The Guardian view on the new electoral landscape: the stakes could hardly be higher

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/12/guardian-view-electoral-landscape-stakes-high

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Slowly the contours of a political landscape that is made up not of three significant parties but six is beginning to emerge. This week, the smaller parties that will now be big players if the country wakes up on 8 May to a hung parliament have sketched out their negotiating positions. They are a reminder of just what is at stake over the next 12 weeks: not only the UK’s relationship with the EU but the union of these islands itself is in play.

On Wednesday, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, came to park her tank across Ed Miliband’s driveway. In a speech at University College London, she called for an easing of what she described as “morally unjustifiable, economically unsustainable” austerity. As she acknowledged, this is the kind of language calculated to appeal to everyone on the centre-left. The subtext, that a vote for the Scottish National party in Scotland would deliver a progressive government in London, ending what she calls the cosy consensus around cuts, is not subtle, but it will resonate in the febrile anti-Westminster atmosphere. Labour will have been only slightly encouraged by the latest Scottish poll, by TNS on Tuesday, which suggested that the party’s position is showing signs of recovery from the post-referendum low point last September. Not a reason for its new leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, to break open the champagne, however – for even on this evidence Labour is still likely to lose half its Scottish seats.

Related: Nicola Sturgeon attacks Westminster's 'morally unjustifiable' austerity policy

The prospect of the SNP emerging from the election in a commanding position appears sufficiently plausible for the leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, Nigel Dodds, to use interviews in the Guardian and the New Statesman to emphasise a readiness to do deals with Labour. Mr Dodds could lead a party with nine MPs after the election. He hopes a deal with the Ulster Unionist party could provide a dozen unionist votes in total. The interviews were an advertisement for his political pragmatism: he sought only a new economic aid package. But he also warned that if Labour engaged with the Scottish Nationalists, the price the SNP would demand for their support would mean the effective end of Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster. It might, in the longer term, also mean the effective end of the unionist cause in Northern Ireland, as he is well aware.

And on Thursday Nigel Farage reappeared after a month spent nursing Thanet, the seat he hopes to win. Ukip has been conspicuously absent from politics since the new year, a decision that may have contributed to a fall in the party’s poll standing, which is now down at 9%, its lowest level since November 2013. Curiously, what was billed as a campaign launch delivered only a slogan reminiscent of US elections, “Believe in Britain”. But it did include, in return for Ukip support, an explicit bottom-line demand of an immediate referendum on the EU. That would cause trouble for David Cameron, whose Tory Eurosceptic wing would see it as creating the ideal conditions to stage a quick exit. Mr Farage claims the campaign so far is dull. Only for those who aren’t surveying the potential consequences.

• This article was amended on 13 February 2014. An earlier version referred incorrectly to the “Scottish Nationalist party”.