Why Alex Salmond is Smiling Today

It is strongly rumoured that one of the DUP's conditions for voting with the government on 42 days was that the revenues from the sale of disused army bases and barracks in Northern Ireland would go to Stormont, rather than the Treasury, as would be normal in these circumstances.

If true, Brown may have made a very big rod for his own back. My SNP friends are already licking their lips in anticipation of a precedent now having been set. The precedent is that that revenues from UK assets in a devolved territory are the property of that devolved government, not Westminster. This means Alex Salmond is sitting on a potential goldmine at Faslane (one of the world's very few facilities dedicated to the servicing and upkeep of nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines - which could mean an independent Scotland using the facilities to service American, English or French subs...for a price, of course) and more importantly...oil.

Oops.

Brown's Mendacity Knows No Bounds

Not flash, just Gordon, was the slogan. That rings hollow this morning. At his press conference this morning Gordon Brown was asked repeatedly by Tom Bradby of ITN and Jon Craig from Sky about deals with the DUP. Brown responded by quoting two DUP MPs saying there was no deal. He also said he personally had not done a deal. This rather cleverly left open the possibility that he hadn't sullied his own hands (he is a man of courage, after all) but had left it to Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward to do the dirty work.

His cover was blown when Jon Craig revealed that DUP MP Gregory Campbell had told him what was on the DUP's shopping list. It remains unclear how many items on that list were ticked off.

Peter Robinson: The New Deputy Prime Minister

An amusing exchange has been reported to me between a Tory MP and a Labour junior minister about the PM's press conference this morning...

Tory MP: So who will the Prime Minister be flanked by at his press conference this morning in the wake of these Al Qaeda papers going missing? Jacqui Smith perhaps?

Labour Minister: Hmmm. Peter Robinson might be a better bet.

The Depend Upon Promises Party

Peter Robinson's leadership of the DUP has certainly got off to an inauspicious start. The phrase 'no surrender' is one which can never be applied to them again. Robinson cravely surrendered to a Gordon Brown bribe. We don't know what they asked for and we don't know what they got. But it must have been big.

Gordon Brown may be pleased to have won the vote on 42 days, but he couldn't have done it without the DUP. The duplicitous bastards kept reassuring the Conservatives they wouldn't cave in, but they were not to be trusted in the end.

There are many people who will view this result as a weakening of Brown's personal position rather than a strengthening of it. Whether that is true or not, we are about to find out.

UPDATE: Dan Hannan is none too impressed by the way the DUP have sold their votes.
UPDATE: Our Kingdom has an excellent round-up.