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Distinctive thinking on two fronts today, reflecting the nature of this UK General Election campaign in devolved Scotland.

Firstly, Labour has , blending pledges on reserved issues determined at this election with forward planning on ideas for implementation at Holyrood.

Those devolved ideas would be addressed now, if possible, from opposition but would, alternatively, form part of Labour's manifesto for the Holyrood elections next year.

This is a way of finessing the core conundrum of post-devolution Westminster politics in Scotland.

How to talk about the voters' concerns such as health and education while acknowledging, openly, that these matters are controlled at Holryood.

Labour has frankly been tripped up by this conundrum in the past. Today's approach is an attempt to resolve that.

Distinctive thinking, part two, this time from the SNP who were , benefiting hugely from the sunshine on Leith.

Day job

Privately, SNP strategists acknowledge that, as they planned for this campaign, they contemplated a possible series of problems.

Problem One: their leader, Alex Salmond, is not a Westminster candidate, opting inevitably to concentrate on his day job as first minister.

Problem Two: even if they win every Scottish seat, they cannot take UK power. Problem Three: politics is in disrepute.

Problem Four the danger of a squeeze as voters focus on who might be PM.

So, in essence, the SNP cannot "win" this election in the conventional sense - and voters are scunnered anyway.

Solution: don't fight a conventional election, addressing both points in one.

Political protest

Alex Salmond even went as far as to suggest that voters endorsing one of his candidates would not be choosing a politician in the usual sense.

Instead, they would be picking a "champion" of both local and national interests.

Mr Salmond went further still. The SNP campaign, he suggested, would be like an "insurgency", a sustained protest against politics as usual at Westminster: such politics having, he argued, landed the UK in a mess and the reputation of politics in the mire.

In particular, Mr Salmond said the SNP would stand firmly against substantial cuts in Scottish spending.

Which, of course, begs its own questions. Won't the Scottish government face tough choices of its own on spending?

Can Scotland be immune from the impact of the UK deficit?

The answers to those questions are, respectively, yes and no. The SNP leader says that the UK cuts can be mitigated by, for example, scrapping costly programmes such as Trident. He says he would press to protect Scottish budgets.

But, more generally, for this campaign, Mr Salmond is in insurgent, not governmental, mode.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Demcrats' Tavish Scott , while the .

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