Ayr by-election Result 16 th March 2000

'It was by common consent a good night for the SNP. Labour MPs and MSPs with smaller majorities and the SNP in second place will be concerned.'
Iain Martin and Lorna Hill in Scotland on Sunday, 19 th March 2000.

Is time running out for Labour?

After Ayr, Donald Dewar and John Reid have no choice but to pull together before the UK election

By Iain Martin and Lorna Hill in Scotland on Sunday

'WHEN Donald Dewar and John Reid both turn up to explain that really there is no problem you can be sure of one thing – there is a problem," remarked a Nationalist sage.

The sight of the pair appearing in Ayr on Friday morning to survey the by-election wreckage would have been almost unthinkable last summer when they were famously engaged in a damaging series of turf wars over who was the most important Labour politician in Scotland. But the unlikely double act were in Ayr principally because they had to be. So serious has the Scottish situation become in the run-in to the next UK general election – expected late next spring – that they have both decided they can no longer allow the perception of division between Scottish Labour at Westminster and the party in the Scottish parliament to dominate.

Their appearance with losing candidate Rita Miller was important because, according to senior Labour figures, it is an indication of how the pair plan to proceed. "We had a slogan in the election last year which went ‘Stronger together, weaker apart’. Then it was about the SNP, but you might say that certain people have realised it’s true for us as well. We all sink or swim together and voters don’t see the difference between Labour at Holyrood and London. It’s just Labour. We can’t fight each other any more."

But can the talk in Labour circles of a new partnership between the pair really hold? What is under way this weekend is a substantial rethink of Labour’s approach in Scotland. The dilapidated state of the party machine is being queried by MSPs and MPs and solutions are being demanded.

The wreckage in Ayr itself was considerable enough. The party’s vote was down 16% on last May and 26.3% down on May 1, 1997, when the party won the Westminster version of the seat. Months of poor publicity and continual criticism of Dewar’s Scottish Executive had taken their toll on a party which appeared to have failed to spot the dangerous electoral impact of becoming caught up in a cycle of infighting and feuding.

The reasons for the Labour defeat were clear, according to the Brian Souter-funded Keep the Clause campaign and some commentators. It was controversy over the proposed repeal of the law which prohibits the promotion of homosexuality in schools which cost Labour votes. Their claims could be caricatured as: "It was the clause wot won it," but it was an interpretation with which Tory and SNP strategists disagreed.

At the count on Thursday night, SNP leader Alex Salmond said the Labour defeat had been caused by what one of his own team termed the "chaos factor". The theory dictates that Labour has embroiled itself in infighting and failed to concentrate on solid, core issues which voters care about. There is, runs the theory, a widely held view that the Executive has not run its affairs with the competence the voters expected. Typically, Salmond has a more folksy way of putting it. He calls it: "The Scunner Factor."

THE Tories also offered anecdotal evidence that many voters actually felt ‘scunnered’ over the performance of the parliament as an institution. One Tory MSP said: "They just think that MSPs are at it. Most of what they see on TV is rowing about things that don’t matter to an ordinary family. We’ve benefited from that, but Section 28 was not the main issue at stake. It’s bigger than that."

On Thursday night the Labour campaign was infected with an understandable gloom. When just after midnight Andy Kerr MSP glanced at his watch he must have realised the significance of the new day. He was, he admitted glumly, just a few minutes into his 38th birthday. By-election humiliation cannot have been the best birthday present he has ever received.

Indeed Kerr, Labour’s campaign organiser, and his colleagues were in a far from celebratory mood. They awaited the results of the by-election in a sports hall filled with the opposition parties, journalists and TV cameras ready to record their reaction, but they already knew they had gone down in third place.

Claims by Labour that the SNP’s second place was a poor result for the Nationalists were dismissed by observers as quickly as SNP claims that it was really a cunning Nationalist victory – so great had been the swing to them. It was by common consent a good night for the SNP. Labour MPs and MSPs with smaller majorities and the SNP in second place will be concerned.

