Douglas Alexander: Alex Salmond has been rumbled by voters

Published on Saturday 12 December 2009 19:14

YESTERDAY, Scottish Labour's candidates and activists gathered in Stirling.

The mood was one of good heart and quiet resolution. Part of this optimism is because of the two crushing by-election defeats inflicted on the Nationalists in just over a year. But it is not just the fact of these victories or the manner of them. It is that they revealed two vital truths about the SNP. One, that their politics are not suited to government or power. Two, the case for independence that they have made for the last decade has been swept away by recent events.

The Glenrothes campaign highlighted the iniquity and incompetence of the SNP-led Fife Council. At a deeper level, however, the weeks preceding that by-election witnessed the destruction of the case the SNP had been constructing for independence. Little wonder we don't hear much these days about "the Arc of Prosperity". Nor do we often hear the claim that the strength of RBS and HBoS will power an independent Scotland to a prosperity built on financial services. All the recent talk of a "social union" and shared military bases can't cover the credibility gap into which the case for independence fell in the wake of the global banking crisis and the action that had to be taken to deal with its consequences.

The banking crisis showed not Scotland's weakness, but the Union's strength. I believe that most Scots see this. And it is difficult to credibly blame the banking crisis on "spivs and speculators" when just a year earlier the Nationalist leader was pledging "a light touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector with its outstanding reputation for probity" and attacking the intrusiveness of the UK's "gold plated" financial regulation.

Yet if victory in Glenrothes was won against this backdrop of financial crisis and government action, last month's Glasgow North-East result revealed a different truth. Voters are rumbling the fact that more than two years into office, Alex Salmond still seems keener to tell Scotland what he can't do than show us what he can do with the powers he already has. Grievance remains both the fuel and the goal of his politics...and it shows.

Politically, the rejection of the SNP and the support for Labour last month reflected the voters' judgment on the Scottish Government's domestic failures and broken promises – from GARL to class sizes, health, and social housing. Organisationally it reflected the new technology, new staff and new skills that will be being deployed by Labour in battleground seats across Britain, including here in Scotland. So today, the SNP are marooned between an unpopular obsession with independence and an increasingly unpopular record of non-delivery at Holyrood. As a result, their support is eroding at exactly the point it should be strengthening.

But their difficulties go beyond these twin vulnerabilities. As last week's Pre– Budget Report anticipated, the months ahead will see a relentless focus on the differences between Labour and the Conservatives...the two parties competing for Government. People understand that at the end of the day we'll end up with a Labour Prime Minister or a Conservative Prime Minister. And the surest foundation for a successful General Election strategy here in Scotland is for Labour to acknowledge explicitly that truth, which even Nationalist voters understand. As recently as last week, figures from pollsters Ipsos/Mori showed 58 per cent of SNP supporters would rather see Gordon Brown in Downing Street than David Cameron. Our message to these voters has to be if you want Labour, vote Labour.

So irrelevance as much as independence will be the Achilles' heel of the Nationalists in the coming contest. Scottish voters understand that for all Salmond's boasts and blusters, the SNP is now struggling to be the fourth horse in a two-horse race. Certainly, there is no evidence that Scotland is ready to embrace David Cameron or his party. What Cameron promised in 2005 was change – but the change he offers today is judged widely in Scotland to be the wrong kind of change. It's the kind of change that most families here can't afford. His recent attack on "big government" and his "age of austerity" narrative reveal the long held ideological adherence not just to public spending reduction but to public service reduction. Scottish voters still remember the last Conservative government that decided to "let the recession run its course". The cost was paid in wasted lives and broken communities.

There is an essential difference that goes beyond policy that will shape the choice Labour, the Conservatives and the SNP will put before the Scottish electorate in 2010. It is the relevance of old dogmas to the new circumstances of our time. Yes, there will have to continue to be difficult decisions made about public spending in the years ahead. The deficit will need to be brought down as recovery is locked in. Yet the Tories' obsession with shrinking the state mean they would cut services while simultaneously cutting the taxes of the three thousand richest estates in the country.

Yes, we will always examine which powers should be devolved to Holyrood and which should be reserved. But we will do so, as the Calman Commission recommended, by reviewing the evidence and recognising that those needs will, and do, change over time. For the SNP, there is one rigid dogma in which independence is prioritised over pressing mainstream concerns like jobs, schools and hospitals.

The financial crisis, and the speed of response required, has shown the need to be nimble in our thinking and swift in our action. In an era such as this, the rigid dogma of both the Tories and the SNP has no place. Had they been in charge, our banks would have collapsed because one didn't believe in intervention, and the other wouldn't have had the resources outwith the Union.

Strong values – of social justice, strong communities and individual aspiration – applied without dogma is what Labour offered the people in 1997, 2001 and 2005. When the election comes, this approach will again underpin a manifesto committed to securing recovery for all. That will be Labour's offer. And I believe, if we govern and campaign effectively in the months ahead, it can be the choice of the people.

• Douglas Alexander is MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South and Secretary of State for International Development