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BROON'S BLOG ...
AS IT HAPPENS
Note: The Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech can be found in 'Miscellaneous'.
See below: Gordon Brown - the best is yet to come ...
May 2010:
SCOTLAND 2011 -
THE REAL ELECTION FIGHT
SCOTLAND is a foreign country; they do things differently there … to adapt a famous opening line. And that important lesson from the general election is a dangerous one, full of explosive potential.
The radically-reversed results in Scotland (and the other Celtic nations in the UK) and England have produced a fraught situation which will be played out long after the stitch-up settlement to produce a government at Westminster.
Having covered 13 UK general elections – not to mention the Scottish Parliament, two Popes and numberless by-elections – I cannot remember any as extraordinary, baffling and with such far-reaching consequences as this one. And what will emerge from the rubble after the Brown bombshell is anyone’s guess.
Having covered 13 UK general elections – not to mention the Scottish Parliament, two Popes and numberless by-elections – I cannot remember any as extraordinary, baffling and with such far-reaching consequences as this one. And what will emerge from the rubble after the Brown bombshell is anyone’s guess.
The dramatically different results north and south of the border will be pored over by more than psephologists, pundits and professors of politics. The parties themselves will try to understand how their campaigns produced such unexpected results and they will all have to reorganise and re-define themselves.
So how did Scottish Labour get it so triumphantly right and the other parties so dismally wrong? It was not just a case of a fed-up and fickle electorate or "The people have spoken, the bastards" as the defeated Californian politician said.
Labour's surprise
Labour surprised even themselves by topping a million votes, holding all their marginals and reclaiming the two seats lost in by-elections. The wide-eyed amazement of Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy at the size of his 10,420 majority in East Renfrewshire, where he was thought to be under serious pressure from the Tory, said it all.
But right across the central belt successful Labour candidates were just as gob-smacked. Ian Murray who squeaked home by 316 votes on a recount in Edinburgh South, former seat of the scandal-prone Nigel Griffiths, admitted: "I haven't got anything prepared because I didn't expect to be standing here."
Even they had not realized the potency of raising the spectre of Maggie Thatcher and their warning to Scots: “Vote Nat or Lib Dem and you’ll get a Tory government.” The Conservatives complained of scare tactics but they could not counter the folk-memories etched deep into the Scottish psyche.
The Labour campaign was mainly a frightening flashback to ‘dark days’ for Scotland of Conservative government in the eighties and early nineties with the core theme: “The Tories haven't changed.”
Murphy described Conservative candidates in Scotland as ‘Thatcher's grandchildren’ and the manifesto launch was at the former Ravenscraig steelworks now the largest brownfield site in Europe, with a reminder of ‘the dark heart of the Tory government era.” Underlying what one London commentator called Labour’s ‘ferociously negative’ campaign was the fear of job cuts under a Tory government in a country where the public sector employs over 600,000 people.
The Tories were ruthlessly efficient, outgunned the others in money and materials and fought with flair but their exasperated campaign supremo David McLetchie was left protesting: "We have to persuade them that we don't eat babies."
Despite the cash (estimated at £400,000 in Scotland) and resources thrown at marginals, the Tories were reminded that money can’t buy love. They are still flat-lining around the 15-16 per cent mark In fact, turning up the temperature in these seats was their undoing; the frenetic activity in East Renfrewshire created a turn-out of 77. 3 per cent, more than half of them voting Labour.
They were not helped by the woolly-minded ‘Big Society’ idea which baffled many of the Scottish Tory candidates as much as it did the voters. Too often, their policies appeared as insignificant Caledonian add-ons to plans for England.
SNP lacklustre and ludicrous
The Scottish National Party started out lacklustre, became unattractive and ended up looking ludicrous. Girning about being left out of the UK leadership debates on TV and demanding that Scotland be exempt from the squeeze which will hit other equally disadvantaged parts of Britain sounded too much like the embarrassing ‘Scottish whinge’. The ungrammatical slogan ‘More Nats, Less Cuts’ was typically annoying.
The once-influential Nationalist Jim Sillars has described their campaign as ‘embarrassing’, ’fatuous’, ‘irrelevant’ and the worst ever mounted by the party. His ex-colleagues may say justifiably that he is sniping from the sidelines, but Nat fundamentalists are aggrieved that the core policy of independence seemed to be taboo and the famous target of 20 seats was as fatuous as the boast that the SNP would ‘hang Westminster by a Scottish rope’.
The impact of the party leaders was markedly different on either side of the border. In direct contrast to the English, Scots stood by Brown, rejected Cameron and dismissed Clegg.
It is no exaggeration to say Brown engendered a virulent personal hatred in the Tory shires, which may explain why Labour’s high command misused him. He was sheltered and shielded and ham-fisted stage-management resulted in the disastrous encounter with Mrs Gillian Duffy in Rochdale.
