Leader: Battle lines drawn

Published on Saturday 12 December 2009 19:14

WITH a general election a constitutional requirement within the next six months, battle plans are being drawn up by all the political parties.

This weekend Scotland on Sunday is well placed to analyse the campaign strategies of the two major UK contenders, Labour and Conservative. On this page today we publish an article by Douglas Alexander, Labour's general election coordinator, and in our News and Insight pages we examine leaked internal polling for the Scottish Tories. The broad thrust of the two parties' election campaigns is taking shape.

Labour in Scotland is confronted with a peculiar predicament: in a UK general election it must campaign as the party of government, defending the record of Gordon Brown's administration; but in Scottish domestic politics it is a party of opposition. Reconciling those contradictions is going to present Labour strategists with an exceptional challenge. In politics, the oppositionist mode is very different from the governmental mindset. To campaign on a confusingly mixed message could cost Labour dearly.

Douglas Alexander affords us an insight into how Labour proposes to address this challenge. His strategy is clearly to represent the Nationalists and the Tories as both mired in irrelevant dogmas. But the focus of his campaign is unmistakably on the SNP. From a Labour point of view, this strategy makes electoral sense, not least because, in the parallel realm of Holyrood politics it is the SNP that is Labour's main opponent, not the Tories.

Mr Alexander also claims persuasively that Labour morale in Scotland is high, in the wake of victories in the Glenrothes and Glasgow North East by-elections. Fifteen months ago that would not have been the case, with Labour feeling battered by the loss of power at Holyrood, followed by the catastrophic result of the Glasgow East by-election in July of last year. Labour's reassertion of its traditional electoral strength has restored confidence among activists that is not matched among their colleagues in England. It is clear, therefore, that Labour's strategy will be to treat the SNP as the main enemy while at the same time claiming they are an irrelevance in the fight for Number 10.

So how will the Tories fight their corner? Their internal polling suggests they, too, will target the Nationalists, particularly in the areas where Conservatives were traditionally strong before losing ground in the 1980s and 1990s. Can the Tartan Tory vote be regained? It is an intriguing prospect, as is the notion of a Labour-Tory pincer movement on the SNP vote.

The problem for the Tories is that there little sign of a 'Cameron bounce' in Scotland – although that will not necessarily protect Labour from the anti-government climate that long-term incumbency provokes. The Tories are talking a good game about capturing 11 seats, but, as an enterprising journalist has discovered, their private projection is four seats next year and ten in 2014. Their appointment of the combative David McLetchie to lead the election campaign is a shrewd move. The Tories' private polling (though all such research necessarily carries a strong health warning) shows that three-quarters of voters think the SNP is ineffective at Westminster and that Labour looks tired and failing.

But these broad-brush impressions do not automatically predicate a surge of votes to the Conservatives; indeed, the fact that two-thirds of Scots expect the Tories to win at UK level could impart a premature flavour of government to them, provoking an anticipatory anti-Tory backlash north of the Border. The Conservatives will be grateful that the polls show the constitutional question is virtually off the electoral radar, for their participation in the Calman Commission has created an extremely divisive issue within their ranks.

There is an unpalatable fact that Scottish Tories have to face: in 1997, at the supposed nadir in their fortunes, they gained just under half-a-million votes; by 2005 that had shrunk to 369,388. If they can win back Tartan Tory support from the SNP, they may finally reverse that trend next year. If they fail in this task, in Scottish politics they will be no serious threat to anyone.