Brown tastes victory - now for a general election in Spring?

Published on Friday 7 November 2008 21:26

IT WAS a Brown bounce that led to a Salmond trounce. But the Prime Minister's personal reprisal was just one half of the story of the surprise victory by Labour at the Glenrothes by-election.

The other side was Labour finally learning to campaign like a party that is in opposition north of the Border by unrelentingly trying to hold the SNP to account.

The victory, which left Labour with a three percentage point increase in its share of the vote – a remarkable achievement for an incumbent in a by-election – has also buoyed its hopes of surviving the next general election.

The SNP has highlighted the incursions it made on Labour's previous majority of 10,664, reducing this to 6,737. But its activists and politicians, convinced that they would take the seat right up until polling day, were left reeling on the night.

Mr Brown himself is not complacent enough to extrapolate the by-election result to make predictions about what it means for Labour across the whole electoral map.

With the economy still heading for recession, despite a massive interest rate cut this week, the Prime Minister is under no illusion that he will have to fight hard to secure another term in government. His gamble will be whether to wait another 18 months until the last possible moment to go to the polls, or risk all now while the full force of the downturn has yet to be unleashed.

He will be mindful of the fact that the UK economy is usually a year behind the United States. And yesterday America revealed it had lost half a million jobs in just two months – more than anyone expected.

Yesterday, Mr Brown played down speculation of a spring general election. Asked if Labour would now go on to win the next election, he said: "The undivided focus of governments and of ministers is on taking people through these difficult times.

"We have got to get the banks resuming their lending, we've got to help people with their gas and electricity bills, and we've got to get the rest of the world working with us."

Mr Brown hailed the result and underscored his personal role in the banking bail-out that had offered a reprieve for the country's financial institutions.

"What I have learned from this by-election is that people are prepared to support governments that will help people through the downturn and offer real help to people. They are less willing to support people who have no idea about how to solve the problems we have got," he said.

As Labour gathered in the Glenrothes shopping centre to parade its latest MP, Lindsay Roy, in front of the media, senior politicians repeatedly highlighted the "Brown bounce". Mr Roy said the Prime Minister had tried to call him three times. "Once on my home phone, but I missed him as I was in the shower, and twice on my mobile, but I didn't answer in time," he said.

Mr Brown had broken the recent convention that prime ministers do not visit by-election constituencies ahead of the contest. His wife Sarah also visited, and one senior Labour MP said: "She was brilliant on the doorstep, and kept being invited in for endless cups of tea. We had to drag her away in the end."

The Scotsman understands Mr Brown had to be encouraged to risk going to Glenrothes, which neighbours his own Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat, for fear that he would be tainted by association with any defeat.

Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, hailed it as the biggest by-election success since 1978, when Labour won Kincardine and stopped an SNP march.

"It's a vindication of Gordon Brown, it's a humiliation for Alex Salmond. We have to get back to the business of governing."

Mr Murphy added that the victory would make the party "reflect what we do next": "Clearly, we put a confident case for the economy with Gordon Brown and the public responded to it."

There were also ramifications for the Conservative Party, however. Mr Murphy referred to Mr Cameron's trip to Glasgow yesterday: "We have a Conservative Party here which halved its vote and lost its deposit."

With his appointment as Scottish Secretary, Mr Murphy has been able to devote his attention to tripping up the SNP – and so far he has proved masterful. Scotland needed "grown-up politicians" and it would not be served by Mr Salmond or by the "Cameron schoolboy analysis".

Labour campaigners, led by Gordon Banks, who fought against the odds to keep Ochil and South Perthshire a Labour seat in 2005, had underlined the threat of SNP-imposed care charges and education cuts locally.

Mr Banks told The Scotsman the campaign was based around the "cuts and charges of the SNP", the popularity of long-term headmaster Mr Roy and his "action plan", and the personal endorsements by Mr Brown.

"Gordon and Sarah were a huge asset. I was very, very pleased that Gordon Brown got involved in this campaign. I thought it would be the right thing to do on a number of levels and I'm delighted he agreed."

Iain Gray, leader of the Labour group in Scotland, told The Scotsman the by-election was a lesson for the Nationalists: "With power comes responsibility. It wasn't negative campaigning. What we have done is hold the SNP up to scrutiny."

Earlier, in a pointed reference to Mr Salmond's attempts to align himself with Barack Obama's campaign, Mr Gray said: "It is not so much about the audacity of hope, but it is about the effrontery of hype."

For Mr Brown, the by-election win comes as a climax to a steady fightback for his own political future as leader of the Labour Party. He has already clawed a 20-point deficit to the Conservatives back to around nine points in the latest polls after his handling of the banking crisis.

Even one-time challenger, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was moved to say yesterday that the result at Glenrothes was an endorsement of the Prime Minister's leadership.

However, while the result will pacify the doubters in the party, it is far from certain that Mr Brown will not be punished for the deteriorating state of the one area that he knows is usually his strongest: the economy.

Cameron puts brave face on coming third, in what was 'always going to be a two-horse race'

IF THE by-election result were to be replicated at the next general election, there would not be a Tory MP left in Scotland. That was one Labour official's instant summary of the impact of Glenrothes on Conservative hopes, and he could barely contain his glee.

