The Glenrothes By-election 2008

'Mr Brown has never liked going into any election without being absolutely sure of the outcome. That's been true whether it has been for his proxy candidates in Scottish leadership contests or last November, when he ducked the chance to go the country because the key marginals looked like going blue. Now he looks as if he has over-calculated again. Hypothecating - dithering - on whether to go long or short on the Glenrothes by-election has cost Labour six weeks on the ground in the constituency and struck fear and doubt in the party's own campaign team.' Torcuil Crichton, Chief UK political correspondent in the Herald, 15 th September 2008.

MPs will keep Brown concerns private ... until after Glenrothes

By Torcuil Crichton, Chief UK political correspondent in the Herald, 15 th September 2008

The game is afoot and Scotland, again, has become the hinge on which the British political scene will swing. It has become apparent to all sides in the Labour Party that whether Gordon Brown survives as leader depends almost entirely on the outcome of the Glenrothes by-election.

While this weekend's "Monty Python coup" was being played out on the airwaves - with over a dozen Labour back benchers and former ministers demanding the right to nominate who exactly? - most of the parliamentary Labour Party kept quiet and watched developments.

The majority of silent MPs do not have their head in the sands of denial. They know that their prospects with Gordon Brown are close on terminal. The problem, the so-called non-plotters discovered, is that most Labour MPs share their sentiments but not their suicide blonde ambitions in going public.

The Lancashire Mafia centred on George Howarth, a long-time friend of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, hope to have more joining their ranks in the coming days in demanding a leadership election. But one big obstacle to their recruiting sergeants comes in the shape of the Glenrothes by-election.

Most MPs contacted were holding back, not just to see how the game would play out and how the Prime Minister will fare at the party conference. The weather eye of seasoned Labour politicians and the press is on Brown's next big electoral test - Glenrothes.

Instinctively, Scottish Labour MPs in particular do not want to damage the party's chances against the SNP. Most of them accept, though, that if Mr Brown loses again in his own back yard, and you can't get closer to his Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat than Glenrothes, that will be the final signal for senior cabinet figures to knock on the Prime Minister's door and drag him by his shorn fingernails out of Downing Street.

Tactically the anti-Brown faction feels it cannot wait that long.

That said, a briefing from the top of Scottish Labour pulled no punches. The words were despairing but can be boiled down to two sentences: "Despite all the importance of this (by-election) the leadership of the party has still to make a decision. It tells you everything you need to know about where we are as a party."br>
Let's face it, Mr Brown has never liked going into any election without being absolutely sure of the outcome. That's been true whether it has been for his proxy candidates in Scottish leadership contests or last November, when he ducked the chance to go the country because the key marginals looked like going blue.

Now he looks as if he has over-calculated again. Hypothecating - dithering - on whether to go long or short on the Glenrothes by-election has cost Labour six weeks on the ground in the constituency and struck fear and doubt in the party's own campaign team.

The paralysis at the top of the party has had a corrosive effect on morale. How deep the malaise reaches will be apparent when Labour's National Executive Committee meets tomorrow to discuss whether to send nomination forms out to all MPs. If Mr Brown cannot hold a line there, he is in serious trouble in Manchester and will limp into Westminster in October where his first task will be to serve the writ for Glenrothes. He could be signing his political death warrant.

At the LibDem conference yesterday, Tavish Scott compared the Labour Party with a burning Shetland longboat in an echo of Viking sea burial. It was a colourful and appropriate metaphor for a Shetlander, but this is no boat on fire. With some senior Labour politicians conceding defeat in Glenrothes without a shot being fired in the official campaign it is the ocean that is aflame.