Eddie Barnes: Labour's leader has good reason to feel confident – but how long can he ignore those cuts

Published on Wednesday 8 September 2010 21:09

IAIN Gray filled his boots in parliament yesterday, lampooning Alex Salmond over the First Minister's decision to cancel his independence referendum bill. As many as ten points ahead in the polls, and with his closest aides warning openly that MSPs already think victory at next year's election is the bag, the tide has turned remarkably quickly for the Scottish Labour leader.

A few short months ago, few people saw him as having a chance of becoming First Minister, Now, almost rising without a trace, he enters the back straight with a substantial lead.

Yesterday's fierce parliamentary attack on the SNP in parliament was Gray in his element. The former teacher and charity worker has declared he plans to focus all his energies on the record of the SNP government in power. He "will not allow" the SNP to escape the charge sheet of broken promises which it has built up in its time in office.

However, what political parties want to fight the election on is not the same as what voters themselves are interested in. And all political debate over the next seven months is certain to centre on the coming unprecedented cuts to Scotland's public sector. The question that Gray is therefore facing with increasing frequency is: "So what would you do?"

This time last year, Chancellor George Osborne gambled by revealing at his party conference some of the medicine he proposed to offer if he took hold of the purse strings. The view was that the party would earn respect from voters by being seen to face reality.

Gray, by contrast, has so far held back. Sources within the Labour camp suggest that there have been some heated discussion about how frank he should be. There are those, understood to include finance spokesman Andy Kerr, who are playing the ultra-cautious card, warning that to be up-front now about what medicine they plan to offer would be to invite unnecessarily negative headlines, and a target for the SNP. But there are other senior MSPs who are increasingly worried about the lack of a forward offer from their leader. The upshot is that Gray is so far keeping shtum. Gray has appeared happy to allow council chiefs such as Glasgow's Gordon Matheson to lead the party's message on combating cuts.

The result of this is that, two years after taking the job, tired TV profiles still persist in characterising the Labour leader as "the grey man" of Scottish politics for want of anything else to say. Gray's defence is that it is for the SNP to show its hand first. It is, after all, the government. Furthermore, in his defence, internal critics can hardly complain about that growing poll lead. But Gray's wait-and-see policy could end up as an even bigger gamble than coming clean. It hands the initiative over to Salmond who – even with a terrible set of cards – will welcome the chance to fight the coming election on his terms. Gray may have won yesterday's exchanges with Salmond; the real test, however, is still to come.