Only in the final week was the real Gordon Brown unleashed – the thundering old-time-Labour-religion political preacher whose storming performances were the highlight of party conferences.
The Citizens UK conference was repeatedly brought to its feet by an inspirational speech, especially when he declared: "As you fight for fairness, you will always find in me a friend, a partner and a brother."
If the Labour campaign team had more confidence in their own leader, his passionate appeal to ‘come home to Labour’ might not have been too late. In the last few days, there was a clear movement to the leader with the experience, solidity and track record; although Brown was never going to get the people to love him, they were warming to him.
It became a cliché before, during and after the election to say that Cameron did not ‘seal the deal’ with the voters generally and was actively disliked north of the border as the classic out-of-touch Tory toff who does not really care about Scotland except as an adjunct to the UK.
Clegg proved an appropriate leader for the Lib Dems: fizz and flash without much substance. Commonsense Scots were immune to Cleggmania and close-up inspection on his visit to Glasgow North showed that much of what he said was dubious and the rest was trite.
An increasing number of Scots are also immune to the dubious charm of SNP Leader Alex Salmond. The ‘Smart Alex’ over-confidence, the snickering delivery and the constant harping on grievances are unappealing, while the one-man dominance confirms the party’s lack of strength-in-depth.
This was supposed to be the Internet election; in particular, key Labour people were influenced by the Obama campaign which they observed at close range. Jim Murphy even spoke of Labour’s appeal to ‘the Facebook generation’.
It was TV that made the difference, not so much with the Leaders’ debates; after all, the Lib Dems shot to 31 per cent then slumped back to their normal level or less in Scotland and lost seats. The relentless coverage and endless analysis on 24-hour TV had more effect on the mass audience.
But surely party political broadcasts - preachy and amateurish, notably the SNP zombie wandering trance-like up hill and down dale - have had their day.
Take it from a veteran campaigner: the one predictable thing about the next UK general election (probably within a matter of months) and the Holyrood election next year is that the results will be just as unpredictable as this one. The times they are a-changin’ … May 14, 2010
GORDON BROWN - THE
BEST IS YET TO COME
FOR many people, the abiding image of Gordon Brown will be the fond father, hand-in-hand with his two lovable little sons and his loyal wife Sarah, as they left Downing Street with dignity and heart-warming humanity.
It will not be the dour, determined Scot, the slug-it-out slogger at the dispatch box, the ‘clunking fist’ nor the grim-faced grump portrayed by his enemies.
I have lost count of the number of people, including Tories, who have said: “If only we had seen THAT Gordon Brown, I would have voted for him.” The shame is that is the real Gordon Brown but we were not allowed to see him until too late.
From now on, we will see more of the relaxed fatherly Gordon – and, at the same time, world statesman and aid worker in a formidable partnership with Sarah.
Weeks before it happened, the Browns discussed what they would do in the event of election defeat. Unspoken, because it did not have to be raised, was that it would not be a Tony-and-Cherie style retirement into riches, mopping up fat fees and sun-tanned globe-trotting.
They agreed they want to work for under-privileged children, together as a team. Gordon said: “Sarah and I might go off and do charity or voluntary work. I don’t want to do business. I just want to do something good”
A job, in fact, that is more in keeping with his lifetime calling as missionary-politician. Those who have been writing his political obituary are premature. Gordon will now move from the Premier League to the Super League.
We are not related, although we share the same name and birthplace and our connection stretches over the decades, His father, the Reverend John E. Brown, would take the trouble after a hard day to help a struggling junior reporter. Later, I was able to repay the favour by editing the Gordon Brown column in the Daily Record.
In our home town of Kirkcaldy, we have a saying: “Speak as ye find.” What I have found is an engaging, genial and thoughtful friend and fellow Raith Rovers fan.
When a Prime Minister, in the middle of an international crisis and with his own colleagues trying to do him down, takes the trouble to phone you late at night, when you are at your lowest after a drastic operation, and write encouraging notes (yes, in the famous scrawl and with one spelling mistake) you know he is a man whose personal values are right.
I have often been asked what makes him tick and it took me years before I realised the answer is simple. When a politician talks about ‘doing good’, it is usually dismissed as insincere rhetoric – but he actually means it.
He still follows the teaching of the Reverend John, who never let on how he voted, but told his three sons “You can leave your mark on the world for good or ill.”
Gordon is no saint. He is driven, although that is understandable in someone who has learned how life can change with dramatic suddenness – from the loss of an eye and the threat of complete blindness in his teens, to family heartbreak and political betrayals. Those of us who saw the sheer joy with which he showed off his new daughter, then the tiny white coffin carried from the church, thought it might break him. He admitted later: “"It was a year after her death before I could listen to a piece of music."
