 | 'The debacle of choosing a candidate may have brought them their best chance of victory (how much worse would it have been without Margaret Curran?), but it exposed the lack of Labour talent coming through the ranks.' Douglas Fraser, Scottish Political Editor in the Herald, 23 rd July 2008. |  |
Margaret Curran, Labour's candidate in the Glasgow East by-election, said that she would be on the phone to Downing Street as a new MP to give them an earful of voters' opinions.
After her defeat, they need to listen all the more carefully. The message they think they're hearing is about fuel, food or mortgage costs, avoiding the possibility Labour has reached a point where voters have had enough of them and just want change.
The pressing question for Gordon Brown is how he can secure middle England if he can't even win in his own back yard. But this by-election lacked the strong dislike of the Prime Minister noted in recent English by-elections. It was at least as much the Labour brand that lost Glasgow East, and the challenge is to Scottish Labour as well.
If 200 votes had gone the other way, the story would be different this weekend, but not that different. A 22% swing on a localised campaign tells Labour that something is badly wrong close to home. Even when it pulls out all the stops, its campaign machine is not good enough. Apply that to the other seats it thought were safe, and it has no organisational advantage over any of its rivals.
Its web of local councillors is weakened through voting reform. And it is demoralising for activists to have to defend the unpopular parts of an 11-year government record.
As demonstrated in last year's Holyrood election, only where Labour recognises its vulnerability and responds can it see off the SNP challenge. In that election, it won some of the hardest-fought contests, while losing those given lower priority.
The debacle of choosing a candidate may have brought them their best chance of victory (how much worse would it have been without Margaret Curran?), but it exposed the lack of Labour talent coming through the ranks.
And if the organisation is troubled, the political positioning is little better. Labour avoided its familiar spats between Westminster and Holyrood. But the perception persists of being divided, and that will surely be part of the leadership campaign to replace Wendy Alexander, over the next two months.
Labour's approach to new devolved powers is bound to be a factor in that race, particularly after Ms Alexander's "bring it on" referendum call, and it needs to find a new way of combating the SNP's independence message.
Candidates also need to find ways to reconnect with voters rather than merely talking about doing so.
An emerging pattern of what is going wrong for Labour is that it seems to be losing the broad, middle class support, and failing to appeal to a new generation moving up the housing, earnings or social scale, while weakening their traditional voters.
Glasgow Council leader Stephen Purcell has pinpointed the need to send out a more hopeful message. Even in economic bad times, being more positive about the voters' future could be one route to a more positive future for Labour, too.
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