Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): What's a more motivating force, fear or hope? Across the pond Obama has inspired a generation, re-inspired another and put 9 million people on the electoral register. Here a halving of the Labour Partys majority has been represented as a historic victory. Here it was politics as usual, and bitter negative politics at that. Labour have successfuly played on peoples fears of economic collapse. But can Britain be held together by fear? Where is a credible positive agenda emerging from London? It's not going to be the Olympics or the sight of a UK football team emerging at Hampden comprising 11 Englishmen.
There is no doubt that Labour ran a very successful campaign, but that's not why they won. The SNP ran a great campaign but chose a candidate that made them the incumbent (Peter Grant is the Head of the SNP Council), but that's not why they lost.
There are three reasons why Labour won.
First, as call after call to this morning Radio Scotland Morning Extra phone-in testified, the Liberal and more so the Tory vote drifted across to prop-up Labour. What 'should have been' an anti-Labour by-election became a vote in some constituents minds against Salmond's plans for independence. The Union has become the dividing line. Once you have virtual policy-merger between Labour and Tory parties this sort of tactical switching is easy. The old loyalties have melted away. This may be worrying for the Liberals and Tories who both lost their deposits. For the Liberals they need to have some coherent constitutional position now that the old boys backroom deals of Brown and Campbell are a thing of the past.
Second, this was the forgotten election. Obamania has swept all before it. A British media bored with the harsh realities of an impending recession, financial crisis and tales of supefying economic mismanagement have embraced the lovely (but frankly irrelevant) story of Barack Obama versus That Old Guy. Who wants to stand in a Glenrothes shopping mall whilst you could be surfing the web for tittle-tattle about the gloriously inpept Sarah Palin? Certainly not the London media, nor for that matter the Glasgow or Edinburgh media either, who suffer from their own media bubble. Compare the coverage of Glasgow east with Glenrothes and its spectacularly different.
Thirdly. A few weeks ago it was seen as the defining moment for Brown who teetered on the brink of an igniminous end, cut down by colleagues comrades and the commentariat. He was failing to redefine himself. The hoped-for re-emergence of Old Labour, Real Labour or some such forgotten fragment of Labours pre-Smithian imaginary past failed to rear its head. Instead, Brown reverted to type. He re-appointed Peter Mandelson, re-employed Alastair Campbell and, hey presto, the heir to Blair had a slick spinning machine back in place. He used his wife to boost his profile in the constituency, though this almost descended into farce when the security threatened to shoot reporters (and mounted a purely negative assault on a single local issue.
All's fair in love and war though and good luck to Labour. As Iain Macwhirter argues, this can be seen as a personal victory for Jim Murphy, something he'll be immensely pleased of given pressures for him to resign after leaking information about the HBOS situation.
But is this a Garscadden moment that stops the independence movement in its tracks, as Labour supporters are keen to suggest?
Hardly. The Sub-Prime Minister will be relieved but quite how he has presided over our slide into recession, housing instability and financial mismanagement on an unimaginable scale and keep his reputation for fiscal rectitude is extraordinary. How in Scotland, he and his Chancellor have personally managed the loss of the nation's bank, and the nationalisation of another, RBS, (without apparently any control of its actions) without any comeuppance is astonishing. They have together created a sort of dystopian fusion of the worst aspects of Thatcherism and Old Labour control-freakery. So we plow billions into banks we then have no say in, because that would be ideologically wrong?
Job losses are coming and when they bite people will remember how there were always funds to save the bankers.
Comments
Hi Mike,
I agree that Brown has been lucky that this happened before the recession has really bitten. If Salmond has been guilty of hubris, Brown has been guilty of huge hubris over his role in the credit crunch.
However, one of the lessons of this by-election is that the incumbency factor affects the SNP as well. They could be even more vulnerable given that while Labour controls the major levers of economic power, the SNP has day to day responsibility for allocating a lot of public spending. That could prove to be a distinctly uncomfortable position going forward.
I think Jim Sillars was right last night, that this could be a healthy wake-up call for the SNP, but only if they respond in the right way.