In the bruising years in office, especially as Prime Minister, there were inevitable compromises and failures but he is still an idealist at heart. When he became Chancellor, we stood at the door of No. 11 and he exulted: “"Downing Street has been a Conservative street,. Now, it's a Labour street.” But it became a New Labour street and we all know what that meant …
Now, in his new life he still wants to ‘do something good’. Standing down as Prime Minister, he has given himself the chance on a global scale.
Gordon will not stay long at Westminster as a backbencher. He has no intention of doing a Ted Heath, who sat sulking on the aisle in the Commons for 20 years.
There was regret when Gordon had to admit defeat and stood down. He did not want to leave as the Prime Minister who could not get elected. He wanted history to remember him, not as the loser in a scramble for power, but as the pre-eminent politician of his age.
But there was also relief, for the pressures have been intolerable. In the la-la-land of what passes for political comment these days, no other senior politician has been singled out for such abuse and character assassination.
Those close to him were appalled at the personal hatred (not too strong a word) he seemed to provoke in the Tory shires. Sarah threw herself into the election campaign at his side and the strain began to show on both of them.
They have been relaxing and recharging at their home, a solid Victorian villa on the hill overlooking the Firth of Forth at North Queensferry which will remain their home-base. Nearby is the favourite beach where the famously buttoned-up Brown has been seen scrambling over the rocks and kicking a ball with the boys.
Their first move will be back to London to return six-year-old John to his primary school and three-year-old Fraser to nursery class a leas until the end of the summer term. After a long summer holiday, their new life will start.
Sarah heads a number of charities, especially PiggybankKids which she founded after the death of their ten-day-old daughter Jennifer and it could be developed as an international organization improving the life chances of children in the Third World.
UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is a good friend who has stayed with them in Scotland, President Obama is an admirer and – whatever those at home think – after his world lead in the economic collapse, his global reputation is high.
Sarah believes her 59-year-old husband will have ‘one more big job’.
The top job at the International Monetary Fund will become vacant in 2012 and Gordon’s record would make him first choice. His motive for taking it, or another job like it, would be his ambition to tackle world poverty and his ‘anger at the plight of many millions of people around the world who live on the knife's edge of bare existence’.
The Browns’ No.1 priority is, of course, the future of their sons – ensuring their education and protecting Fraser’s health. Although he has cystic fibrosis, he is a normal active and exuberant little boy who plays football but will always need special care.
Sarah has hinted they may end up in the US, where they spent their honeymoon and several family holidays on Cape Cod: “We both have great friends there.”
His best days as family man and world figure lie ahead. It is Britain’s loss that we did not see enough of the REAL Gordon Brown.
April 30, 2010:
BROWN'S BOOB WAS
BOUND TO HAPPEN
GORDON Brown did not reveal anything new in his self-accusing e-mail to Labour Party members when he told them: “You know I have strengths as well as weaknesses.”
The failure was that in a modern political campaign, where leaders are subjected to the relentless glare of media scrutiny, those weaknesses were disregarded – until they were embarrassingly exposed by the unwitting Mrs Gillian Duffy.
That Brown found himself in a classic foot-in-mouth, bite-your-tongue-off situation was directly due to his own complex personality and the failure of his closest aides to protect him from himself. I can testify that they were warned but were either incapable or not allowed to prepare for just such a debacle.
BROWN'S BOOB WAS
BOUND TO HAPPEN
GORDON Brown did not reveal anything new in his self-accusing e-mail to Labour Party members when he told them: “You know I have strengths as well as weaknesses.”
The failure was that in a modern political campaign, where leaders are subjected to the relentless glare of media scrutiny, those weaknesses were disregarded – until they were embarrassingly exposed by the unwitting Mrs Gillian Duffy.
That Brown found himself in a classic foot-in-mouth, bite-your-tongue-off situation was directly due to his own complex personality and the failure of his closest aides to protect him from himself. I can testify that they were warned but were either incapable or not allowed to prepare for just such a debacle.
Previously, the driven, obsessive Brown would have found it impossible to leave the nerve-centre of negotiations. He would have stayed on in Downing Street surrounded by his close-knit clique, with staff on call through the night, plotting, planning and manipulating.Yet the 59-year-old father left London on Saturday, as David Cameron and Nick Clegg, started their talks, and made it home to at North Queensferry in time to see his sons John and Fraser off to bed. A member of his team said he had insisted on ‘family time’, a few snatched hours of calm and comfort with Sarah, who has become his No.1 mainstay both personally and politically, and their boys.That is not to say the Brown home was insulated from the constitutional crisis. The phones and Blackberries were in constant use and the temporary structure in the driveway which acts as international communications centre was humming through the small hours.
