Before I start here’s the result:
- John Mason (SNP) – 11,277
- Margaret Cuuran (Lab) – 10,912
- Davena Rankin (Cons) – 1,639
- Ian Robertson (LD) – 915
- Frances Curran (SSP) – 555
- Tricia McLeish (Solidarity)- 512
- Dr Eileen Duke (Scottish Greens) – 232
- Chris Creighton (Ind) – 67
- Hamish Howitt (Freedom 4 Choice)- 65
Up until Last night Labour had held the Glasgow East seat (and it’s predecessors) for some 50 years it hardly surprising then that the SNP should be celebrating the 22% swing which delivered the seat to their candidate John Mason by no more than a few hundred votes. That this is a great victory for SNP is beyond question, that the 3rd safest Labour seat in Scotland (26th in the UK) could be lost to the SNP must have die hard Labourites in either a state of panic … or maybe more likely, based on recent history, a state of denial.
I was listening to David Cairns (who I believe was managing the Labour campaign) on Radio Scotland this morning talking about the defeat and that Labour would be ‘listening’ to the electorate – haven’t we heard that before recently? He was attempting to play up what Labour is doing for the hard-pressed consumer by attempting to paint the autumn freeze in fuel duty as a tax cut (what tosh) and also attempting to make the 10p tax band thing sound like anything other than a complete farce … to be honest though, he didn’t really sound like he believed the rhetoric himself. So why should we, the electorate, believe it either.
I don’t think we can hold David Cairns responsible for the loss though, despite the 22% swing, this was never going to be an easy take and the best case scenario was going to be a marginal victory. On the day it didn’t go their way, but why, who was responsible?
Whoever it was Labour is now in absolute free-fall, I know that that has been said before, but it is absolutely beyond doubt now. Labour may have one shot at recovery, but it’s a long shot and it may well be beyond recovery – more of that in a moment though. It’s easy to point to Gordon Brown and say, “it’s him”, but I actually believe that the problem with Labour is far more deep rooted than that, the ‘New Labour’ project has utterly failed and the party is now left flailing somewhere Right of Centre, hemorrhaging the Tory support that they courted back in the beginning of their reign, and discovering that their traditional core vote have realised that they have been betrayed by ‘the peoples party’.
Gordon Brown Defiant
The question now is, can Gordon Brown survive this setback? His statement this morning was predictably defiant promising that there is:
a brighter future that we can build …
And that his party must:
Have confidence that not only do we have the right policies but that when the time comes we will be able to persuade the British people.
This sort of thing is to be expected, as is the inevitable reshuffle predicted to occur following the summer recess in which it is expected that Des Brown, Scottish Secretary, will lose his position. I will also be watching for another Brown to be standing down, one G. Brown, and I would be comfortable to suggest he’ll be gone before Christmas.
If Gordon Brown doesn’t stand down (and possibley even if he does) then we can expect to see a raft of populist and ill conceived policies aimed at minimising Labour losses in the approaching General Election. Ironically, all such actions would do is open them to further attack as the notion that they are prudent in governance is thrown in their collective faces. Yet, this is coming at a time when the Treasury is loosening it’s fiscal rules to allow greater borrowing. Not a good combination in my mind … are we to be paying for the death throws of Labour’s current administration through excessive borrowing aimed at saving a few votes?
A Labour Long-Shot
If Labour is to have any real chance at the next General Election Gordon Brown really must be removed. Further than this though, Labour have to take a punt, and not any punt, a punt on a long-shot.
New Labour have failed … there simply isn’t room for two conservative parties. If Labour are to recover they must do so quickly and they must do so by returning their party to the Left, where it belongs, taking onboard socialist values and applying them to the modern era. Labour’s core strength was always that it was the party of the masses, of the people at large and yet it is these very people who it has abandoned in pursuit of big business and party funding.
I would go further than this though, I would suggest that this all needs to happen at great pace and that immediately on the back of the change a General Election must be called. Further even than that though I would suggest Labour must fight it as if they were an opposition party! They must acknowledge the mistakes of the past and regard them as the actions of another party, maybe their tag line could be:
Don’t blame us, we were hijacked! Vote ‘New Old Labour’ …
Ok, maybe that’s not going to be it, but you get the idea. The Labour Party must be just that, and drop the ‘new’.
Obviously none of this will happen, and it would be a long-shot, but the end of Gordon Brown must be the beginning of a new party for Labour otherwise whatever they do they won’t be able to shake off the chains of Blair and Brown.
Personally, I don’t care, but the notion of another decade of Conservative rule off the back of a decade of ‘Labour branded conservative’ rule terrifies me.
Anyway, congratulations to the SNP on a well deserved victory in Glasgow East, may they build on it for the benefit of all Scots, but not least of all those of Glasgow East who have been so neglected. Maybe the SNP are right, maybe …
… IT’S TIME
Yeah, I’d thought they might just win it, although the cynic in me was doubting the party could get enough votes to beat them. I’d been hedging on a very small win for Labour.
A win for SNP is terrific news, and as we can see the media can smell the blood in the water.
A tory government would be a good thing for Scotland though (Wait! Put down them bricks and gimme a sec before you start the lynching); nothing will concentrate the mind of the average voter to the realities of staying in this flawed and dead Union than the prospect of another 18 years of the Tories. They’ll be far more likely to say “Yes” at the right time if the Tories are in power down in Englandshire.
And of course, there’s not a donkey’s chance in hell of Labour not losing the next election. Especially if the muppets in the westminster camp do kick Gordy out. The pressure for an election soon thereafter will be huge, and they’ll lose, guaranteed.
I can see a hypothetical hung-parliament though, with Labour and the Tories not managing to get a majority and the Liberals not managing to get enough votes to matter except where they can do a deal. At that point the 20 or so MP’s the SNP will have become far more vital; they won’t just be a faction to be ignored where possible and only consulted on close votes. They’ll be an integral asset to whichever party offer the right deal…
It’s a long shot, but a hung parliament is more likely now than for a very good while; re-districting has been massive and could easily result in a whole number of changes.
Not been quite so big here in Scotland though, since the boundaries were changed a coupla years back, so we’re still on course for a nice SNP-yellow stain across that sea of unholy red.
One thing is certain; we are living in interesting times. Opinion is divided on whether that’s a blessing or a curse.
By: Math Campbell on 26 July, 2008
at 7:33 pm
There won’t be a hung parliament. The Tories will take it by a large margin while the Lib Dems have failed to grasp, well they haven’t really grasped much of anything seem to be getting largely forgotten through their own ineptitude … like starting their leadership contest on the same day as the Glasgow East result in announced.
Labour will take a hiding far and wide, in Scotland they will still retain the largest number of seats, although a substantial swing to SNP will narrow the margin. Meanwhile the Tories will turn England Blue and make headway into Scotland.
As an interesting footnote, the only party to have held a true majority of seats in Scotland was the Tories in 1955 … or so I hear – I really must look that one up.
By: Alasdair on 5 August, 2008
at 3:15 pm