@ Tom Griffin,
Equally, the fact that the SNP have the responsibility for allocating the spending means they can play a blame-credit game. If the Westminster government increases the amount they have to play with ('spending our way out of recession'), the SNP can maximise the impact of its spending choices on Scottish jobs and free services to help people out during the recession. If the UK government ends up having to turn down the tap, the SNP can blame them and their mismanagement of the economy.
I'm sure the unionist, Obamamaniacal and spin factors were important; but wasn't it 'the economy, stupid' that decided this one? And it wasn't such a stupid choice to opt for Labour on the part of electors in the constituency next to Brown's. Better to have the local boys Brown and Darling controlling Westminster's purse strings and the fiscal favouring of Scotland through the Barnett Formula than to send an SNP MP to parliament who can do nothing on the economy. After all, the economy is a retained matter, and this was an election on retained matters for all Lindsay Roy's ridiculous emphasis on local issues he can have no direct influence over as MP.
The way Glenrothes voted on the economy has little bearing on how it will vote at the next Scottish election, when these local and national issues will come to the fore - although it has a bit more of a bearing on how Glenrothes might vote in an independence referendum. But, for the time being, I'm sure the thinking was 'let's look after our local boys - Brown and Darling - and they'll look after us'.
@Britologywatch:
I agree wholeheartly your last paragraph:
"The way Glenrothes voted on the economy has little bearing on how it will vote at the next Scottish election, when these local and national issues will come to the fore - although it has a bit more of a bearing on how Glenrothes might vote in an independence referendum."
I think people are reading way too much into this by-election's results.
The Tories could win all of Scotland in the next elections, for all anyone knows (yes, very unlikely, but you get the general idea). Elections really need to be viewed in a vacuum, as they are decided in a particular space in time. I, however, don't think that the SNP will be losing any sleep over this loss.
If the SNP were clever, they'd dismiss this as just a hurdle to overcome. If Labour were clever, they would seize this opportunity to rebuild their reputation. If the Tories were clever ...
It was sad that the SNP did not gain the seat but it was only a by-election and it held some important lessons for the SNP.
The first lesson was that negative campaigning works. The SNP policy of so far only campaigning on the positive aspects of an SNP run Scotland will have to be reviewed and the next SNP campaign will have to be fought on the positive aspects of SNP policies and candidates PLUS the faults, failings and negative aspects of the opposition's policies and candidates.
The second lesson was that the electorate do not distinguish between local, Holyrood and Westminster areas of responsibility. The Labour campaign for the Glenrothes' Westminster seat was not fought on Westminster issues or positive campaigning on Labour's record at Westminster but on the perceived failings of the SNP and Lib-Dem Local Government in the area. In essence you can pick any level of the opposition's governmental failures and use these as a stick to beat them with. They don't have to match the level of government being fought for.
The failure to capture the seat was not a surprise as I never took it for granted but the failure of the SNP to predict the scale of the vote for Labour was surprising.
This is the third lesson. The SNP are pretty good at canvassing and I'm sure that the canvassing had been going on in Glenrothes for months. I suspect that the problem was that the credit crunch and bank failures coupled with the mainstream media's endless narrative of Brown as the decisive saviour of not only Britain's Financial Sector but the European Financial Sector with his "Brown Plan" happened between the canvassing and the actual election. What people said to the canvassers and how they voted may have been very different on the day.
Lesson number three. If something big happens between the canvassing and election day or if the opposition's negative campaign gains traction don't believe your canvassing results.
It does seem surprising that the electorate in Fife wanted a party whose government are hell-bent on ID cards, who want a huge data-base of our email and what we look at on the web and who have followed the US neo-con policies slavishly in Iraq and Afghanistan but then again....
This was 947 and 1,381 respectively in this by-election with a similar turnout figure. 52% in 2008, 56% in 2005.
It does look as if Scottish central-belt politics are re-arranging into a Labour (unionist) and SNP (nationalist) slugging match and the voters simply don't care what the policies of the parties are.