From there, the Prime Minister sent his message to party members. Most commentators seized on the line: “My duty as Prime Minister has been to seek to resolve this situation.”
But perhaps more telling was his assertion: “My resolve has not, and will not, change. I pledged to do everything in my power to fight for the people of this country – to secure the recovery, to protect their livelihoods and to continue to fight for a future fair for all.”
The defiance of the defeated? Not entirely. That is his declaration of intent that he will not give up – not right now and perhaps not for some time to come.
Instincts
His political instincts tell him the game is not over. Having intrigued, fought and seen off countless rivals to become Prime Minister was – he will play his hand to the last card. More important, the man is incapable of conceding that all hope is gone; he is simply not made that way.
His mindset is that of the typically thrawn Fifer (‘thrawn’ is defined in the Scots Dictionary as ‘perverse, obstinate, intractable’) and that dour determination has actually been an asset throughout his life. It has helped him overcome setbacks that would have broken a weaker character and he seemed to thrive on adversity.
From the loss of an eye and a narrowly escaping complete blindness in his teens, family heartbreak, betrayals and backstabbing when he reached the top to global debacles, Brown has often seemed like a character in a Greek tragedy: just when life seemed set fair, fate dealt him a blow.
Most frustrating of all for him is waiting on the sidelines while his and the country’s future is decided by his political foes – especially Cameron and Clegg, both of whom he regards as his inferiors and not up to the job. These are hours of purgatory for an acknowledged control freak who cannot bear not to be involved in the big decisions.
Sitting tight in Downing Street may seem like undignified squatting in the light of the election result but under our increasingly inadequate unwritten constitution, he has to remain until the political impasse is resolved. However, it also gives him the chance to scheme …
If the Cameron-Clegg talks fail, could a Labour-Lib Dem coalition be forged. Leading Lib Dems and some Labour back-benchers have called for the PM to stand down immediately. Paddy Ashdown said yesterday of Brown’s character: “Among his personal qualities is not one that is easy or very able to run a collegiate style of government.”
It is unthinkable that Labour would allow Lib Dems to choose their Leader and in the more likely event of Labour being forced into Opposition, Brown would resign and start the ferrets-in-a-sack scramble for a new Leader before the next general election.
It is painfully obvious that this is not how Gordon Brown wanted his career to end. As he was overheard saying on the morning after: “I did not foresee it.”
Barring some sensational development, time is running out on his tenure in the job that was his single-minded aim for most of his life. An intimate friend from student days at Edinburgh University recalled: "He had a sense of his own destiny. There was no need to talk about it. It was going to happen."
A Ph D in history, he would like to be remembered by posterity for his achievements and not a failed footnote as the Prime Minister who could not get himself elected.
He would prefer to struggle on, even in some creaky coalition, then go with his head high having seen the UK through the economic crisis and accomplished radical constitutional changes.
That would fulfill the task he set himself in his biography of Labour pioneer John Maxton: "A successful socialist politician is one who advances the fortunes of his or her political party, and progressively uses power to transform society."
In his victory speech in his home town, with the exit polls predicting the end of his Premiership, he seemed to be writing his political obituary, talking of his pride in being returned ‘now seven elections in a row - by the people who know me best, know who I am, what I stand for and what I went into politics to achieve’.
Our shared Kirkcaldy roots have always been important, as he once said to me in the Thatcher years: "What influences me isn't what happens at Westminster. It's what is happening in Fife and what I see around me, what my fellow-Fifers tell me, when I go home every week. There is still real suffering, appalling waste of people, sickening injustice."
Those proto-socialist ideals will continue even after he has retired hurt from the political fray.
And then what? Asked about life after politics, he has said several times “If I could not make a difference any more, I would go off and do something else. Sarah and I might go off and do charity or voluntary work. I don't want to do business. I just want to do something good.”Sarah founded the Jennifer Brown Fund and PiggyBankKids, researching and treating conditions affecting the newborn, after her ten-day-old daughter Jennifer died in 2002 and they are both active in charities for vulnerable and young people.The Browns work as a team and her skills as a formidable PR woman and international networker will be useful if, as her husband hopes, their work is extended to the Third World and they become ambassadors for children and the under-privileged.
Whatever those at home think, Gordon Brown’s global status as statesman is high. UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is a close personal friend and President Obama is an admirer and it will be no surprise if he is offered a post at the UN, the World Bank or IMF.
Can Gordon Brown live happy ever after? His contemporary colleague, fellow Fife MP and former First Minister Henry McLeish speaks with the experience of being forced to resign from office: “It may be difficult, especially for someone as driven as Gordon, but he has to see it’s not a disaster. He is a man of enormous talent and achievement who can take credit for doing a great deal of good and he has been a towering figure.
“In time he may look back and think he didn’t do too badly, certainly much more than most who go into politics. And he’ll discover it’s amazing when you leave office how much more rounded you become.”
