Glasgow North East: Reality check for SNP

Published on Saturday 14 November 2009 19:08

THE SNP campaign team had given up before the tea-time rush even began.

• Missed the vote: David Kerr, left, and Alex Salmond were left to reflect on a crushing defeat for the SNP in Glasgow North East

On the streets, foot soldiers had realised the game was up much earlier. A huge push from Labour, which flooded the Glasgow North East seat with 450 activists from across the UK, was overwhelming the SNP challenge. A new computer system bought by the Labour campaign team was allowing them to see in real time exactly which of their core voters had cast a ballot and who still needed reminding. The SNP machine was struggling to keep up.

"We were getting slaughtered", says one SNP street worker. "In some parts of the seat, even the Conservatives had more people out than us." When Michael Martin retired as the MP for the area in the summer in the wake of the expenses scandal, Labour strategists in Glasgow swear blind that in focus groups, their core vote was minded to give them an almighty kick up the backside. Now that core vote, however sullen, appeared to have been hauled back, persuaded by Labour's relentless attacks against the SNP government in Edinburgh. The tribal loyalties that have kept Glasgow North East in Labour's hands since the First World War kicked back in. Their victory in the early hours of Friday morning was crushing.

By breakfast time, the post-mortems in the SNP camp were beginning. A west-coast website of SNP activists warned that there was "a grave danger" that the party could be caricatured by Labour once more as an "east-coast party". It described the decision by Finance Secretary John Swinney to cancel the Glasgow Airport Rail Link just weeks before the by-election as "an error of judgment of considerable proportions". On the ground in Glasgow, among councillors and activists, there was anger at the way the campaign had been run. The original selection battle, which first picked local councillor James Dornan, before he was forced to step down over his personal finances, had led to bitterness in the camp.

The eventual candidate, David Kerr, had been "undermined" said supporters. Not enough SNP councillors in Glasgow had done their bit to ensure he got enough support. On Friday lunchtime, deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon suggested the SNP had struggled because it "did not have a political base" in Glasgow North East. "That's just total bollocks," said one SNP activist later that day. "In Glenrothes we had a sitting MSP and a council leader as the candidate, but we still got horsed there. We're getting almost as deep into denial as Labour was after the 2007 election."

Not so, answered the party's top brass. "I don't think it has any bearing beyond Monday," said one SNP minister. "We're talking about one of Labour's safest seats." To illustrate the problem, SNP campaigners pointed out that they hadn't even been able to take Labour on over expenses – the very reason why the by-election was called – because of the deep Labour loyalties in the seat. "They thought Michael Martin had been downed by a bunch of Tory toffs." So who is right? Was last week's result just a minor blip in the SNP's march to independence? Or was it the harbinger of a wider fall from grace?

This week, the focus in Scottish politics will return to the business of the SNP Government. Tomorrow, Alex Salmond will head to Frankfurt to take part in Euro Finance Week, as a keynote speaker in a discussion on "Restructuring the Global Architecture: the Road Ahead". Later in the week, at an award ceremony in Edinburgh, one of the SNP's cabinet is likely to named Scottish Politician of the Year. The business of government will continue, with St Andrew's House now firmly focused on the end of the month and the publication of a white paper on a referendum on independence.

Soon the memories of Kerr's devastating defeat last week will be a distant memory. There is near unanimity across the political divide that last week's Labour triumph has almost nothing to say about the UK-wide general election, to take place next year. But even in a Scottish context, observers caution against taking too many lessons. "I think there is no more than limited significance," says John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University.

THERE is a but, however. Curtice, other pollsters – and even the SNP itself – all agree that what the by-election did show was that Labour has worked out how to fight back against the SNP. With a two-year record in power at Holyrood, Labour set the Nationalists up as the big Edinburgh-based government which was out to stuff Glasgow. It carried out a similar trick in Glenrothes last year. Bobby Duffy of Ipsos Mori, said: "The campaign was much more effective from Labour. There is a bit of a sheen coming off the SNP and it is harder for them to run when they are incumbents in Holyrood."

As in Glenrothes last year, the attacks caught the SNP off-guard. Salmond attempted to run a classic insurgent campaign; declaring the SNP as the underdogs; David versus Goliath. But in the face of Labour's attacks, it didn't work. "At the moment the SNP is very slow and very inept at fighting back," says Curtice. "They are out to trying to fight as a challenger, as an opposition party, but that doesn't work when you are in government."

