Woah! That I didn’t expect… SNP takes Glasgow East. And the winner is… July 25, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Labour Party, British Politics.trackback
Watching Channel 4 News during the week I was a bit dubious about how much Alex Salmond was investing in Glasgow East. John Mason even had to joke about ‘being his own man’ after Salmond had visited the constituency numerous times during the campaign.
Salmond had said:
… on Wednesday – the last day of campaigning – about a “political earthquake” about to arrive in Glasgow East. “The ground is shaking and shuddering,” he said. “I think the earthquake is coming and it will arrive on time and on schedule tomorrow.”
Yet after 11 days of personal campaigning in the constituency, Salmond admitted the vote was extremely tight. “I believe it’s neck and neck,” he said.
Well, as the Guardian puts it:
Gordon Brown suffered his most severe byelection setback in a summer of electoral routs early this morning as the Scottish National party won a dramatic victory in the Glasgow East contest, taking the once staunch Labour seat with a majority of 365 votes.
One for every day of the year. And while super slim by-election margins don’t come much slimmer, this really is a turn up.
In its third byelection humiliation in nine weeks, Labour saw its majority of more than 13,000 evaporate in a swing of more than 22% to the SNP, a reversal even more chastening than the loss of Crewe and Nantwich in May on a 17% swing.
The actual figures are interesting, and point to Labour retaking it at a future contest, with Mason on 11,277 votes Labour’s Margaret Curran on 10,912 (and a high turnout of about 42%) but that is largely irrelevant in the context of a deeply wounded Labour party across the UK. Now, the Guardian, in full on doom mode was suggesting that as this was Labour’s 25th safest seat a similar swing would see Brown put out of his own seat, but again this is a by-election and one which can in no small way be attributed to Alex Salmond. For while it is true that Mason won the seat for the SNP this is the best of good news.
A Labour heartland taken out, even temporarily, by the SNP indicates that their increasing dominance of the Scottish political landscape continues apace. Moreover in the face of a faltering Labour machine their victory solidifies their position nicely. During the week discussing the blocks that appear set in the way of the independence project it looked as if that might be running out of steam. Well, politics is of course base, but it’s also optics and these optics look good.
I can’t help but think that Salmond might be one of the most fascinating politicians on these islands and that his intuitive grasp of political dynamics is remarkably good. Even had it gone the other way, say 365 votes in favour of Labour this would still have been an excellent, albeit not quite as outstanding, a victory.
And again, Salmond put it perfectly when he noted:
“It is a test of strength between two governments,” he said. “This is a tale of two governments and people are passing judgment on the Labour government and the SNP government in Scotland … that’s what people are entitled to do.”
Because devolution has brought two governments and while London retains primacy the SNP is carving out as much room as it can.
So if for the SNP this is great news it’s desperate for Labour.
Brown will convene today with ministers and union leaders to decide on a slate of policy changes that unions want to revive the party’s appeal to its core constituencies, but may struggle to assert his authority over a party newly disappointed at its inability to keep its third safest seat in Scotland.
They’re going to have to be some policy changes. But after ten years or more of NL I can’t see them as amounting to anything substantial, not least because New Labour simply doesn’t have the instincts for that. Even survival – as we’ve seen before – doesn’t appear to have any particular impact on them.
And there is one other person for whom this is pretty good. As we already see the Conservatives and Cameron are calling for a ’snap election’. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? But in retrospect Brown avoiding a contest last year – and perhaps precisely the way he did so – has undermined his administration ever since. There is of course on chance that he will go the election route, but that chorus will merely continue and perhaps strengthen over the next year or so.
The Channel 4 report on the election, mentioned above, was – to put it mildly – disturbing. The news team hooked up with a Church of Scotland vicar who spoke of how he presided over numerous funerals of men in their early 20s and mid 40s, lives ground down by drugs, deprivation and marginalisation. And he cynically, but accurately pointed to the reality of a media and political spotlight that would shine on the constituency briefly and then move on. If that isn’t testament to the failure of New Labour, then what is?
Mind you, for once I’ve got to agree with Cameron:
“…what I wonder is whether we can put up with this for another 18 months,” he said.
Me too.
The future.
The Tories in power in the UK.
A crass campaign for the Union.
More support for the SNP.
A referendum with a majority for independence.
More crass moves by Tories.Threats that Scotland will be out of the EU. Eurosceptics want the reverse.
Backlash in Scotland.
Scotland wins independence.
Some Ulster Unionists call for an arrangement on Irish Unity.
The Welsh start to move in a similar direction.
Though I think Belgium will cease to exist before all this happens.
I can’t see them as amounting to anything substantial, not least because New Labour simply doesn’t have the instincts for that.
Well, quite. All they’re really capable of is looking at the headlines and trying to propose initiatives which they think will gain approval: but if you do too much of that (and they’ve done far too much of it) you just inspire contempt because of your won weakness, like the football manager who makes the changes that the crowd demand and makes himself a laughing-stock by doing it.
Nevertheless I suppose I hope they cling on for a while. One thing is, if the Tories get the sort of majority that Labout got in 1997 – and in 2001 – they won’t waste it like Labour did.