Above all, although it has become a cliché for politicians to resign ‘to spend more time with my family’, Gordon Brown can say it and really mean it, What’s more, he’ll enjoy it.
April 30, 2010: April 30, 2010:
BROWN'S BOOB WAS
BOUND TO HAPPEN
GORDON Brown did not reveal anything new in his self-accusing e-mail to Labour Party members when he told them: “You know I have strengths as well as weaknesses.”
The failure was that in a modern political campaign, where leaders are subjected to the relentless glare of media scrutiny, those weaknesses were disregarded – until they were embarrassingly exposed by the unwitting Mrs Gillian Duffy.
That Brown found himself in a classic foot-in-mouth, bite-your-tongue-off situation was directly due to his own complex personality and the failure of his closest aides to protect him from himself. I can testify that they were warned but were either incapable or not allowed to prepare for just such a debacle.
In a very real sense, Gordon is his own worst enemy. And his second worst enemy is the team he has around him.
Brown is flawed – but who among us is not? – and they should have been ready for the moment when the flaw became an issue. Do we really accept the pretence that our leading politicians are perfect? Do we want to be led by human beings or by humanoid holograms created by PR men, spin doctors and image consultants?
Weeks ago, when the Andrew Rawnsley book appeared with its distorted picture of bullying and tantrums in No Ten, I was called in the middle of a family occasion by a TV company to give an interview as an old friend and colleague. I agreed after their third increasingly desperate call and, as a result, spent most of the next day in radio studios on five different programmes, talking about the eeal Gordon Brown as I know him – loyal, considerate and compassionate.
Warning
With the election impending. I warned one of his Number Ten staff they should recognize that Gordon Brown’s character was bound to become an issue. Either that, or there was bound to me a ‘media moment’ that could derail the Brown bandwagon.
If, either through inefficiency or unpreparedness they could not produce people to speak to his good qualities, it would look as if he were short of friends and they should prepare by having a ‘Friends of Gordon’ team on standby.
As far as I know, nothing was done – and that has been obvious in the shame-faced follow-up to the encounter with Mrs Duffy; it says it all when he has to rely on Peter Mandelson as his main character witness.The consequences have been dire for the man and potentially disastrous for his party and far-reaching for the country.
When Brown said he was ‘mortified’, it was an understatement; he may not publicly admit his mistakes but no-one is more self-lacerating when he knows he has made a wrong move. His “I’m a penitent sinner” after personally apologizing to Mrs Duffy struck a typically Biblical note of repentance.
In a very real sense, he is a politician out of his time. He is old-fashioned and happier with policy than he is with people (as one critic said ‘He’s in the people business but doesn’t understand people’); he is an idealist who is impatient with those who falls short of his high ideals; and he is a technophobe who forgets when he is tethered to a radio mike which picks up every word.
His has been described as a ‘control freak’, yet he lacks self-confidence and hates to be caught unawares. It is a sign of the pressure he feels that his mind was already on the next interview, the Leaders’ debate, the final week, the strategy, how it would look on that night’s news programmes.His meeting with Mrs Duffy actually went very well and would have gone down as a genuinely satisfactory ‘meet the people’ moment but the political obsessive felt it had not gone as well as he wanted.
His overheard reaction - “That was a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman ... whose idea was that?” – was also typical.
While concentrating on the big things, he has relied on others to take care of the details. His brother Andrew became embroiled in the Commons expenses scandal simply because he had taken care of the cleaning arrangements for his brothers notoriously untidy flat and his sister-in-law said: “In the days when Gordon was a brilliant but extremely busy bachelor we would try to keep a bit of an eye on him on the domestic front.”
Micro-manager
As Prime Minister, he needs such people on a larger scale, but he resents not being able to micro-manage government and his own life.
Consequently, he finds it hard to take personal blame when he cannot take personal control, as when in this second leaders’ debate, he adopted the ‘it wisnae me’ defence over questionable his own election posters in his constituency.
And, despite being an arch-pragmatist who led in the creation of ‘New Labour’, he is still an traditional Old Labour idealist. Hence his failure to understand an all-too-common concern about immigration and his catastrophically unfair castigation of Mrs Duffy as ‘just a sort of bigoted woman’.
He admitted that he had misunderstood what she was saying but, tellingly, in his immediate reaction when he first heard his own words on the Jeremy Vine programme, he said: “It was a question about immigration that really I think was annoying.”
In our home town of Kirkcaldy, immigration has never been an issue. I was 16 in the early 1950s before I saw or spoke to my first coloured person when some Ghanaian sailors just shipped in the harbour. Before that, Poles and Lithuanians who had served in World War Two, stayed on and married local girls were valued members of the community – like Joe Kidel who ran the most reliable taxi service despite only having a fractured version of our local dialect.
