The symbolic contrast in their fortunes will be obvious to anyone who has ever
been involved in the preparation of a celebration bash. So confident is the
Scottish National party of success in next Thursday’s election that it has
already chosen the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh as the venue for its victory
party.
In keeping with its less than smooth-running campaign, Labour’s post-poll
affair is expected to be altogether more low key. Nobody in Team McConnell
wants to be accused of being unable to organise a party in a brewery.
Despite throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign in the past fortnight —
including deploying Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at every conceivable
opportunity and benefiting from a frenzied propaganda campaign by the
tabloid press offering dire warnings of the dangers of separatism — the
much-vaunted Labour breakthrough has failed to materialise.
With just three days of campaigning to go, a poll of 1,872 voters published
this weekend — the biggest of the election
campaign — reveals that the SNP is retaining its commanding lead. If
replicated on Thursday, it would give the nationalists six more seats than
Labour and a guiding hand in the formation of the next coalition government.
“The champagne is definitely on ice,” said one elated nationalist.
Labour continues to insist that everything is still to play for. With 300,000 voters
still undecided, the party could still benefit from a late surge of support.
But while publicly the grin on Jack McConnell’s face remains as big as the
swing needed to turn things round, behind the scenes there is a palpable
sense of defeatism.
A gallows humour has crept into the party’s Scottish headquarters. One senior
policy adviser has recently been joking that they will no longer need their
business cards in a few weeks’ time.
Senior Blairites, already demob happy ahead of the prime minister’s imminent
departure from Number 10, no longer display even the pretence of discretion.
“The best we can hope for is we’ll get the same number of seats as the SNP,”
said one source close to Blair. “If we get that, McConnell will be hailed a
hero and paraded throughout Scotland.”
In previous contests, big hitters such as Blair and Brown were used sparingly
and strategically, parachuted into key marginals to keep wavering voters on
side. But this time around the pair have been spending their time in what
would ordinarily have been safe Labour seats, trying to shore up Labour’s
core vote to avoid a landslide.
Blair visited what should be safe Labour territory in Glasgow Rutherglen and Kilmarnock,
while Brown has been to the Clyde shipyards in Glasgow Kelvin. McConnell has
been twice to the mining villages of Midlothian in support of his
beleaguered communities minister, Rhona Brankin.
When Salmond visited the constituency a week ago, he was stunned by the
positive reaction he received in Dalkeith, reckoning that if seats like that
were in play his odds on becoming first minister ought to be shortening by
the hour.
“There’s no doubt about it, people are wanting to give Labour a kicking. We
have canvassers picking up a 5% swing to the SNP, even in strong Labour
areas,” said one senior Labour figure. “The anti-
Labour vote is coalescing around the SNP. People don’t believe the scare
stories or that it will lead to independence.
“On top of that, this is the sixth time since 1997 that we have asked people
to vote Labour in a national election. When you think about it that way, you
realise how difficult it is.
“Every time that Blair and Brown come to Scotland they’re in the heartlands,
which tells its own story. We have never had so many big hitters coming to
west and central Scotland for an election.”
McConnell’s days as Labour leader look numbered, and Downing Street insiders
expect a leadership challenge unless he quits after polling day.
“He’s been a dead man walking for quite some time,” said one senior Labour
figure. “He either loses the election or he almost loses the election.
Either way, he’s on his way out.”
One Labour minister at Holyrood predicts Brown will metaphorically
“assassinate” McConnell on Friday.
While most Labour MSPs continue to scramble after votes, others have been
sidetracked by the question of McConnell’s succession.
“The campaign has clearly been a shambles. There’s no sense of direction in
the government of Scotland and therefore the campaign has no sense of
direction.
“Being against the nationalists and independence is not much of a crusading
slogan,” said one senior party figure.
“Jack is simply out of his depth. He was a very able student politician, but
he’s never really moved on from that. Student politics is all about
short-term positions, manoeuvring and having wee alliances without
necessarily having a clear idea of what you want to do when you get there.
There’s a feeling he was a car crash waiting to happen, and now we want to
see what we can rescue from the wreckage.”
Some observers believe that McConnell has not been properly focused on the job
at hand for some time. He has already dropped hints in interviews about what
he might like to do after life at Bute House — a return to teaching,
perhaps, or voluntary work.
On this weekend’s polling evidence, the most likely contenders to replace him
as the party leader, health minister Andy Kerr and former enterprise
minister Wendy Alexander, would be marooned outside parliament on May 4,
losing their seats of East Kilbride and Paisley North seats respectively to
the SNP.
That could leave Margaret Curran, the current minister for parliamentary
business, and Tom McCabe, the finance minister, feeling obliged to scrap for
a post that neither of them particularly seems to want.
It may then be left to Iain Gray, the former enterprise minister who lost his
Edinburgh Pentlands seat to the Tories in 2003, and is now set to re-enter
Holyrood via East Lothian, to play the role of the king across the water and
try to revive a Labour group in the doldrums.
