Ewan Crawford: Positive action needed to counter Labour negativity

The images and ideas are generally brilliant. Even now some of them make me laugh, particularly the one where then Labour first minister Jack McConnell and the former Liberal Democrat leader Jim Wallace are depicted as wedding cake figures under the tagline of "The Marriage of Convenience".

During that campaign, I was amazed at the speed with which the advertising agency we had employed came up with witty and clever suggestions.

But, in truth, I think we became intoxicated by it all. We, of course, loved the campaign. For the electorate though, some of it must have been bewildering.

Taking the wedding cake poster as an example. Most voters would have struggled to recognise Wallace in a suit, let alone in a meringue wedding dress - no matter how fetching.

In the 2003 election we did push positive messages, but the primary focus became a call to kick Labour and McConnell out of office.

Voters were not averse to that call, but it became clear that they also needed to have more confidence in us as an alternative government before they felt able to "throw the rascals out".

I remember a friend of mine agreeing with me about everything I said about Labour, but then asking "how do we know your guys are any better?" That was one of the moments when I realised that the election was going to be a struggle.

During that time, and certainly afterwards, I became convinced that negative campaigning had had its day. Apart from anything else, the press is usually so unrelentingly hostile that sometimes there is little for political parties to add to the negative mix.

Four years later and with me safely out of the way, the SNP fought an upbeat, optimistic, positive campaign in 2007 and was rewarded with national office for the first time in the party's history.

During the election, Labour kept to the old negative style - churning out ever-higher figures for the size of the budget deficit an independent Scotland would face (little knowing that the UK itself would soon be careering towards annual deficits of 155 billion).

Having lost the election, Labour's response in opposition was to launch non-stop attacks and hope that voters would somehow come to hate First Minister Alex Salmond as much as it did. It was both predictable and futile.And yet, having spent much of the past seven years telling everyone that negative campaigning is a waste of time, more recent events have suggested otherwise.

In particular, Labour in Scotland at the UK general election fought a successful campaign based almost entirely on whipping up fears of the calamities that would befall the country if the Conservatives won. The crucial factor here though is that Labour had a point. There are indeed huge planned cuts in public spending, reductions in tax credits and mounting job losses.

For the SNP, this presents a dilemma. The basic argument about negative campaigning still holds true - people don't like it that much and if you engage in it, you also have to assure voters that "your guys are better" by promoting an equally clear, positive message.

But my concern is that at present Labour is getting too much of a free ride on cuts and the economy. Yes, the party was right when it said that the Tories were going to slash spending - but so was Labour, only by not quite as much.

In an important speech last week, Ed Balls, the most economically literate of the Labour leadership contenders, made this clear when he said: "I told Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in 2009 that - whatever the media clamour at the time - even trying to halve the deficit in four years was a mistake. The pace was too severe to be credible or sustainable."

Labour, of course, despite promising us the end of boom and bust, also helped to create the disaster in the first place. That's what makes a nonsense of its mantra of "SNP cuts".

The cuts are purely driven by decisions taken in London - by Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and now the Tory-Lib Dem coalition - which means that Labour's comments about cuts in nurse and teacher numbers in Scotland are entirely dishonest. Moreover, by campaigning to stop the Scottish Parliament from having the powers it needs to grow the economy and hence the tax base, the only way Labour can protect spending on public services is by massively increasing council tax and by using the tartan tax powers, probably to their maximum.

This all means that there should be a strong, proactive SNP campaign turning up the heat on Labour and it has to happen straight away.

The reason for urgency is that the path has to be cleared for a proper election next year on alternative positive visions for Scotland.

There are big issues to be faced in the wake of the banking collapse and subsequent recession; most importantly, how we as a country can build the prosperous and more equal society many of us crave. Intriguingly, all the main parties will go into that election arguing for some sort of further constitutional change. The various proposals should be tested rigorously in the heat of an election campaign.

But none of that will happen if the election becomes a battle of who is to blame for the cuts, as it appears Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray would like it to be.Almost from the day Brown left Downing Street, Gray has made it clear that this is ground he is keen to fight on. So this is something that needs to be played out now. The arguments have to be exhausted well before polling day and if they are, then I believe the emptiness of the Labour case will become clear.

The big prize will then be that next May we can look forward to a positive election about the future, not a negative one about the past.

lEwan Crawford was private secretary to SNP leader John Swinney 2001-4