 | 'A 22.5% swing to the SNP, on a turnout far higher than Labour hoped, was no protest vote. It was, instead, the demonstration of a clear preference, of a belief in an alternative, and hard evidence that this Glasgow electorate - that's "Glasgow electorate", remember - is now comfortable with the Nationalist party. Labour has lost the ability to make these voters afraid of the SNP.' Ian Bell, in the Herald, 23 rd July 2008. |  |
It happens one event at a time. First there are a few tremors, unnoticed or ignored. Then the dirt begins to slide, the pebbles begin to roll. Nothing to worry about. But as the boulders tumble and the rocks crash, the eternally complacent may be allowed an instant in which to notice that this time, finally, the catastrophe might just be definitive.
Alex Salmond predicted a political earthquake in Glasgow East and you could not fairly say he exaggerated, even slightly. You could call on history and remember that famous SNP by-election victories tend to lead nowhere much. Even now, conventional wisdom - rejected by Mr Salmond - says that John Mason will lose his seat come a General Election, when the fight for Westminster power will be, as ever, between Labour and Tory. For all that, this is different.
A 22.5% swing to the SNP, on a turnout far higher than Labour hoped, was no protest vote. It was, instead, the demonstration of a clear preference, of a belief in an alternative, and hard evidence that this Glasgow electorate - that's "Glasgow electorate", remember - is now comfortable with the Nationalist party. Labour has lost the ability to make these voters afraid of the SNP.
That is why, paradoxically, "independence was not an issue" in Glasgow East. Of course it was not. Some commentators have been reassuring themselves over the absence of the constitutional argument, but they misunderstand Mr Salmond's tactics, never mind his strategy. He seeks trust above all. He seeks the kind of trust that will one day persuade Scotland to select independence because the party it trusts most says independence would be the best choice.
After Glasgow East, Mr Salmond is far closer to his goal than most of his rivals are able or willing to realise. Unionists should bin those comforting polls on "separatism", and bin them soon. Why else were the Nationalists so quick to argue that Mr Mason's victory was an endorsement of SNP government in a straight fight with "London Labour"? The Tories cannot preserve the Union - David Cameron might not even want to try too hard - and nor can the Liberal Democrats. Only Labour, the old hegemony, had the power.
Until now.
The boulders began to roll in May of last year, with the Scottish elections. On the graph of political fortunes, the rising line of the SNP crossed the falling, plummeting, Labour line. What was revealed was the absolute decline of the party of Hardie, Wheatley, Maxton, Dollan, Johnston and the rest. Labour was moribund. Its organisational roots, where they still survived, were shrivelled. It had lacked confidence while in government. In defeat, it was traumatised, as though the laws of nature had been overturned.
After a farcical start, it managed to find a better-than-usual by-election candidate in Margaret Curran. It had, if truth be told, a decent enough story to tell in Glasgow East. Contrary to the London media stereotype, it did not have to spend much time defending Gordon Brown to the locals. It merely had to explain what it, as a movement, was for.
In hard economic times, what was the purpose of a party born in hard times? Simple question, but the job was beyond Labour. After 11 years in power in Westminster, and almost as long in Scotland, it was going through the motions robotically.
Hindsight will shortly say that Labour's fate in Scotland has been a taste of what awaits its English counterpart. For Mr Brown, Glasgow East is not just the beginning of the end. That point has long gone. Even as we watch, he is being swept away, bewildered, flailing. And all that "leadership speculation" so beloved of the Westminster bubble is entirely beside the point.
There is no plausible successor. Imagine that: after 11 years, the Labour Party cannot point to a single obvious commanding heir. The younger individuals who attract media speculation are largely untried, unlikely to desire the poisoned chalice and probably unwilling to face the instant General Election that public opinion would demand. Besides, New Labour is beyond saving, next year or in 2010. Glasgow East destroyed all doubts on that score.
So Mr Brown will remain, wounded fatally but "getting on with the job", "listening", "learning", but finished. He has the demeanour, in fact, of a man destroyed from within, much like the New Labour project itself. No amount of guff about political convention will conceal the fact that neither he nor his Chancellor dared to show face in Glasgow during the by-election campaign. They were liabilities.
What was the burden of Labour's efforts, after all? The world, that tough place, just got tougher, and we're very sorry about it. Nothing more. Nothing to say while the SNP discoursed on the subject of oil, and the profits flowing from that commodity. No answer, either, at least in any real sense, while Mr Salmond said all the easy (if true) things about the management of economic demand.
Labour's fate has been written on Mr Brown's face for months. Was it only last year that party and country alike waited expectantly for the pent-up energies of a decade to be unleashed? Ideas, such as they have been, have proved trivial or catastrophic. Meanwhile, the fruits of the work of the 10-year Chancellor - the credit and housing booms not least - have been blasted by the perfect global storm.
I thought New Labour was a crock long before 1997. Which is to say incoherent. Which is to say little more than redundant managerialism, fancy book-keeping, equivocation, punitive moralising, ethical relativism - and advertising. The hunt for Mr Brown's fabled fatal flaw goes on, no doubt, but a single truth is that he severed himself from all the political forces that shaped him. It turns out that he has found nothing, nothing of substance, to take their place.
So Mr Salmond enjoys his moment, and loftily instructs Mr Brown to "change policies or change jobs". There are several SNP policies, important ones, yet to be tested according to that particular criterion. For now, a single by-election gives us a glimpse of a possible, even likely, political future. South of the border, meanwhile, Mr Cameron cannot believe his unearned luck.
The old idea that each generation throws up a natural party of government does not bear the closest examination. Nevertheless, Mr Salmond and Mr Cameron would both have us believe that such a moment has arrived. Labour folk will mock the appearance of a Nationalist and a Tory in the same sentence. Is there a difference, they will ask, between a community of interest and a conspiracy? But Labour, in Edinburgh and in London, has no answer to those twin challenges.
That was the "message" of Glasgow East. The belief that Mr Brown still has a couple of years in which to claw his way back from a position history says is untenable is sheer wishful thinking. Neither inflation nor prices will fall by much, if at all, this year. Recession - 0.2% "growth" is a chimera - is upon us. Meanwhile, the wars and all those grandiose defence projects go on.
The Scottish citadel is rubble. The leader broods, but does not rise. Scotland grows daily more accustomed to the SNP. Labour is done. And the ground continues to shake.
Return to home page