As the ballot papers were counted it was becoming increasingly obvious that the fears Labour’s campaign bosses had privately shared with MSP colleagues were coming true.

As Salmond glided around the hall the Labour team could not even draw comfort from their leader . Instead of Dewar, the health minister Susan Deacon had been dispatched to the count with a smattering of MPs. When the returning officer called the candidates to the stage and announced the results, one activist simply shook his head before announcing to nobody in particular: "I’m off." He left the hall in disgust as others looked on bewildered.

So accustomed to success has the party become in recent years that it appeared for a while that activists did not have the emotional equipment to deal with serious defeat.

Labour MP George Foulkes was on hand to explain what had gone wrong and told reporters the defeat was partly due to the Keep the Clause campaign. "We tried to get our message over but there was a constant fog caused by the Brian Souter campaign."

As MSPs and party insiders are pointing out this weekend, the gloom will have to lift pretty soon if further setbacks are to be avoided.

Aside from Section 28, Labour analysts face the daunting reality after the result that the party’s vote in Ayr disappeared on two fronts. The complaints of core Labour voters over claims that the party has not done enough for pensioners or the underprivileged was costly. But at the same time, Scottish New Labour ‘switchers’, or swing voters may now be discontented about the performance of the Executive. It is a combination that will be studied with care in Millbank, Labour’s London headquarters.

But both Reid and Dewar are determined to see to the gloom lifted, according to senior party figures. The real impact of Ayr, according to allies of Reid, is that it will convince backbenchers who have recently been critical to throw their weight behind the two men.

"We have to unite, there’s an election coming. Neither of the two groups can do it alone. John and Donald have both known that for some time, hopefully other people will now get the message. There has to be a recognition that we are all wearing the same jerseys."

First on Reid’s list is a boost to the party organisation. The widely respected professional team under John Rafferty which ran Labour’s last campaign cannot be reassembled because a number of principal players have departed the Labour family.

There is still no indication of who will fill the shoes of special adviser Philip Chalmers, who quit the Executive in disgrace. It had been expected he would take his polling and presentational expertise into party headquarters at Delta House in Glasgow and his absence has left a void that has heightened significance because of the Ayr defeat. From next week he will also summon rebellious MPs to remind them of the cost of division and attempt to persuade them to join in with the preparations for the general election campaign.

Reid’s allies are also confident that First Minister and Secretary of State will now undertake far more joint initiatives and public appearances. Some MSPs are also hopeful that Thursday’s by-election will mean an end to the tensions between the two groups.

One MP was quite clear: "We’re all Labour. There is no another option to closer working ties with an election and that is what you’ll see because we have to."

Before that though, there are bound to be further difficulties, as certain MPs have indicated that they blame Dewar and Labour in the Scottish parliament for the general election threat posed to their seats.

Despite the claims of unity there was strong criticism of Reid from several senior Labour figures in the Scottish parliament. "If people like John Reid want to behave the way they have towards Donald and the Scottish parliament, then this is what happens. It was said that John Reid was running the by-election but he doesn’t seem have made a difference. His people are always saying they are the experts. When are we going to see some examples of their expertise?"

And then there is Dewar. At his Friday appearance with Reid, some observers thought that Dewar seemed far more willing to listen to the complaints of those who had deserted the party. Reid largely blamed the media, and said that the public are not getting the message.

So well documented have the difficulties of his administration been in recent months that even internal critics were weary of cataloguing them again.

Instead there is to be a new emphasis this week on policy questions after Tuesday. A string of announcements is planned to cash in on Chancellor Gordon Brown’s Budget and Dewar is to make a series of key speeches on the direction his administration.

More thoughtful Labour backbenchers say they hope that Ayr has concentrated the mind. But the general election is now only around a year away.

Time is, both Dewar and Reid must surely recognise, short and getting shorter.

March 19 th 2000

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