BRITAIN:AN APPARENT about-turn by the Scottish Labour Party on a referendum on independence is being seen in Holyrood and at Westminster as a fresh dimension to the Labour Party's crisis of confidence over the leadership of prime minister Gordon Brown.
Conservative leader David Cameron, meanwhile, is being urged to consider a formal approach to Mr Brown to explore whether the pro-Union parties might be able to address the growing Scottish question on a non-partisan basis.
The leader of Scotland's minority nationalist government, SNP first minister Alex Salmond, has committed himself to introduce his planned referendum bill by 2010. However, in a surprise intervention over the weekend, Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander appeared to soften her previous opposition to a poll on the constitutional issue, telling Mr Salmond: "I don't fear the verdict of the Scottish people. Bring it on."
Downing Street appeared to distance Mr Brown from Ms Alexander yesterday, the prime minister's spokesman maintaining: "The position taken by the Labour Party leader [Wendy Alexander] is a matter for her."
Like other unionist politicians who have been similarly tempted in the past, Ms Alexander may think to "shoot the nationalist fox" by forcing a referendum on independence sooner rather than later. The BBC's respected Scottish political editor also ventures that she wants to deny Mr Salmond the opportunity to fight the next Holyrood election in 2011 on the basis that the unionist parties conspired to deny Scottish self-determination.
However, Ms Alexander's new-found interest in a referendum will have surprised her Conservative and Liberal Democrat partners in the cross-party Scottish Commission, only recently appointed to review the working of devolution while safeguarding the unity of the United Kingdom.
The SNP, meanwhile, has accused Ms Alexander of behaving "erratically" and of a "panic reaction" to Labour's disastrous local election performance and worsening general election prospects.
SNP deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon told BBC radio's Good Morning Scotlandprogramme: "If Wendy Alexander really does now support an independence referendum, clearly I and the SNP welcome her very warmly indeed - but we have to inject some caution here. Wendy Alexander's behaviour is erratic in the extreme.
"Only a few weeks ago she said she was implacably opposed to a referendum, she's just set up a constitutional commission that expressly excludes the option of independence. So who knows what her position will be this time next week, let alone in six months' time."
Ms Sturgeon also signalled the SNP would not change its timetable for a proposed referendum in 2010.
Before briefing Labour MSPs at Holyrood, however, Ms Alexander suggested this would prolong damaging "uncertainty" unacceptably close to the next Scottish election. They should "get on with it", she said.
However, with the issue already exercising his party's constitutional policy review, Conservative peer Lord (David) Trimble cautioned Ms Alexander that this course should not be undertaken by the Scottish Labour leadership "on the back of an electoral disaster" for the Labour Party.
"I see some merit in having a referendum to settle this issue," he said, "but if it is to be done, it would need to be done on a broader basis and in a non-partisan manner."