In Gordon Brown’s ideal world, you should welcome immigrants and shelter them. It is in his upbringing in the Church of Scotland manse, as his brother John recalls: “Our father never turned anyone away.”There was a constant stream of people in need would come to the family's front door - including a serial burglar whom Gordon famously invited in for tea.
The Prime Minister said of his father, Rev. John Ebenezer Brown: “He taught me to treat everyone equally and it is something I have not forgotten.''This may explain his failure to understand fully that what is happening now is a vague resentment, not a racist rejection of needy people. Mrs Duffy was not impressed when Gordon Brown asked her: “Come back to your initial principles – helping people, which is what we’re in the business of doing.”
Nor will lifelong Labour supporters, including the Parliamentary candidate who privately admitted to me: “If she’s a bigot, then so am I. Because she was only saying what I’m hearing what on the doorsteps.”
Gordon Brown fights on because he does not want to go down in history as a failure or the short-lived unelected Prime Minister. He would rather be remembered as the politician who changed out country and brought about far-reaching constitutional reforms and then he might be persuaded to step down.
He has just made his fight for political survival even harder because of a moment of weakness – which he and his friends knew might happen.
23-07-10
TORY-NAT TACTICTORY-NAT TACTIC
TO OUST MURPHY
RICHARD Cook, campaigning to wrest East Renfrewshire back from Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, is an outspoken opponent of political correctness. How fitting that he could achieve it through an act of extreme political INcorrectness – tactical voting by Scottish Nationalists.
The bush telegraph says that Murphy is under pressure and, with a little help from his enemies, Cook might narrowly win back the former safe Conservative seat.
The bush telegraph says that Murphy is under pressure and, with a little help from his enemies, Cook might narrowly win back the former safe Conservative seat.
A Labour loss and Tory gain would help bring about the hung Parliament, which SNP Leader Alex Salmond says nationalists should ‘embrace enthusiastically’ to strengthen Scotland’s (i.e. his party’s) hand
.With the SNP trailing a hopeless fourth in East Renfrewshire, the plotters say that, they might as well hold their noses and vote Tory instead of their own Gordon Archer.
Cook, local businessman in recycling and Scottish spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, admits: “The Internet is going wild with talk of tactical voting in this constituency but that has happened at successive elections. I suppose it’s recognition that ours is the only party with a realistic chance of getting Labour out.”
Another result desired by both Tories and Nats would be that it claimed the scalp of a Cabinet Minister and Labour’s top man in Scotland, who has been out-manoeuvring Salmond and seeing off his Conservation counterpart, Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell.
Murphy admits: “By its nature, East Renfrewshire will always be unpredictable. If they keep saying the Tories can win, that will stop the Nats from voting SNP – but I don’t think tactical voting will make much of a difference.”
No-one is more aware of the reasons for East Renfrewshire’s unpredictability. Murphy won it, to his own surprise, after a double scandal involving the ex-MP then his substitute, who happened to be the Scottish Tory chairman, gifted the leafy lanes, discreet cul-de-sacs and expensive golf clubs to Labour.
By assiduously tending the constituency and wooing the cross-cultural community – concentrating on working-class Scots, plus the largest Jewish community in Scotland and a substantial Asian population – while he rose through ministerial ranks, Murphy pushed his majority to 6657 (14%) over the Tories in 2005.
However, an independent polling report describes it as ‘a middle class suburban commuter seat outside Glasgow that, were it not in Scotland, would almost certainly be a safe Conservative seat’.
Cook claims: “There’s absolutely no love for Labour in large parts of this constituency.
“Demographically, it is the closest to Middle England you can get in Scotland. There is a degree of anger at things they have nipped away over the years from people who live here, like stealing from their pension funds.”
With a 7% swing required, East Renfrewshire is eighth on the Scottish Tories’ target list but in the special circumstances, Cook’s campaign is impressively efficient and well-financed. His placards outnumber Murphy’s 50-1 in some areas and near the Labour HQ are three ‘I never voted Tory before but …’ billboards.
Murphy, who has to persuade former Labour supporters who are refusing to re-commit or even say whether they will vote this time, says: “it’s hard to compete with the amount of money being thrown at this constituency by the Tories.”
Cook counters that it is all locally raised: “Not a single penny has come from any national source and, categorically, not one penny of Lord Ashcroft’s money has come into East Renfrewshire.
“We haven’t been able to get a categorical assurance from my Labour opponent that there isn’t any money for their campaign from rich Labour Party donors. “ (This is a subtle hint at suggestions that shady Glasgow business figures attended a Murphy fund-raiser.)
