Oh Danny Boy, The Price of Power's Calling ....

So its all over bar the shouting and it's officially a ConDemNation. This proud little oil rich nation of Scotland has learned the hard truth - vote Labour, get Tory. There is just one Tory MP in the whole of Scotland, yet for the next five years (if it hangs together that long) it will be a Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition that rules over far too many of Scotland's interests, and worse, has ultimate control of Scotland's purse strings. But there are eleven Lib Dem MP's in Scotland, and it was inevitable, therefore, that Nick Clegg's Chief of Staff, Danny Alexander, would be rewarded.

His prize is the post of Scottish Secretary - that anathema of a position that has no real place in post-devolution Scotland - a post that true Liberal Democrat Federalist Principles might well feel to be inappropriate and irrelevant. In fact, a post that the man himself said should be abolished!

But for Danny, this is surely the most poisoned of chalices. It is Alexander's Rag-Bag band who stridently called for the A9 dualling to be brought forward quicker than the SNP Government could possibly afford; it was this same politician who has called for the Scottish Government to pay for the final section of the Inverness Trunk Link Road - yet Lib Dem policy - as set down by this same man - calls for savage cuts in road building. And his new found friends are looking to achieve £6 billion in spending cuts this year alone. How will Danny square the circle? How will he now balance the interests of his own constituency in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey with the needs of the coalition? Let him try to tell constituents that it's not his fault - it's the Tories - or even less likely, that it's Labour's fault. In the words of Roosevelt all those years ago, let him tell that to the marines.

Only time will tell if the Lib Dems have sold their collective soul to the Devil, but for Danny, judgement day may come sooner than he might wish.