LABOUR WIN

SENSATION!

NO matter what the ‘experts’ say – and despite the fact that two-thirds of the voters are so scunnered with politics and politicians they didn’t bother to turn out - lessons can be learned from the Glasgow North East by-election.

 ● Scotland’s post-devo politics are volatile and unpredictable when a Labour win in a tradition left-wing seat they have held for over 70 years is regarded as a sensation.

● Labour’s surprisingly smooth cruise to victory with 60% of the vote in what should have been a problem constituency was a much-needed shot in the arm for a demoralised party. New MP Willie Bain exulted it is ‘game on’ for next year’s UK general election – but the odds are still stacked against his party winning that unprecedented fourth term in government.

● The wheels have not quite come off the Scottish National Party bandwagon but it is stuttering. Leader Alex Salmond’s promise to win 20 seats in next years’s UK general election is, as one bitter SNP member said, ‘fantasy politics – fantasy and vanity’.

● The Tories are still largely shunned in Scotland, where David Cameron’s supposed  charm has no effect And the Liberal Democrats who crawled in fourth after the racist British National Party have nothing to offer.

So how did Labour win such a crushing victory in a constituency with the worst employment, health, housing and welfare dependency figures in the country, as well as the enforced resignation of Speaker Michael Martin, because of the MPs’ expenses scandal?

They learned the lessons of last year’s drubbing by the SNP in the next-door seat, Glasgow East. From the off, they ran a sharper and more aggressive campaign included a new secret weapon – a sophisticated on-line polling-day operation, so successful it will  used nationally in marginal seats next year.

Gaffes

They denied the SNP any momentum, pounced on every gaffe by the Nat candidate David Kerr and his team (and there were many such gifts). They set up a "virtual" phone bank with trade unionists contacting fellow members, found to be four times more effective than politicians calling. Law lecturer Bain’s own union, Unite, contributed heavily to his fighting fund.

On polling-day, they deployed the new ’Big Brother’ software which gave a street-by-street read-out on who was voting and when. Over 500 volunteers flooded into the constituency to man polling stations, identify pledged supporters who had not yet voted and notify HQ on-line. As a result, on a 33 percent overall turnout, some streets turned out over 50 per cent and the computer revealed there was not a single street in the constituency where SNP out-performed Labour.

Labour’s problem in UK and Scottish elections will be to motivate enough disillusioned activists and voters to return to the fight, because the technology ultimately depends on knocking on doors.

Labour’s charge that the SNP government in Edinburgh was ‘ripping off’ Glasgow hit home and the Nats complained Labour’s campaign had been ‘relentlessly negative’.

To be fair, their candidate David Kerr, a former BBC journalist, should not shoulder the blame that the SNP’s share of the vote was a pitiful 17.7% in the lowest-ever by-election turn-out in Scotland. It would be cruel to point out that the previous low was in the Falkirk West in 2000, where he was also candidate. One commentator sniffed: “He must be wearing voter-repellent aftershave.”

The recriminations within the SNP leadership are bitter and Salmond must bear some of the responsibility for his usual arrogance in predicting “substantial tremors” and that 20-seat total which would see them holding the balance of power in the next Westminster.

 Elections guru Professor John Curtice points out: “If that pattern were to be repeated throughout Scotland in next year’s general election then, far from winning 20 seats as Salmond has predicted, the nationalists would be left with just five — two fewer than they have at the moment.”

More realistically, recent nationwide polls of Westminster voting intentions in Scotland suggest, on average, that the SNP is trailing Labour by about five points. which  Such a performance could leave the SNP struggling to win 10 seats, let alone 20.

Labour may pay the price for their aggressive campaign in Glasgow North-East. The Nats have been stung – and when it comes to nasty no-holds-barred in-fighting, they are hard to beat.