I think that's my main point Doug, tactical voting is alive and well and its new dimension is a Unionist coalition - otherwise what happened to 6,000 Liberal and Tory voters? But will that hold and can you build a consensus AGAINST something? The question all of the unionist parties have to answer, is that is it all for? The biggest mainstream cultural event of the week was X Factor. currently No 1 with a Sun backed beautifully cyncical conflation of Rememberance Sunday (for the fallen in WW1 and WW2) and thre illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pure propaganda, and shameful at that.
But will it hold?
The Lib-Dems' Cherished Steel Commission Report and Calman Commission is now just dust in their hands. It serves them right for believing in Brown. <Nelson Muntz> Ha! Ha!</Nelson Muntz>
The Tories are left looking a bit stupid as well.
What this does mean is that any third agreed option on any proposed independence referendum is gone so an independence referendum looks like being back to a straight choice again.
This is embarrasing but sort of inevitable Doug. There is a split between the Tory Blue Rinse Brigade on the ground (Annabel Goldie and Holyrooders who clearly think its all a hoot) whjo belive in 'fiscal autonomy' and the Hardline Unionists who are feeling the hand of history.
The Liberals in particular will look ridiculous if this is true, given the Steel Report.
I hope its true. The third option would have killed independence.
My gut feeling is that Labour’s strategy as reported in Doug’s link to ‘Scotland on Sunday’ sounds credible. It states that, after Glenrothes, Labour are going to take a much harder line towards the SNP and on more powers for the Scottish Parliament because they believe that in an economic downturn voters will view voting for the SNP as too risky.
I feel this is the explanation for why voters from other unionist parties tactically voted for Labour. The fear factor has reasserted itself in Scottish politics. That is not to say that Labour’s negative campaign on local charges and its lies over cuts in educational spending weren’t effective, but their traction was due to the more pervasive fear of risk in a time of economic uncertainty.
I’m not sure what the SNP can do to counter this, but Labour’s strategy as outlined above could also pose risks for it. In blocking any more powers to parliament and in pushing through the merger of HBOS and Lloyds against the concerns of the FSA and public opinion in Scotland, Labour could come to be seen as the anti-Scottish party. I do not think they will have much trouble in this strategy from the other two unionist parties. Although the Lib Dems may protest they would not want to be seen as supporting the SNP on the constitution.
Faced with a threat to the union, Labour seems to have realised that Thatcher was right to resist change after all, but Labour will have to careful not to be cast in the same mould in Scottish eyes. Labour is playing for big stakes. They hope that, even if there is a price to be paid at a later date, this will have postponed the issue to a future where they hope Scottish oil reserves will have dwindled and the nationalist case will be weaker. Meanwhile Scotland languishes.
The risk is that the SNP will see the demise of Calman as vindication of a policy of independence or nothing. But, given the present economic difficulties, opinion is slipping away from them. What they must do instead is build a genuinely inclusive coalition of progressive forces in Scotland across the board including elements in other parties to resist the London Government’s attempts to put a stop to Scotland’s evolution towards a constitutional settlement more attuned to its needs.
If the SNP abandon their attempts to create an independent Scotland then they and every other party which wants constitutional change in Scotland will be ignored.
If the threat of independence is gone the reaction to demands for additional powers for devolution or attempts to stop the dilution of devolution by Labour or the Conservatives will be, "Independence is off the table so if you don't like what we're doing, tough."
Doug
I share your analysis, but Labour and the other two unionist parties are adapting to the changed circumstances in Scotland. One of the tactics they are using is to try to lodge in the electorate’s mind the idea that the SNP are extreme and that they instead represent the mainstream of reasonable opinion. This was something they were already doing, and the setting up of Calman was part of that [as well as being a response to the threat posed by the SNP]. But with the Glenrothes result they will try to build on this.
The SNP needs to ensure that it is seen as representing Scotland and not just a narrow band of zealots. Alex Salmond needs to appear as statesman-like as possible and to really work at building a consensus of opinion in favour of substantial constitutional change, while at the same time pointing out why he believes independence to be the best option. Unsurprisingly, given the prejudiced reporting of the unionist press, and the BBC, I think the public has bought the unionist argument that the National Conversation is not genuinely representative. This is another reason why I think a fresh initiative on engaging not just the wider public but institutional Scotland is needed.
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