The big question is whether Labour can see their only option is to prep for a snap election if they could even temporarily get the mood music right. Their goal would need to be that the Lib-Dems can hold off the Tories in some seats in the south-east, that the Tories make no gains outside of England and Labour have to sign up to a program of immediately electoral reform introducing some form of PR. That way Gordon could save the party from long term exile from power like in the 80s and 90s. Otherwise when they lose it will be an ongoing battle between the old and new Labour factions and back to the unelectability of the mid 80s.
Quite a few tendentious claims in there…
One rather interesting thing is that this is one of those rare occasions when Glasgow Catholics have voted SNP. It’s a long long time since the Nats were raising the “Keep Scotland Protestant” banner, but in the minds of Scottish Catholics they’ve still got that Orange tinge to them. Probably helps to explain why Galloway hates them so much.
Looked at from the other perspective, the Scottish Labour Party has been a bit of a Catholic mafia, especially in those rotten boroughs on Clydeside. Could it be that a fairly popular SNP government, plus the introduction of PR for local councils, has cracked open the old patronage networks?
I remember when the SNP won Govan and thinking that’s interesting, people who are overtly against the Union winning on Rangers’ own territory, but if your account is right there wouldn’t be anything exceptional about that. So how come it’s the Prods who aren’t the Unionists?
Oddly, I remember in the Monklands by-election the Scottish branch of the UVF endorsed the SNP… though Airdrie is a very Prod town.
The sectarian vote in Scotland doesn’t always fit into neat boxes. I once met a former member of the CPGB and a long time shop steward who was a Rangers season ticket holder! Some of Rangers hardcore would support England over Scotland in international football and consider themselves ‘British’ not Scottish, first and foremost. As of course loads of Celtic fans support the Republic of Ireland and why tricolours are more popular at Parkhead than the Scottish flag. But I would guess most working class Celtic and Rangers fans voted Labour more or less automatically, most of the time.
Yes the SNP had a very Prod image for a long time (and were a bit rural as well) and Scottish Catholics have long memories. That some of them are breaking with Labour should really start alarm bells ringing. For Labour that is.
It’s the logic of devolution. Incidentally, and I’d hope to look at this myself in greater detail, note how the Tories are trying a lash-up with the UUP… oh yes!
It is the sad truth that in Glasglow,as in New York and Boston etc Irish Catholic immigrants brought with them a machine corrupt appraoch to local government. The SNP have been a party fairly free from corruption, an issue which in Scotland is nearly completely attached to east end of Glasglow and to some extent the Masons. It is great to see the a mindless alligence to Labour by a section of the Glasglow WC is now at an end although its sad that this could spell the begining of the end of Left wing government in Britian for a generation. If Britian will survive at all.
Oddly that’s sort of my sentiments as well Pete.
I don’t doubt the corruption of Labour in many local governments but to blame just imported Catholic Irish culture goes a little far.
Much of the clientism of Labour culture was a reaction to other more entrenched elites.
A relative on starting a job in Glaosgow (a government job) was given the cold shoulder by her 2 colleagues and told ” you are only here because the council wanted a teague and a woman.”
The Orange walks in Scotland are just the same as in the North, a sectarian display.
Some of Rangers hardcore would support England over Scotland in international football and consider themselves ‘British’ not Scottish, first and foremost.
Well quite, that’s my point: that’s why I’m confused to find them so associated with the SNP. (Incidentally I was at Wembley the last time there was a friendly interernational between England and Scotland. I very well remember the mutters of “she’s our queen too” from Rangers fans when everybody else was booing GSTQ.)
Talking of the culture of corruption, a friend of mine, Partick fan as it goes, active for years in Scottish Labour politics, tells a story about the huge Castlemilk estate in which, if I recall the story properly, there was only one licensed premises entitled to open on Sundays. This was of course the Labour Club…
‘It is the sad truth that in Glasglow,as in New York and Boston etc Irish Catholic immigrants brought with them a machine corrupt appraoch to local government.’
It is the sad truth that Irish immigrants faced extreme nativist Protestant hostility in the USA and of a different kind in Scotland and embraced forms of politics that offered protection and basic forms of welfare denied to them by the establishment. IN the US the Democrats and in Scotland, Labour realised that there was votes and support in catering to this immigrant mileau. It was also the case that the O’Connellite mass politics of the 1820s/30s had given many of the immigrants a grounding in political mobilisation, as well as a deep suspicion of established politics. Corrupt? Yes, but not only that.
Eoghan Harris, no less, expounded on this very topic many years ago in a very good documentary, ‘the Greening of America.’
But its easier to say Irish catholics are corrupt.
Nah its easier to dance around going on about the historic excuses for current behavior. What you say is true to the roots of machine politics. After a couple of generations though its best just to approach it as corrupt shitbags – beat them get them out and then anaylsis the shit then to try and stop it from happening again. Not of course if your E Harris then you study it so you can cozy on up to it to wax your sad flagging troubled soul.
‘A relative on starting a job in Glaosgow (a government job) was given the cold shoulder by her 2 colleagues and told ” you are only here because the council wanted a teague and a woman.”’
Probally ture – she may have got the job for that reason – two wrongs never made a right
However I do support postive descrimnation – that her two co-workers didn’t – fuck them
Post16:
“…Probally ture[sic] – she may have got the job for that reason..”
Conas tá a fhois san agutsa?
Oíche mhaith
Don’t speak the Irish, sorry