Another possibility is that McConnell is asked to stay on by Brown for a few
more months — perhaps to allow time for Gray to reacclimatise.
“It depends on the election result,” said a Labour MP. “If we do badly and he
doesn’t fall on his sword, the sword will be
falling on him. If we muddle through, he will have some time, depending on
when Brown is ready with a successor.”
Another MP added: “Brown is the most strategic politician in the country. He
does not do anything that affects his own plan. If it suits his plans for
Jack to stay, then Jack will stay.”
One popular theory in Labour circles is that a wounded McConnell could stay on
until the end of the year, by which time Glasgow will know if it has won its
bid to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Success would allow McConnell to go out on a relative high.
By then his nemesis is likely to have enjoyed six months of governing with
Nicol Stephen, the Lib Dem leader with whom he has been playing footsie for
the past few weeks of the campaign.
The northeast of Scotland has a limited and well-worn social circuit its
aspiring politicians must tramp.
As the MP for Banff and Buchan and MSP for Aberdeen South respectively, Salmond
and Stephen have frequently crossed paths at Scottish Oil Club soirées or
watching tennis at the Aberdeen Cup, where Andy Murray is a regular.
Salmond also saw Stephen up close at the start of his political career, when
the Lib Dem spent a fleeting 154 days as MP for Kincardine and Deeside after
winning a by-election in 1991. Eight years later the two were facing each
other across the chamber at the outset of the Scottish parliament.
In spite of their frequent encounters, there had never been much desire by
either man to get to know the other.
In recent weeks however, there has been a political imperative to do so, and
the two have entered into an elaborate courtship, in which Salmond has
played the ardent suitor and Stephen has done a valiant impression of being
hard to get.
Both parties know that any formal talks on a coalition in advance of the
election, however tentative, would lead to
public anger and accusations from Labour of a stitch-up and taking the voters
for granted. There is also their mutual reluctance to make the initial
approach, knowing that to do so could play into their opponent’s hands, and
the information could be used against them during the campaign.
So instead the SNP and Lib Dems have been forced to circle one another,
looking for clues about each other’s intentions, hoping to waltz in
ever closer circles towards polling day.
A key moment in the dance came in February, when both leaders appeared on
BBC1’s Question Time programme, broadcast from Heriot-Watt University’s
Riccarton Campus in Edinburgh.
Away from the cameras it was notable for a post-recording dinner hosted by the
show’s chair, David Dimbleby.
As Salmond and Stephen sat opposite each other in a makeshift “green room”, eating
steak, Dimbleby teased them about the prospects of them forming a coalition.
“The body language was very positive,” said one of Salmond’s aides. “After
that we knew Nicol was someone we could work with.”
Six weeks later, Salmond and Stephen were brought together again for the Sunday
Times/Sky News debate, the first TV hustings of the election featuring all
four main party leaders.
McConnell made most of the headlines by saying he was ready for Labour to govern
as a minority administration if it emerged the largest party. To Stephen,
the idea came out of the blue.
The next day, at another TV debate, Salmond asked the Lib Dem leader if he had
known what McConnell would say.
“No,” he replied firmly.
It was clear to Salmond that the two coalition partners had drifted. If Labour
was ready to drop the Lib Dems, he would ensure the SNP was ready to pick
them up instead. To make the point, Salmond stressed during the debate that
the SNP would much prefer working in a coalition to any other form of
government.
The signal was not lost on the Lib Dem leader and ever since the pair have
lobbed one another occasional tidbits in front of the cameras to maintain
the relationship.
Another arm of Salmond’s strategy has been his attempt to present himself as reasonableness
personified. Those who know him, know he is nothing of the sort. He is a
tough taskmaster, with little patience for those not on side.
Yet time and again through the campaign he has signalled his willingness to
compromise, wooing the Lib Dems, shifting his position whenever he believes
it is what the object of his desire wants to hear. He has even offered
movement on the
timing and phrasing of a referendum on independence, the sine qua non of any
SNP adminsitration. The 2010 date floated a few weeks ago is now merely a
target, while the original Yes/No question could be replaced by multiple
options.
In recent days he has also made clear a referendum could only be held once in
a generation, responding to earlier Lib Dem suggestions that the SNP would
return to the question in successive parliaments, creating a Quebec-style
“neverendum”.
By bobbing and bending this way on the campaign trail, Salmond hopes to onvince
the Lib Dems that he is ready to be equally flexible in government, hoping
they will respond in kind and find a way to fudge their rigid opposition to
a referendum. So far, Stephen has gone part of the way to meet him.
This weekend the Lib Dem leader has made clear he will enter coalition talks
first with whichever party has the most MSPs and therefore the “moral
authority” to attempt to form an administration. It is a courtesy that
Labour figures furiously point out does not apply in other European
countries with proportional representation, where mosaic coalitions of the
smaller parties often exclude the largest.
