Dunfermline & West Fife by-election 2006

'McConnell stands accused of putting his precious coalition with the Liberals before the bare-knuckle war of by-election politics.' Eddie Barnes, Political Editor in Scotland on Sunday, 12 th February 2006.

Brown's fiefdom turns into Kingdom of Strife

By Eddie Barnes, Political Editor in Scotland on Sunday 12 th February 2006

LOSING had been bad enough. But now came the really awful bit. Who was going to tell Gordon Brown? The Chancellor was in London preparing to go to Moscow, for a meeting of G8 finance leaders. He had been on the phone all day demanding to know how the by-election was going. And so it fell to Alex Rowley, Brown's faithful election agent, to put in the call. "We heard it was a one-word text message," said one close confidant.'Lost'."

Brown's fellow finance ministers in Moscow yesterday did not disclose whether they found their Scottish companion in a particularly distracted mood at their meeting. But it can be safely assumed that Brown's mind may have wandered briefly and focused nearer home: on the High Street in Dunfermline, perhaps on the broad smiling features of a previously unknown Lib Dem candidate called Willie; and, probably on an increasingly irritating colleague known as Jack.

Scotland, and in particular Fife, are often referred to as Gordon Brown's "personal fiefdom". Last week, Brown's homeland kingdom came crashing down.

"We got mugged," said one bleary-eyed Labour MP on Friday morning, still coming to terms with Labour's extraordinary defeat. "We simply didn't see it coming."

The truth is few, if anyone, did. By-elections regularly cause upsets for sitting governments. But a by-election in Dunfermline and West Fife, held by Labour just eight months ago with a majority of 11,500, and caused by the tragic death of a well-liked Labour MP, whose neighbouring MP was Gordon Brown, usually does not.

Two days before Thursday night's extraordinary result, in which the Lib Dems over-turned Labour's lead with a massive 16% swing, Labour's campaign headquarters, situated in an empty video shop in Dunfermline was, if not complacent, supremely confident. Labour MPs up campaigning for the day were already versing candidate Catherine Stihler in what she could expect at Westminster the following week. Stihler urged them not to tempt fate, but her caution came more from superstition than anything else.

Labour Party chiefs believed the "wobble" the campaign had experienced over the future of the Forth Road Bridge and the announcement of job cuts at the local Lexmark factory had been overcome. "This is the kind of area where people just assume that they are Labour members, never mind backers," says one activist.

The panic began in earnest on Wednesday as the results of postal votes dribbled through. At the video shop, the two senior Labour figures in charge of the campaign, the Scottish general secretary Lesley Quinn and MP Frank Roy, had run it on the basis that the main threat would come from the SNP. But the returns showed a remarkable swing, not to the SNP, but to the Liberals.

Written off after six weeks of unprecedented turmoil on the national stage which had led to the undignified exit of Charles Kennedy and the lurid revelations of leadership contenders Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes, it seemed the Lib Dems were far from damaged beyond contention.

In retrospect, Labour should have seen it coming. Under the radar, at their own headquarters in Inverkeithing, the Lib Dems were running a sophisticated campaign. A crucial decision had been taken a month ago, when Scottish leader Nicol Stephen decreed that the Liberals would draft in the party's muscle from down south.

Two of the party's most experienced election strategists - Lord Rennard and Paul Ranger, the party's director of campaigns - arrived and detailed maps of where the party would be most likely to make gains were drawn up. They had set up an accommodation bureau to find temporary accommodation for the hundreds of party activists from across the country who were being mobilised.

On the weekend before the election, approximately 450 party members flooded the town. Every single home in the constituency received three separate glossy booklets trumpeting the policies of their man. One SNP MSP shrugged: "Before the weekend, the feeling was that it was coming to us. We were getting a message that people were fed up with Labour. Then something happened and it just shifted. The Liberal vote had taken off."

The professionalism of the Liberal campaign was in marked contrast to what came out of Labour's video shop. "We knew that this was coming for six months and yet we didn't have a campaign headquarters, our maps were out of date and we hadn't spoken to our councillors. It was hopeless," says one Fife member.

Only belatedly did the message begin to get through. On Thursday morning, the Labour-supporting Daily Record reported party officials were worried about the Nats. "That showed that they were worried about us," said one senior Liberal aide. "They were throwing people off the scent."

