Miliband is a loser.

The Labour Party's arcane electoral system saddled them with a leader who was not the choice of Labour MPs, nor of the of the individual members.  He was elected by the trade union constituency.

Last Thursday was a bad day for Labour.  Divided over the Alternative Vote, Ed became the cheerleader for the 'Yes' campaign. His name will for ever be associated with the disastrous Yes campaign.  Quite why Labour jumped on the AV bandwagon is a mystery.  Perhaps he hoped AV would result in a permanent 'progressive' (whatever that means) majority in the House of Commons.  What he forget, and Labour must remember, is that the majority of citizens in the United Kingdom are conservative in their attitudes.  This has been recognised by Jon Cruddas who has the ear of Ed Miliband.  Labour became disconnected from its core vote which is conservative as distinct from progressive. Labour had thirteen years to change the electoral system but failed to do so. The Miliband stance on AV was pure opportunism and it failed.

Labour's decimation in the Scottish Parliament elections has resulted in what most commentators believed could not happen under the electoral system in Scotland - an overall majority for the Scottish National Party. Already the SNP is talking about greater powers being devolved to the Scottish Parliament and there will be a referendum on independence within the next three years.  It would be wrong to assume that the SNP will lose the referendum.

Labour's showing at the local election was poor. Seats lost in 2003 were not regained.

The Tories must be pinching themselves at Labour's poor showing and the rout of the Liberal Democrats. Perhaps Ed Miliband was hoping that that the Liberal Democrats would leave the Coalition and join with the Labour Party and eventually force an early general election.  Such a strategy will fail for two reasons.

First, the Liberal Democrats are are an uneasy coalition of 'Orange Book' ideas which can be traced back to the Liberal Party and ideas of democratic socialism which can be traced back to the Social Democratic Party.  The SDP was formed by disillusioned Labour MPs when the Labour Party was in the grips of Militant. Whilst it is likely the majority of Liberal Democrats would feel at home in the current Labour Party, a significant number would not. For the Liberal Democrats to throw their lot in with Labour runs the risk of splitting the party even more so than the current Coalition arrangements.

Secondly, there is the issue of support. The recent local elections resulted in Labour hammering the Liberal Democrats in northern local authorities - areas in which the Liberal Democrats have destroyed the Conservative Party and are the only real opposition to Labour.  Therefore it was likely they would take a hammering over Coalition policies.

Over  large swathes of  the South the Liberal Democrats have destroyed the Labour Party and therefore the only real choice the electorate had was between the two Coalition parties.

Where the Conservatives did not do well was in those areas where the main opponents were Labour and Conservative.

The Liberal Democrats cannot risk withdrawing from the Coalition and forcing an early general election. Labour will take Liberal Democrat seats in the north and Conservatives likewise in the south.

For Ed Miliband the risk of an early general election is that he will lose heavily in Scotland and be unable to gain seats in the rest of the UK to compensate.