Kenny Farquharson: East Enders will rewrite the script

Published on Saturday 19 July 2008 19:36

HOW inconsiderate of them. It seems the voters of Glasgow East are stubbornly refusing to play the part sketched out for them in the story of Gordon Brown's downfall.

According to the script – think Braveheart with a dash of Spartacus – the people of the East End were meant to rise up and throw off the Labour shackles, inflicting a historic by-election defeat. This week's contest was to be the tipping point for Brown's premiership, the moment when Labour was sent an unmistakable message from its deepest heartland, landing a body blow from which no Government could ever recover.

Such a sensational result now looks unlikely. Labour will indeed see its majority slashed in its 25th safest Westminster seat on Thursday. But few are now expecting Glasgow East to be lost to the SNP – one poll yesterday had the Nationalists still trailing by 17 points. The expectation of campaigners on the ground, backed up by the bookies, is that Labour will win.

So this will not be the tipping point, the final straw, curtains or the coup de grace. Brown's political death will not be conveniently swift and dramatic. It will be long and slow and ugly and painful. If Labour clings on to this seat it will be the most hollow of victories for Brown. Defeat would surely have damned him, but victory will not save him. Glasgow East won't change the diagnosis that has been clear for the past six months, that Brown is the political equivalent of an old sick dog; everybody knows he's on his last legs but no one can muster the heart to put him out of his misery.

Few of the reasons for Labour's by-election survival will be cause for celebration in Downing Street. Labour will have held on because in much of the East End stasis is a way of life. Dependency culture can breed an adherence to a party just as much as an armchair, a bottle or a welfare handout. For this reason it would be foolhardy to extrapolate too much from the Glasgow East outcome. This is not the kind of constituency where general elections are won or lost. The people who decide general elections are floating voters who are at ease with exercising choices in their lives. Choice is not a common feature of life in the Calton.

To insure themselves against any setback on Thursday, Downing Street spin doctors are already briefing that they are relaxed about by-election results, insisting it will be a completely different story once we get to choosing a Prime Minister. At that point, they say, it won't be about protest. Instead it will be a choice between Brown and David Cameron, and Labour is confident it can make the challenger look callow, opportunist and insincere. Brown will be presented as the man who can steer Britain through global financial storms to emerge weathered but intact at the other end.

This analysis is so naive it's almost rather sweet. It completely under- estimates the extent to which Brown has lost the voters' confidence. As the cost of living continues to climb, the public isn't looking for a helmsman – it wants a scapegoat.

Back to Glasgow East. Of course, there are still four days to go until polling day and anything can happen. The biggest imponderable is tomorrow's unveiling of Labour's work-for-welfare strategy, which represents the biggest shake-up of the British welfare state for a generation. Launching it while fighting a by-election in one of the most benefit-dependent corners of Britain (16,800 local voters of working age are living off the state) is either brave or foolhardy. At the very least it gives Brown a decent defence against the charge that he is pandering to the voters. Incidentally, there must have been hollow laughter at the Treasury last week when the Tories characterised the scrapping of the 2p fuel duty rise as "a by-election bribe" – Glasgow East has the lowest car use of any constituency in Britain, with 59% of the population having no access to a car.

Pundits had predicted the Glasgow East contest would be a re-run of the Govan by-elections that produced famous Nationalist breakthroughs. But to my mind, it has been more reminiscent of Monklands East, the by-election that followed the death of Labour leader John Smith in 1994. The similarity is the key role played by religion. In Monklands, the controversy was over local councillors allegedly featherbedding Catholic Coatbridge at the expense of Protestant Airdrie. In Glasgow East we have seen the Catholic church effectively go to war against Labour over its support for the human embryology bill and its refusal to back a tightening of abortion law. Last week, Bishop Joe Devine said, bluntly: "Labour has broken its pact with Christian voters." Catholic academics are publicly calling for a vote for the SNP and today Cardinal Keith O'Brien weighs in.

This is the other imponderable: what effect will this morning's sermons have in this most Catholic of constituencies? Regardless of the result on Thursday, this by-election campaign will have crystallised a fundamental truth in the new Scottish politics – the emergence of the SNP as a party of social conservatism, and the belief among the Catholic hierarchy that an independent SNP-led Scotland would better reflect Christian orthodoxy on morality, the family, sexuality and fertility. Glasgow East may make its mark after all.

Join Scotland on Sunday assistant editor Kenny Farquharson from 9pm BST today for an online chat about the issues of the day. Add your questions or comments below – now – and visit here later today for the live discussion.