Newspaper-style posters outside Cook’s campaign office proclaim “Changing Times – The Conservatives Can Win Here”. Even as a result of political incorrectness? The candidate grins: “I just don’t do political correctness …”
16-04-10:
BACK TO THE DARK DAYS WITH
'MAGGIE'S GRANDCHILDREN'
LABOUR’S back-to-the 80s Ashes to Ashes election poster may have misfired badly in the rest of the UK. But in Scotland they are still firing up the Quattro with a vengeance.
North of the border, they are sticking doggedly to what is meant to be a frightening flashback to ‘dark days’ for Scotland of Conservative government in the eighties and early nineties with the core theme: “The Tories haven't changed.”
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy describes Conservative candidates in Scotland as ‘Thatcher's grandchildren’.
He launched the Scottish Labour manifesto this week, at the former Ravenscraig steelworks now the largest brownfield site in Europe, with horror stories warning: “We can go backwards with the Scottish Tory party, to the dark heart of the Tory government era …”
Scottish Labour's first party political broadcast on Tuesday was a video nasty with images of “the damage that the Tories did to Scotland when in power - the Poll Tax, abandoning Scotland's industries, huge numbers of unemployed, cuts to the NHS and schools and thousands of homes repossessed”.
Russell Brown - desperately defending Dumfries & Galloway, the Tories’ top Labour-held target seat in Scotland – gloomed: "Scotland bears deep and painful scars from the last time the Tories were in power.”
Gordon Brown joined the Tory-bashing when he said on his home turf in Kirkcaldy: “If people don’t want a Conservative government, then they must make sure they don’t allow the Conservatives to get in.” Was he talking tactical voting in seats where they might have a chance?
All of this in a country where the Tories have only one seat and, despite setting a pie-in-the-sky target of ten, can realistically only expect to win two or three - and where the Scottish Nationalists represent a more potent and immediate threat.
The reason is, of course, that the votes of his ain folk are vital for Gordon Brown to have any chance of clinging to UK power, even in a minority or coalition government. If he is to run Cameron close, his party must deliver at least the same number of seats – 39 - in its traditional heartland and win back some of those they have lost.
Is there a Gordon Brown factor in his homeland? No more than usual; he gets a cordial reception on his limited forays in Scotland (even more so his wife Sarah who has become royalty in the Kingdom of Fife). Brown’s defiant declaration “I am not slick and the honest truth is I don’t really want to be” is seen as characteristically Scottish but he is now regarded as a BRITISH politician.
The scare campaign also reveals truths about Labour – they struggle to provide a distinctive local agenda in post-devolution Scotland; their traditional vote needs to be re-galvanised in an election characterised by disillusion and apathy; their campaign is under-funded, because membership payments have shrunk, and over-stretched because they have half the staff of the last General Election and the smallest number of street activists for 50 years.
The ruse that the election in Scotland is simply a two-party race with the Conservatives (‘keeping the Scottish Tories in their box’ as one national strategist describes it) seems to ignore the inroads that the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists have made in recent years.
In fact, Labour have high hopes of clawing back at least one of two seats the Lib Dems snatched from them. The more promising is East Dunbartonshire, the see-saw seat which Jo Swinson won in 2005 by 4,061 votes mainly because of a hospital closure and an Iraq war backlash which played strongly in the locality but the Lib Dem-led council is unpopular.
They are less confident in Dunfermline and West Fife, once a bastion of left-wing politics with a Labour majority of 11,500, which Willie Rennie won by 1800 votes in the sensational 2006 by-election. Rennie has dug himself in and has been joined by a Lib Dem MSP and eight local councillors.
Despite dismissing the Nats as irrelevant, Labour are mounting some of their most ferocious fights in seats where the SNP are either in situ – particularly Glasgow East where they threw away a solid 11.500 majority through arrogance and contempt for perennially-loyal Labour voters - or where they pose the greatest threat.
Voters may be confused because Labour don’t seem to know which election they are fighting – the current one or next year’s Scottish Parliament poll. More than 20 of the promises in their manifesto cannot be delivered by a Westminster government because health, education and crime are devolved to Edinburgh.
The confusion is deliberate; by establishing themselves in No. 1 position now, they believe that will make them front runners to wrest the Scottish Government back from the Nats in 2011. Murphy justifies the mixed messages in the dual manifesto: “The most important thing is to win this election but we also need to use it to get us in good shape for the Scottish Parliament election.”
Meanwhile, Scottish Tories scoff; “Labour are still fighting the battles of the past because they have nothing new to offer.” But scratching at old wounds revives folk-memories etched deep into the Scottish psyche, where Margaret Thatcher is still a bogey-woman. Her Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth was portrayed on the front page of a national newspaper as the horror icon Freddy Krueger in Nightmare On Elm Street – coincidentally re-made and about to be released in time for the election.
