 | 'If relations between McConnell and Stephen are going to be strained, imagine how much more strained they will be between McConnell and Brown. The loss of a safe Fife seat is a catastrophic personal blow for Brown, no doubt about it. He gave the campaign his all but his all wasn't enough. If he can so badly misread the mood among the former miners and shipyard workers in his own heartlands, what hope has he in the rest of the country?' Jenny Hjul in the Sunday Times, 12 th February 2006. |  |
It was the by-election that had everything: big beasts (Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling), sexy beasts (David Cameron, apparently), and ex beasts (Charlie Kennedy). But in the end it was more mundane matters that swung it - hospitals, job prospects, the neglect of town centres, post-office closures, and the concerns of commuters.
Willie Rennie, the Liberal Democrat who overturned an 11,500 Labour majority, was able to make such a dramatic impact in Dunfermline and West Fife because he was a local man who focused on local issues. He fought an intense campaign, diverting attention from recent national Lib Dem embarrassments, winning the trust of voters and, crucially, getting them out on the day.
In contrast, the Labour candidate appeared to be controlled by party headquarters, jetted in from her cushy number as an MEP, and never emerging from the shadow of Gordon Brown's bossing, brooding presence. The Labour campaign was wrong-footed from the start by internal bickering between the Westminster and Holyrood branches of the party. While they battled each other for supremacy, the constituency drew its own conclusions about who could best defend its interests. And it wasn't Labour.
A Labour party spokesman said before the declaration in the early hours of Friday morning that the huge excitement in the by-election showed that people 'are engaged in politics'. In fact, the result demonstrated the exact opposite. People were engaged all right - the 49% turnout, relatively high for a by-election, proved that. They were engaged in the sudden loss of 700 jobs at the Lexmark factory. They were engaged in the threatened fourfold increase in the bridge toll. And they were engaged in securing the long-term future of their hospital.
They were not particularly absorbed by the politics as such. If they had been, Willie Rennie would not have romped home so convincingly. Because although this was a Westminster by-election, fought by Westminster heavyweights, its outcome was not decided by national grievances. Safeguarding the Queen Margaret hospital, regenerating Dunfermline's high street, cutting class sizes and persuading Fife Council to hand over more than half its education budget to schools - these are devolved matters.
The people of Dunfermline and West Fife may have been choosing an MP rather than an MSP but the policies that moved them to vote were engineered at Holyrood rather than at Westminster. All of which makes a Liberal Democrat triumph even more astounding, given that in Scotland the Lib Dems are in a coalition with Labour and therefore in power, not in opposition. It is unusual in the extreme for a party in government to win a protest vote against the government. But this is Scotland and confusion over who runs which bit of it since devolution is inevitable. The only certainty in Dunfermline and West Fife is that voters clearly did not associate devolution's failures with the Lib Dems.
No wonder the party was stunned. Charlie Kennedy was right to describe the win as a 'seismic event in Scottish and UK politics'. Nothing will ever be the same again. It is hard to see how Nicol Stephen, leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, will handle relations now with his coalition partner Jack McConnell, how he will get through cabinet meetings without gloating, and how he will pursue his party's agenda to be 'a very powerful force for the future in Scottish politics ' at the same time as making joint policy decisions with the Labour Party (aka the enemy).
But if relations between McConnell and Stephen are going to be strained, imagine how much more strained they will be between McConnell and Brown. The loss of a safe Fife seat is a catastrophic personal blow for Brown, no doubt about it. He gave the campaign his all but his all wasn't enough. If he can so badly misread the mood among the former miners and shipyard workers in his own heartlands, what hope has he in the rest of the country?
He will blame McConnell, naturally. Everybody in the Labour party, from Tony Blair down, will blame McConnell. They will say that he took his eye off the ball, trying to extend his influence overseas while losing it at home.
It will be difficult for Scottish Labour to refute the charges. However they spin things, they cannot escape the recriminations from Fife and the fact that even the Labour faithful no longer have confidence in them.
Willie Rennie accused the Labour party of taking their voters for granted and nowhere is this more evident than in Scotland. The cynical manipulation by Labour of its record in office has fooled nobody. McConnell and his ministers may stand up in parliament and gloss over lengthening hospital waiting times, falling standards in secondary schools, burgeoning crime rates, and a stagnating economy, but voters are not listening.
They can see for themselves the fruits of Labour-controlled constituencies and local councils. They can see their ever increasing council tax bills do not buy better services but merely feather the nests of local politicians. And they can see that the money pouring into Scotland from the Treasury has made life comfortable for the political industry but has not brought any obvious benefits - better hospitals, better schools, better transport infrastructures, safer communities - for them.
If Scottish Labour acknowledged that the Fife vote was, above all, a 'get Labour out' vote they might begin to claw back some support. But they won't; they are far too arrogant and have dominated the political landscape for too long to admit to mistakes.
With this in mind, next year's Holyrood and local authority elections look tantalisingly unpredictable. The Lib Dem challenge would appear to be alive and kicking even if the SNP one has keeled over and the Tories' has never got off the ground.
If diehard Scottish Labour voters can decamp to the Lib Dems in the current climate, when that party is scarred by scandal and leaderless, the omens are good for them in 2007. There are 14 Westminster seats in Scotland where they are in second place to Labour, so potentially plenty of opportunities for further upsets.
A by-election can be a blip, of course, but it is tempting to believe in the wake of Dunfermline and West Fife that anything is possible in Scotland. It may not be the end of apathy, as one academic suggested, but could it be the end of Labour's stranglehold?
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