 | 'The Chancellor must also face the complaints of the rest of Labour's political elite. His ability to carry the country is now in question. What, they demand, is the Chancellor going to do about it?' Eddie Barnes, Political Editor in Scotland on Sunday, 12 th February 2006. |  |
THE irony that Gordon Brown's own MP is now a Lib Dem has not been lost on political pundits. Willie Rennie's remarkable win in Dunfermline and West Fife was not just an encroachment into the Chancellor's kingdom, it took the fight into his very back yard.
Moreover, it could have dealt a serious blow to Brown's long-term plan to secure the succession when Tony Blair finally stands down as Prime Minister - a plan which has seen him try to tackle his perceived weaknesses by taking on global issues, wrapping himself in the Union Jack and even showing his cuddlier, paternal side in numerous newspaper articles.
He will get his first serious assessment of the damage caused by the by-election tomorrow at 4pm, when he attends a long-arranged meeting in Westminster with his fellow Scottish Labour MPs.
It was all supposed to be so different: the original plan was to use the meeting for Brown the benefactor to welcome his new charge to the group, Labour's candidate on Thursday, Catherine Stihler. Instead, Stihler this week is getting ready to go back to her old job as an MEP in Brussels.
Brown, meanwhile, will face complaints about the way the campaign was handled - from accusations of "abysmal" organisation on the ground, to the involvement, or lack of it, of Jack McConnell. Enough Scottish MPs have majorities of much less than that wiped out in Dunfermline and Fife West to ensure a rough ride for Brown, though his dominance of the group will see him through.
Away from the meeting, however, the Chancellor must also face the complaints of the rest of Labour's political elite. His ability to carry the country is now in question. What, they demand, is the Chancellor going to do about it?
Brown's allies were playing down the significance of the Dunfermline result yesterday. "This was another Leicester South," said one minister, referring to the remarkably similar by-election in 2004, when the Lib Dems overturned a Labour majority of 13,000. "And we won that back a year later."
All blame is being focused on the mechanics of the defeat, rather than the politics: it was the formidable Liberal by-election hit squad that won it, say the Brownies, combined with Labour's piecemeal campaigning style - for which Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Scotland and likely Chancellor in a Brown Cabinet, was quick to take the blame on Friday.
In contrast, Brown has himself been notably quiet on the result, though for anyone who has worked with him over the past eight years this will have come as little surprise. Having, as he sees it, become one of the most successful Chancellors in the history of British politics, where is the need for him to suddenly change his style on the back of one unsuccessful result, which he wasn't even in charge of running?
This could be playing straight into the hands of Brown's opponents, both within and without his party.
The victors in Dunfermline are in no doubt that the Chancellor's various promises and declarations on devolved policy matters offered them a perfect opportunity to portray division in the Labour ranks. "It was disbelief," said one senior Lib Dem, summing up the party's reaction to the Chancellor's interventions during the by-election. The Tories, too, were ecstatic; it confirmed to them that David Cameron's phrase that Brown is "the great Complicator" might just stick.
The other parties' happiness with Brown's performance was noted at Westminster and at Labour's spring conference in Blackpool this weekend. There, along with the usual gossip about when Tony Blair will finally leave office, the old talk of whether Brown really will be the right man to take over returned to the fore.
One insider said: "People are beginning to wonder if, in two years time, there might not be someone ready to come forward to challenge him. Look at how Cameron just came through unexpectedly?"
Brown's team insist their man knew he'd face a backlash after Thursday and that he will not panic. They say he has urged allies not to respond by seeking to push the blame elsewhere, such as towards McConnell. He knows, in other words, that while his position may have been weakened this week, it is not yet been truly threatened, and the truth is that it will take a lot more than one poor by-election result to alter the behaviour, or the career trajectory, of Gordon Brown.
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