The trick will be in making the connection between then and now, linking older people with a folk memory of the evils of Thatcherism with those who have grown up with Labour in power. There is a suggestion that the older generation should be recruited to talk to the younger: ‘Grannies and Grandads for Gordon”?
17-04-10
WILL GORDON HAVE
SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT?
ONE photograph in the political picture gallery above my desk always causes comment. It shows Prime Minister Gordon Brown LAUGHING!The man with the reputation for being grim, grumpy and bad-tempered is enjoying himself hugely.
Truth is, we’re at a Raith Rovers game and we’re giving the referee a right earful; but it’s the too-rarely-seen side of Brown - relaxed, sociable and good-humoured.
That is the image of the Leader the Labour Party (and his wife Sarah) would like the voters to see, as well as the serious statesman for serious times and the political grown-up among fresh-faced Tory boys.
He was once unkindly described as ‘having the social skills of a whelk’, but I can vouch for the fact that socially he is engaging company, good-humoured and fond of a joke.
An American strategist with experience of presidential elections, who has been called in to advise Labour, told me: “The more voters are exposed to the real Gordon Brown, the better it will be for Labour. People want to know that their leaders are capable, but they’re more comfortable if they’re likeable, understanding and sympathetic – all of which Gordon is.”
Clearly, the Brown personality and the contrast with dashing Dave Cameron will be an issue in the election. Hence the face-to-face encounters, the press-the-flesh forays, Tweets, Twitters and Facebook chats.
That is not natural Brown territory; he is far happier with policy than with courting personal popularity. The fact that he is up for even the most toe-curling exposure shows how determined he is to hang on in No. 10.His greatest problem is that – unlike Tony Blair – he is incapable of faking sincerity. You’d think that would be a plus point but in these days of TV-show personality politics, it’s a major minus.
Another reason for such embarrassments as the emotional striptease on the Piers Morgan TV show is that those closest to him, especially his wife, have been shocked by the blatant personal hatred vented on the Internet and in Middle England – some of which can be put down to anti-Scottishness.
Can the voters, particularly the English, learn to love Gordon? Should he bother to try? Having watched the change in his character since marriage and fatherhood, I have no doubt that the formerly forbidding hard man has softened.
I never thought I’d see him walking hand-in-hand on the big occasions and his delight in his two sons John and Fraser is genuinely touching.But the beetle-browed glower and occasional thunderous eruptions still occur off-camera and the realists in the Labour camp think the dogged and determined Brown is a greater asset than Mr Nice Guy.
His former foe turned cheer-leader, Lord Mandelson, lists Brown’s electoral assets as ‘policy, team and backbone’ but admits: “He has his agenda and priorities and is like a bull-dozer. Woe betide anyone who wants to stand in the way or say no.”
Gordon Brown is also keen to erase the memory of the notorious 2007 election-that-wasn’t and other wobbles that have given the impression of dithering. He describes himself as: “Strong, steadfast and resolute in will. You’ve got to be decisive; you can’t let things slip and I don’t let things slip.”
Brownies are relishing the prospect of the party leaders’ TV confrontations because they believe their man’s authority and experience of 15 years of national office and world statesmanship will show up Cameron and Clegg as inexperienced lightweights.
However, there are other, more personal, reasons than moral fibre and strength of character why Brown will fight tooth and nail until the last vote is cast – his prickly personal pride, for one.
A lesser man would have quit months ago when he was being written off by pollsters and pundits. No Prime Minister has had to tolerate betrayals and back-stabbing on such a scale from leading members of his own out-of-control party seemingly intent on mass suicide yet Brown never contemplated quitting.
He does not want to go down in history as the short-serving Prime Minister who could not get elected, nor go out on a note of failure. Having waited so long and suffered so much frustration waiting for Blair to honour their deal and make way after two terms in office, he wants his achievements to be recognised.
And, yes, there is a sense of mission imbued by the teachings of his Church of Scotland minister father and his background in our hard-hit home town. He once told me of the impression made on a young boy by the procession of hard-luck cases to the kitchen door of the manse: beggars looking for food, mothers of young families with not enough money to last the week, the bereaved and the troubled: “I suppose it's not a bad training for politics.”
Brown also regards himself as someone who has had to struggle through life-events that have had a deep psychological impact: the loss of the sight in one eye and a narrow escape from complete blindness; the death of a baby daughter. So he takes mere political battles in his stride.
First came ‘Operation Fightback’, the matching of Brown as beleaguered but unbending party leader and as the great helmsman steering Britain through the economic storm. Amazingly, the polls narrowed to the point where one over-optimistic headline read ‘Brown on course to win election’ and the Tories have had to launch an onslaught targeting him personally.
Make no mistake. It is not just that battler Brown will not give up without a fight; he really believes he can win. Thebig question is whether Gordon Brown will be laughing after May 6.
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