It is this apparent failure to respond as a party of power that is now being debated within the party. Last month, at the SNP Conference, Gordon Wilson, a former leader, advocated a return to more negative campaigning against Labour. The result in Glasgow North East has confirmed his view that the SNP leadership have allowed Labour to take the fight to them, particularly over the key issue of budget cutbacks. "Around about nine months ago, the SNP should have led the attack on Labour on the budget cuts. It should have railed about how Britain is bankrupt," says Wilson.

"If you are in whatever layer of government and you have to cut a local facility you are going to get the blame for it. Well, I believe in preemptive strikes which should have taken place nine months ago to fix the blame on London and the British state."

He adds: "They might have been able to tell people that it was Labour that was doing the cutting. On the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, we should have turned around to Iain Gray (the Scottish Labour leader] and said yes, you have a good point about it, so why don't you get onto Alistair Darling and ask him for 300 million more?" Wilson says he fears that the SNP leadership may be getting bogged down with the daily grind of parliamentary and ministerial paper-work. "Having been in parliament you tend to associate politics with the parliament. Politics is on the street and perhaps they ought to get out more," he added.

Responding to the defeat on Friday afternoon, Sturgeon acknowledged that the SNP had been too slow in getting back on the front foot against Labour. She also pointed out that it would be impossible for Labour to run next year disguised as an opposition party when they will quite obviously be the incumbents.

But there are many in the party who fear that next year's big test will see another flop. The core problem, they say, is that Salmond has set the party an impossible target. The party's opponents say they are "delighted" that Alex Salmond has now publicly stated that the SNP can win 20 seats next year – because it now seems all but completely unattainable. A poll out last week showed that, on Westminster voting intentions, Labour has a 14-point lead over the SNP, on 39 per cent next to the SNP's 25 per cent. And never mind taking more seats, the SNP is now having to watch its back in its existing ones. Labour's Margaret Curran is said to be "increasingly confident" of being able to take back Glasgow East from the SNP. Meanwhile, the Tories now believe they have a genuine chance of loosening the SNP's grip on Angus.

But even a dreadful SNP performance next year will not hit the party too badly, as it is Holyrood, not Westminster, which matters most for them. The same poll which showed that the SNP was falling behind in London showed that it remained well ahead of Labour in Edinburgh.Scottish voters are now entirely at ease in voting differently for the two parliaments. They seem entirely content, so far, to keep an SNP administration in Edinburgh.

THE unknown factor, however, is how the result of next year's Westminster elections will change things. As yet, nobody quite knows how the advent of a likely Conservative government in London will impact on Scots voting habits for Holyrood. Curtice continues: "My view has always been that the context changes after the next Westminster election." It could go two ways, he says. "If the Labour party loses and fratricide commences, then they will lose (at Holyrood]". If, however, Labour pulls together in the wake of their likely defeat, a different scenario emerges. "They can fight as the party which is both clearly the main opposition party to the SNP and also the main opposition to the Conservative government in Westminster."

In other words, no longer would Salmond be the only Scottish politician frothing at the mouth at the iniquities of London control. In the end, it may boil down to personalities – and there are few bigger than Salmond's.

As he celebrated his victory in Glasgow North East last week, the new MP Willie Bain attempted to claim that the victory had been a testament to the voters' belief in Gordon Brown. Speaking clearly to a UK audience, Bain finished his speech by declaring: "It's game on." In the context of next year's general election, most observers believe this to be little more than wishful thinking. But seen in the context of the longer two-year battle for Holyrood supremacy, he might just have had a point.

SNP BY-ELECTION UPS AND DOWNS

HIGHS

1967: Hamilton. A milestone in Scottish politics marking the rise of the modern SNP, as Winnie Ewing, right, records a 37 per cent swing from Labour.

1973: Glasgow Govan. Margo MacDonald, below, repeats Ewing's success, notching a 26 per cent swing from Labour to take the seat.

1988: Glasgow Govan. MacDonald's husband, Jim Sillars, re-taking the seat, which had gone back to Labour, on a 33 per cent swing.

2008: Glasgow East. John Mason records a shock victory over Labour on a 22 per cent swing, prompting a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown.

LOWS

2005: Glasgow Cathcart. Labour present the seat on a plate after Mike Watson quits as MSP and is jailed for fire-raising. But the Nationalists only increase their vote by 5 per cent and lose by a country mile to Charlie Gordon.

2008: Glenrothes. Alex Salmond borrows Barack Obama's slogan "Yes We Can" only to find that no, he can't, as Labour candidate, head teacher Lindsay Roy, holds the Westminster seat easily despite SNP predictions.

2009: Glasgow North East. SNP is out-fought and out-campaigned by Labour's Willie Bain.