OK, purely for fun, here is my prediction of the General Election result. This is not in any sense a reflection of what I want to happen. It is rather what I think will happen, my best guess. Anyone want to see if they can get closer?

Conservatives 283
Labour 259
SNP 51
Lib Dem 31
DUP 9
Sinn Fein 5
Plaid Cymru 4
SDLP 3
UKIP 2
Green Party 1
Independent 1
Speaker 1

It is interesting that those who have no qualms at all about extreme surveillance of citizens by the state, are outraged at the idea that citizens may monitor the state in the conduct of its election.

Severin Carrell is of course under instructions to come up with a “crazed violent Scottish nationalists threaten Scotalypse” story. But the best he can come up with is the story that a very small group are planning peacefully and legally to try to follow, so far as they can, their own ballot paper within the process to ensure it is counted fairly.

But really instructive in that Guardian article are the howls from Labour supporters that dominate the comments section. They are absolutely frothing at the mouth with rage at the idea that citizens may wish peacefully to check on the activity of the state. But these Labour supporters are perfectly OK with the fact that GCHQ collects millions of communications of ordinary citizens, including a database of tens of thousands of perfectly law-abiding individuals taking part in online sex chats with their partners. They had no problem at all at lengthy detention without charge, or the murder of Jean Charles De Menezes for looking a bit Middle Eastern . They had no problem with bombing children to pieces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. They have no problem with CCTV continually monitoring them as they go about their daily lives.

But a Scotsman with a mobile phone following a ballot box? That is an outrageous threat to society.

UPDATE: Dermot Murnaghan has tweeted it wasn’t him. Quite possible it was another Sky correspondent, as I have no idea what he looks like. There was a caption up with Murnaghan’s name on it at the time. It was whoever was reporting for Sky from Edinburgh just after 13.10 today.

Just after 13.10 Dermot Murnaghan on Sky News, speaking in Edinburgh, told us that the success of “Labour’s fightback” in Scotland was due to Gordon Brown, Labour’s “most vocal campaigner alongside Jim Murphy of course.” He had been speaking at a lot of rallies and visiting a lot of constituencies, wooing voters back to Labour.

I had to play it back to make sure I had heard it correctly. There is absolutely no evidence for the success of the Brown “fightback”, despite the frantic promotion efforts of the corporate media. Was Murnaghan just wittering, or was he seeding a narrative to prepare the ground for a counter-intuitive result once the thousands of fake postal ballots get mixed in?

You may not expect me to endorse a man standing in front of a Union Jack, but I do hope voters in mid-Bedfordshire will show some appreciation for Tim Ireland, who is standing to highlight a variety of examples of corruption and cover-up by the Conservative Party. Tim has done more than anyone to expose the lies and aliases of Grant Shapps.

Tim was the midwife of political blogging in the UK, not just on his Bloggerheads website but for the help he gave aspiring bloggers of all political persuasions. This blog would not exist without him.

I have just sent the following email to the SDLP media office. I am genuinely puzzled as to how they reconcile their purported desire for uniting Ireland (which I strongly support) with their support for the aggressively unionist UK Labour Party. The only explanation I can find is that the politics of Northern Ireland are so parochial that they are oblivious. I don’t imagine they will reply, but the questions seem to me worth asking. Were I a voter in Northern Ireland, the answers would determine my vote.

My name is Craig Murray. I am a freelance journalist, a member of the NUJ, mostly working in new media including my own blog, which has approximately 300,000 unique visitors monthly.

Could you kindly give brief responses today to the following questions?

The UK Labour Party party has now firmly described itself as a unionist party committed to the integrity of the United Kingdom. How will that impact on your historically close relationship?

Will your MPs continue to receive the Labour whip? The website Labour List and very many media outlets state that your MPs “unofficially take the Labour whip.” Is that a fair categorisation?

Do you support the Labour Party decision not to enter any kind of deal with the SNP or Plaid Cymru? Will your MPs take the same line?

Thank You

Craig Murray