As the election campaign shifts up a gear, highs and lows of the week: including Sinister Salmond, Wee Mili Winkie and reports of a rare bear birth-off

The week in Scottish politics: the Glasgow East battleground, Jockophobia and why the Vow didn't matter

This week we’ve certainly felt the pre-election gear shift, with shit going down right, left and centre.

First, some lovely long-form from last weekend: in the third of our series Going Home, the superlative Ian Jack returned to his old constituency of West Fife, to find a middle class influx transforming the area. And in his Observer column, Kevin McKenna reminded us that Scotland’s poor are too busy surviving to be engaged.

On Friday morning, Nicola Sturgeon spoke of the difficulties of expectation management when the SNP are riding so high in the polls.

This week, however, it seems she could have done with some Salmond management. The former leader was popping - mainly London-based - corks with relish as he promoted his new memoir of the referendum campaign The Dream Shall Never Die.

Salmond told the Andrew Marr Show that he expected to “hold the power” in a hung parliament; he told the New Statesman that the SNP could help bring down a Tory minority government; he told the Spectator that he would “exploit Labour weaknesses”. I’m sure I’ve missed something...

This led Bob Neill, the Conservative party deputy chairman, to describes Salmond’s threat as “deeply sinister” - but maybe not as sinister as this...

Carolyn Leckie tackled the rise of so-called Jockophobia here in the National.

But if anyone thought that it was only Nicola Sturgeon getting a hard time from the Sun, here’s the Scottish edition’s splash on Tuesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scottish Sun front page Photograph: Guardian

Wee Mili, or Ed Miliband as I still like to call him, visited Clydebank to urge voters not to “blow the whistle on the match before the game is over” after a Guardian poll showed (again) Labour faces being wiped out by the SNP in Scotland.

As part of our Battleground Britain series, we visited the Glasgow East constituency where Labour’s Scottish secretary Margaret Curran is facing a strong challenged from the SNP’s Natalie McGarry. You can watch our floating voters panel here, while Jim Murphy admitted to Severin Carrell here the massive challenge that his party is facing.

As ever, the repercussions of the September 18th 2014 weren’t far away, with civil servants being accused of bias during the referendum campaign.

Two interesting referendum-related studies: one revealed that Scots might not be as Europhilic and lefty as painted by the yes side during the referendum campaign; another that the Vow was not as decisive as suggested by the ongoing SNP narrative. Oh, and that the losing yes side was actually far more hopeful about the future of Scottish politics post-referendum than the winning no side.

Scottish Labour rung the cash tills, pledging to set up a £175m “anti-poverty fund” in Scotland using cash freed up by abolishing the bedroom tax in the UK, in a fresh attempt to win back disaffected Labour voters, and then promising to spend more than £1bn on a revamped jobs and student funding package.

Humza Yousaf, the Scottish government’s minister for Europe and international development, argued that UK immigration policy is failing Scotland

The Scottish government moved to ban smoking in cars with children, resulting in some mumping about the nanny state, until it was pointed out that this was only bringing Scotland into line with England and Wales.

The Scottish governmnet pledged to fight for justice and support for the victims of the contaminated blood scandal, after this week’s Penrose report was dismissed as a whitewash.

As the SNP prepares for its campaign conference in Glasgow this weekend, where it will vote on whether to allow positive discrimination to help women enter parliament, a Guardian survey shows Scotland’s politicians have been slow to increase the number of women and non-white candidates.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Victoria the polar bear, who arrived at her new home in the Highland Wildlife Park this week doubtless unaware of election fever gripping the land Photograph: Highland Wildlife Park/PA

And just in case you need a break from all this politicking, we had pregnancy rumours this week not only about pandas but also polar bears - in a weird rare bear birth-off that I’d really rather not think about too deeply.

As always, add links to what I’ve missed, conspiracy theories and reprimands BTL. Thanking you kindly.