douglas Alexander was a cabinet minister, then worked with, I think it was shadow foreign secretary.

He said lots of posts in the Ed Miliband era.

That ended in defeat for Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander lost his seat.

He's now standing again for the UK general election in Scotland.

And so he's had vast experience of the politics of Scotland, the politics of labour in Scotland, as well as on the UK stage. So I thought I would

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