The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair arrived in Scotland last night as leader of Scotland's overwhelmingly dominant party, yet facing an opinion poll which tells him very clearly to stay away.
A survey for the Scotsman newspaper showed that 61 per cent of Scots think Mr Blair should keep out of the election campaign he came to Glasgow to launch today.
Only 29 per cent of people think he should take part, with even half his own supporters telling him to stay south of the River Tweed border.
With only two months to go until the vote for Scotland's first parliament in nearly 300 years, two further surveys published yesterday showed that the race is wide open - one giving Labour a comfortable lead, but the other indicating that the Scots are on the verge of backing a split from the rest of the UK.
When Mr Blair visits Scotland, he appears puzzled by the hostility he finds in one of the Labour Party's strongholds. After all, this Edinburgh-educated grandson of a Red Clydesider can claim credit for delivering, within only two years, the most significant measure of home rule since the Act of Union in 1707. Yet, despite having 56 out of 72 Westminster MPs from Scotland, the governing party is in a nasty political street-fight with the Scottish National Party.
The Scotsman/ICM poll shows that 53 per cent of the public think Labour will not make much difference to Scotland if it wins the May 6th election. But it provides some relief for the government, with Labour likely to win 59 seats out of the 129-seat legislature, compared to the SNP's 42.
By contrast, a Daily Record survey shows the Nationalists could win 53 seats to Labour's 43, though using a sampling technique with less credibility. That spread is in line with a battle, intensifying a year ago, when the SNP began an unprecedented surge into what became at one point last summer a 14-point poll lead.
As a result of that battle, the dominant issue is not about the range of domestic matters on which the parliament can legislate - including most things other than almost all taxation, welfare, immigration, defence and foreign affairs. It is about whether the parliament has enough powers to meet the high expectations Scots have for it.
Yesterday's ICM poll showed that 46 per cent of Scots do not trust Mr Blair's party to stand up for the interests of Scotland. That shows the success of attacks from its Nationalist opponents that it is "London Labour" in the hands of Whitehall "control freaks" - a view shared with many Labour activists.
At the Scottish conference in Perth a year ago, the government was attacked by its own grassroots for a welfare cut for lone parents which was "economically inept, morally repugnant and spiritually bereft".
Since then, Scottish Labour - led by Glasgow lawyer Mr Donald Dewar (61), who is currently Scottish Secretary in Mr Blair's cabinet - has gained a growing reputation for ineptitude. Its candidate selection procedure descended into rancour, with Blairite loyalists excluding many of those deemed to be "off-message". Despite an attempt to be politically correct with a near 5050 women's quota, a woman of Indian origin has launched a court case claiming racial discrimination over her exclusion from the list.
Out of its 56 Scottish MPs in Westminster, two were told they were not good enough even to be on the approved candidates list, while another was expelled for trouble-making. Two sitting MPs are to stand against party candidates in May.
In addition, there has been a spate of scandals in Labour-dominated local councils, the courts quashed a Blairite attempt to oust Glasgow's Lord Provost (mayor) from the party, and the Glasgow Govan MP, Britain's first Muslim member of Parliament, is in the sixth week of an electoral fraud trial in the High Court in Edinburgh.
The SNP has, of course, exploited such troubles. Despite having only six MPs in Westminster - fewer than the Scottish Liberal Democrat group - it has the kind of motivation and internal discipline which Labour enjoyed before it ousted the Tory government in 1997. Nationalists have followed a strategy which mark them out as "Scotland's party", seeking to catch the mood of the nation rather than dazzle with policy options.
The SNP, led by a 44-year old oil economist, Mr Alex Salmond, claims to be committed to making the devolved parliament work. But that is only so that it provides a convincing case to move on towards a referendum on having a complete split from the rest of Britain while remaining part of the European Union.
Yesterday, it set out the limitations of what it can do, claiming only 1 per cent of the new parliament's £314 billion budget is available to set its own priorities.