Stephen’s comments are a marked shift from the public position of Sir Menzies
Campbell, the UK Lib Dem leader, who said only last week there could be no
question of talks unless the SNP put independence “out of sight”.
Instead, Stephen and his team seem intent on screwing the best deal possible
out of Salmond, knowing that the SNP leader is desperate for power.
If talks with the SNP break down, Stephen has said he would rather go into
opposition than prop up a failing Labour party, giving the nationalists a
second chance to try to form a rainbow coalition with the Greens and
independents, or to govern as a minority administration.
However, even if Salmond manages to broker a deal that gets him into power, he
still faces a huge threat from within his own party. If he cannot deliver
some form of referendum which mentions independence, in whatever guise, his
party could revolt and fall apart and take the government down with it.
It is the nightmare scenario for him — achieving what no other SNP leader has
done in the party’s 73-year history, only to see power slip away as a result
of the internal strife and factionalism he hoped he had laid to rest.
Winning power will buy him some respite from his party, but not for long, as
separatism moves to the fore. After the honeymoon, his activists will want
to see a swift divorce from the UK.
In the coming days, all the parties will bludgeon voters with a final deluge
of leaflets, phone calls and door-knocks.
Yesterday Alex Salmond embarked on a US presidential-style whistle-stop tour
of 20-plus target seats by helicopter, including Cumbernauld, Stirling,
Renfrew, Paisley, Livingston, Linlithgow and Falkirk.
McConnell, rather bizarrely for the final weekend, headed for the ultra-safe
seat of Hamilton South. But even there he ran into trouble, barracked by a
man incensed about council tax. When an SNP activist began to heckle, Tom
McCabe, the finance minister, turned on him and appeared to lash out with a
fist. A minder grabbed McCabe’s hands and led him away.
Labour, who have been claiming that almost every weekend since January has
been a turning point in the campaign, can only hope this one finally is, as
they wheel out Blair and Brown for one last time — although
as former first minister Henry McLeish admits today, at least one of that pair
is now a liability. For Labour, the birth of a devolved nation is proving a
horribly messy business.
Make your mark
THE Single Transferable Vote system (STV) makes its debut at this year’s
elections on May 3. Voters will be given two ballot papers to vote in the
Scottish parliament and local authority elections.
You use the coloured ballot paper to vote for the Scottish parliament, marking
an X in each column.
Voters get two votes with this paper. The left side of the paper is
peach-coloured. The right side is lilac. The peach side is where you choose
your regional MSPs. The lilac side is where you will choose your
constituency, or local, MSPs.
Place your first X against the party you want to provide your regional MSPs.
Then place another X against the candidate you want to be your constituency
MSP.
On the white ballot paper for the council — use numbers not Xs in the new STV
system.
Number the candidates in order of choice. Mark your first choice as 1, second
choice as 2, third as 3, and so on. The more preferences you state, the more
impact your voting is likely to have.
You can mark as many or as few as you like — but you cannot use a cross. Every
vote in the STV system counts, so if there is a candidate you do not want to
be elected you should not rank that candidate at all.
Scare tactics fail to dent SNP
A MONTH’S onslaught by Labour’s big guns on the SNP’s economic plans has
weakened support for independence but failed to narrow the nationalists’
lead in the polls, writes Jason Allardyce.
Scots expect to be worse off and pay more taxes if Scotland goes its own way,
but most are evidently reassured that they will get another vote on the
union in a referendum should Alex Salmond become first minister after
Thursday.
The scare tactics that worked in 1999 and 2003 now look out of date, with
Labour realising only in the past few days that it might be better to focus
on challenging Salmond’s suitability for office rather than on a
constitutional battle that voters believe is for another day.
The Sunday Times poll of polls, based on the average of the five most recent
polls, including an Economic and Social Research Council “super poll” of
nearly 2,000 voters published today, shows the SNP with a seven point lead
in the constituency vote on 38%. Labour is on 31%, the Lib Dems on 15%,
Tories on 12% and others on 5%. In the regional vote the SNP is on 34%,
Labour on 29%, Lib Dems and Tories on 12%, the Greens on 7% and others on 6%.
A late surge in support for the Greens, whose inroads took observers by
surprise in 2003, could deny the SNP and the Lib Dems a working majority.
The coalition partners, assuming they could strike a deal, would have 48 and
17 seats respectively on this rating, a majority of just one. If the SNP
loses any more of its regional vote support to the Greens — predicted by our
poll of polls to win seven seats — the nationalists would almost certainly
have to include them in a rainbow coalition.
If the polls are right, Labour will finish on 43 seats, 13 less than it won at
the first Holyrood election and down seven from the last contest in 2003,
making Jack McConnell’s position all but untenable.
