Hamish Macdonell: Battle of Glasgow East could be a bloody affair

Published on Monday 30 June 2008 22:19

GLASGOW East could hardly be more Labour if every house was painted pillar-box red. Going round with a Labour candidate in last year's election campaign, I heard a similar message at every door. "I'm going to vote Labour – my father would turn in his grave if I didn't," was the answer from one woman.

"I'm Labour, we've always been Labour, and we're not going to change," said another.

"The SNP? No, I don't think so. I'll go with what I know. I'll vote Labour," said yet another.

Labour managers are confident that, of all the seats in the country, they will hold on to Glasgow East when the by-election is called, probably for 24 July.

They should be confident; it's not the sort of constituency where esoteric arguments over the establishment of a Scottish oil fund or the range of powers for the Scottish Parliament have traditionally held much sway.

The issues that decide elections in Glasgow East are much more earthy – such as the scale of benefits payments, provision of council housing, access to local health clinics and cracking down on teenage gangs.

The SNP, however, is hopeful of causing an upset. Party managers point to Glasgow Govan in 1973 and 1988, where the Nationalists achieved more than the 22-point swing they need in Glasgow East and they flag up the case of Hamilton South in 1999, when a 16,000 Labour majority was reduced to a few hundred.

But Glasgow East is rather different from Glasgow Govan and it is very different from Hamilton South.

Glasgow East is such a traditional Labour seat that the party should be able to put up a donkey with a red rosette and get it elected, and that is exactly why this by-election is so crucial.

It is such a safe Labour seat, and the party is so confident of winning, that, if the SNP does cause an upset, it will undermine the foundations of Downing Street itself.

One senior Labour source summed it up yesterday by saying: "Oh, yeah, we're going to win. I have no doubt about that. But if we didn't, Gordon would go for sure – there would be no way back."

The stakes for Labour could not be higher. Win, and there will be no waves, just an acceptance that Labour has held a safe seat; lose, and the party will be in meltdown.

For the SNP, it has been a whirlwind few days: getting rid of Wendy Alexander and then facing the prospect of winning a seat in the very heart of Labour territory – and possibly bringing down a Prime Minister, too.

The Nationalists will argue that they did not get rid of Ms Alexander, that she was responsible for her own downfall. That is true, but only partly so. The Scottish Labour leader failed to declare a series of donations and that was the core of the problem, but the Nationalists then did the rest, bringing her down by turning the standards committee of the Scottish Parliament into a party political vehicle.

The theory in SNP circles was that Ms Alexander would not resign, even if she was suspended by the standards committee, that she would hold on and struggle through, in the way she has done before.

That was at least one of the calculations done by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats before their MSPs voted to suspend the Scottish Labour leader. What they had not counted on was Ms Alexander quitting.

But if there was no party political campaign to get rid of her, as the Nationalists argue, then why did all three SNP MSPs on the committee vote the same way, consistently, and use exactly the same arguments as their SNP colleagues to justify their decisions?

The standards committee at Westminster is genuinely independent. MPs know that it is vital for that particular committee to remain above party politics and for every member to be given a fair, non-partisan hearing when they come up before it.

This does not seem to be the case at Holyrood. It may be that Ms Alexander should have been punished for failing to declare her donations, but that would have been easier for the committee to sell had there been a split in SNP ranks. For all three SNP MSPs to vote the same way, time and again, and use the same arguments to back up their decisions when their investigations had been prompted by a complaint from an SNP party worker, does tend to suggest that the committee is not quite as independent as its Westminster counterpart.

Labour managers have been grumbling that all the complaints against Ms Alexander came from SNP members, and that may be right. But Labour should also acknowledge that all the complaints against David McLetchie, when the former Tory leader was under fire over a potential conflict of interest for being a lawyer and an MSP, came from Labour members.

So, although Ms Alexander can probably feel she has been hard done by, Labour and the SNP have both to take some responsibility for the politicisation of the conduct of MSPs.

What is clear, though, is that there is real anger in Labour ranks over the way their leader was treated in the parliament and that fury is being directed at the SNP.

That is the background for what will be the most important by-election in Scotland for generations.

Glasgow East will be a straight fight between two parties that did not get on very well before Ms Alexander's departure and now hate each other with a passion.

Some by-elections come and go, making hardly a ripple on the surface of the Scottish political agenda. Glasgow East is already shaping up into something rather different.

The stakes are high, for both parties, and the atmosphere has degenerated into all-out war – before the campaign has even started. We could all be in a for a very rough ride.