Hamish Macdonell: Mixing oil and water may be a political necessity

THERE are some combinations that go well together: port and cheese or strawberries and Wimbledon spring to mind - even Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Then there are others that just don't fit: like whisky and cola, checks and stripes or, in Scottish political terms, Labour and the SNP.

These two parties are, ostensibly, really quite similar but, like matching magnetic poles, they repel each other as soon as they come within touching distance.

It is really quite extraordinary for two parties which share the same basic social democratic, left-of-centre ethos to hate each other quite as much as they do.

There are two main reasons for this: first, these are the two big parties in Scotland. At every election, they compete in some of the most bitter of contests at all number of battlegrounds across the country.

Second, there is one core difference between them. The Labour Party is based on a left-of-centre political philosophy: socialism. The SNP is made up of people from different points on the political spectrum, from free-marketeers to communists, who share the common goal of nationalism.

They may share a similar broad domestic policy agenda but they have a completely different world view.

Could an SNP-Labour coalition work? In theory, of course it could. But could it work in practice? For that to happen, both parties would have to bury their deeply-held mutual animosities and embrace - at least in part - the core agenda of the other.

And that really does appear to be a step too far.

What these tentative discussions do show, however, is that senior figures in the SNP have started preparing for life after Salmond and started making contingency plans for a Labour victory next year.

That is what should really encourage Labour leaders.