Rowley was very busy, but it was all too late. "He seemed to spend the whole of polling day on the phone to Gordon Brown, getting glummer all the time," said one activist. By lunchtime, the postal returns were now showing that the Liberals were only six points behind Labour, with the SNP trailing nowhere. An increasingly tense Labour group made their way to the count.

It was clear pretty quickly that a disaster had hit Labour.

Some of the party workers who had been toiling all day, and were still expecting a victory, retired to a nearby pub to enjoy themselves. There was a boisterous atmosphere among the group. Then, at midnight, Scottish TV's live coverage began with reports that the Labour vote had collapsed. "You could have heard a pin drop," said one of the revellers.

In Glasgow, former Labour MP Bill Miller - who was expecting to take up Stihler's place at the European Parliament when she went to Westminster - got the fright of his life.

"I knew something was up when I saw David Cairns [Labour's Scotland Office Minister] on the TV sofa. No disrespect to Davie, but the big guns had obviously left him to explain the mess."

On the podium, as the count was revealed, Stihler was a picture of devastation; she was forced to watch in silence as victorious Lib Dem candidate Rennie took the applause of his jubilant supporters. This being a Lib Dem victory however, there was not the raucous atmosphere of previous Scottish by-election victories such as SNP-snatched Hamilton or Govan. Everyone was still a little stunned. It was left to Rennie to sum up the mood. "This result will rock the foundations of Downing Street - both Number 10 and Number 11."

The hyperbole, for once, was not misplaced - at least for one of those addresses. By Friday morning, Scottish Secretary Alistair Darling was accepting all of the blame. "We copped it," he acknowledged. The defeat, he averred, had been the result of a perfect storm of local events - the factory closure, the future of the Forth Road Bridge and the local hospital and the state of Dunfermline High Street - which had all conspired against the party. Yet within hours of his attempt to put a lid on the loss, the recriminations were beginning.

For some the blame lay with the poor work on the ground. Quinn is in the firing line. "She needs to take the blame. Three weeks ago, she told Jack McConnell and Alistair Darling that the threat was from the Nats. The campaign was totally disorganised," said one of the campaign team. But - this being the Labour Party - the blame game has quickly moved on to more factional territory.

Observers noted that on Friday morning, Jack McConnell declared the defeat had posed many questions for the "Fife Labour Party" to sort out.

"That was short-hand for Gordon Brown," said one Brownie. Allies of McConnell's were blunter - Labour had lost because of Brown's blunderbuss approach. The Chancellor's declaration that the £4 toll on the Forth Road Bridge was "dead in the water" and that a new bridge would be built both led to confusion, after McConnell insisted that neither decision had yet been made.

While McConnell's allies insisted that they were disappointed with the result, it was impossible not to detect a tone of quiet satisfaction too. "He tried to get his tanks on to Jack McConnell's lawn but the voters have taken away the gearbox and he has got stuck in reverse," said one of the First Minister's inner-circle deploying a rather tortuous metaphor.

The recriminations were reciprocated - in spades. For Brown's supporters, it was McConnell who had caused the damage, by not backing up the Chancellor. Brown had cleared his statements with the First Minister, they claim, only for McConnell to then disavow them the moment they were made public. Not only that, but McConnell stands accused of putting his precious coalition with the Liberals before the bare-knuckle war of by-election politics.

One Brownite declared: "There is a strong feeling among people in the campaign that Jack totally f***ed up the campaign. He stopped us being as aggressive as we would have liked to have been. He didn't want us to do anything that was devolved nor damage the coalition."

In truth, few are escaping the blame. Some local members believe sitting MSP Scott Barrie should be deselected for failing to properly deal with local resentment. Bizarrely, perhaps desperately, some blame the fact that Stihler was heavily pregnant. One MSP said: "The real reasons are because the older generation didn't like a female candidate who was pregnant."

Scottish Labour this weekend is angry, wounded, and heavily pre-occupied with its navel. There are now growing calls for a root-and-branch review of its internal workings, so that in future everyone will know who does what and Brown and McConnell are made to get along.

As its troops retreat from Dunfermline, the party presents a sorry sight: divided, conquered and bedraggled. A chill far colder than that felt in Moscow in February now awaits Brown upon his return.