The swing of three percentage points recorded against the Tory candidate Maurice Golden, combined with another improved Labour performance, would be enough to unseat David Mundell from his Dumfries-shire seat – the sole Tory constituency north of the Border.

No wonder, then, that Scottish Labour politicians were queuing up yesterday to express fake sympathy for the plight of David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Despite a determined effort, his candidate lost his deposit and saw his vote almost halved on the 2005 election result. The Tory share of the vote dropped from 7.1 per cent to 3.8 per cent, on a 52 per cent turnout – only four points less than the 2005 figure.

According to Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, the result was a "humiliation" for Mr Cameron. Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, said: "There will be quite a lot of furrowed brows in Conservative Central Office."

Still ahead in the UK polls – though by a margin now reduced to single figures – Mr Cameron could yet find himself becoming prime minister without winning a single Scottish constituency.

But there was no talk of a Tory general election victory – rather, the result had virtually ensured that Gordon Brown would be allowed to lead his party into the next election, something that was far from certain only three months ago. The result even sparked gossip about an early poll next May.

The Tories have only modest hopes for Scotland in the next election, and expect to win an extra two to four seats at best. But in Glenrothes they hit a modern-day low by losing their deposit after failing to win 5 per cent of the votes cast.

Westminster archives fail to show when the Tories last lost their deposit in a Scottish parliamentary by-election. Since 1997, it has happened to the party only once in the UK – at the 2006 Blaenau Gwent by-election in Wales (a seat won by an independent).

Before Glenrothes, the party's worst by-election performance was in Glasgow East in July, when it scraped 6.3 per cent but again saw its share of the vote fall.

Mr Cameron, on a visit to Glasgow yesterday, said he was delighted that the Tories had taken third place, pushing the Liberal Democrats into fourth. But he admitted: "In Scotland, it's always hard work for Conservatives."

He said: "This was always going to be a battle between Labour and the SNP. … The Conservative Party is now the third party in Scotland. That is progress for us."

Tory insiders regard the Glenrothes result as the inevitable consequence of a two-horse race between Labour and the Nationalists in an area that was not natural Conservative territory.

They point to the frequent visits from Westminster shadow Cabinet members as evidence of the party's willingness to engage with voters in Scotland, where the party has been polling around 17 per cent for the past two years.

The controversy surrounding the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, who was caught up in allegations of seeking funds from a Russian oligarch, was not said to have been mentioned on the doorsteps.

"If this was a general election, we would not have lost our deposit," one insider said. "There is no doubt our 7 per cent would have gone up. I hope that in a Westminster election the SNP are not going to represent the voice of change."

By-election specialists lick their wounds

ONE of the biggest humiliations of Glenrothes was the performance of the Liberal Democrats.

The party, which has built a reputation for performing well in by-elections, was beaten by the Conservatives into fourth place, losing its deposit on its way, along with ten per cent of its votes.

It polled under 1,000 votes as its usual supporters defected to the SNP and to shore up the Labour vote.

Worryingly for the Lib Dems, it highlights the collapse in support despite the campaign being run by Willie Rennie, who won a stunning victory in neighbouring Dunfermline in 2006.

While local businessman Harry Wills was no Willie Rennie, he cannot be held entirely accountable for the paltry 947 votes the party gained. Many aspects were outside the Liberal Democrats' control: the national mood and tension between the two chief candidates being foremost reasons for the party's failings. The Lib Dems' usual core of "angry and aggrieved" have moved to the SNP while the left-leaning supporters have drifted back to Labour.

Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem spokesman on Scotland, played down the disastrous result, the first campaign under the leadership of Tavish Scott.

"In a two-horse race, this is what happens. We get squeezed with two other centre-left parties."

And he denied that the party was on course to be wiped off the map in Scotland. "In Tavish Scott, we have someone leading the debate on crucial issues such as tax cuts and HBOS."

No matter what the party had done, it would have lost. But the scale of the defeat was bad partly because the Lib Dems chose not to invest the resources or people power to save the party from humiliation.

The things they said in a war of words

"I don't know any Labour MPs who are expecting us to win."

Labour MP Nick Palmer misjudges the situation as the polls close in the Glenrothes by-election.

"Everyone knows there is an economic storm sweeping the globe. The people yesterday put their faith in Gordon Brown. And it is a real personal tribute to his work."

Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

"What I have learned from this by-election is that people are prepared to support governments that will help people through the downturn, offer real help to people. They are less willing to support people who have no idea about how to solve the problems we have got."

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister.

"The real loser is the SNP and as they want to break up our country, to destroy the Union that I'm passionate about, then maybe it's no bad thing that the 'Salmond bounce' has disappeared."

David Cameron, Conservative leader.

"I won't pretend not to be deeply disappointed, I want to win every election we contest. But we did make progress last night."

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP deputy leader.

"I was wrong about the by-election. We're disappointed with the result. However, we're not disappointed with the campaign we fought. A campaign fought by Labour was a scaremongering and negative campaign but was successful. There are lessons to be learned and we will learn them."

Alex Salmond, SNP leader and First Minister.

"Since Glasgow East, the leadership of the party has been infected by hubris."

Jim Sillars, former SNP deputy leader.

"Alex Salmond predicted the SNP would win on Day One. He got it spectacularly wrong. Scottish politics has changed again. The honeymoon is over."

Tavish Scott, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader.