Labour Loses Glasgow East. Is Gordon a Gonner?

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• Full results of the Glasgow East by-election
• Labour MP calls on Brown to go
• Union leader calls for leadership election
• Update: Lord Desai calls for Brown to go – again! ‘Like watching a crash in slow motion.’ He strikes again: the man who said ‘Brown was put on this earth to remind us how good Tony Blair was’
• YouGov: Muslim Students Radicalised by Hizb ut-Tahrir – the group Blair wasn’t permitted to ban!
• Prescott blogs at Labour Home -Support Gordon

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25th July, 2008

I FEEL SORRY FOR MR BROWN TODAY – YES, HONESTLY, I DO!

Gordon's headache

A ‘Glasgow Kiss’ (headbutt) for Gordon Brown & Labour? For the man who wanted this job for so long – longer by all accounts than Blair did – it’s tragic really.

OK, I know I have called on several occasions for his head to be served on a plate, but I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him on a personal level. Still, following the main course that Labour and the country consumed with some relish last year, this dessert may be a bit of a sickener.

But, come on – to lose with only 365 votes! That’s one person per day of Brown’s last year of descent. And to lose to Salmond’s crowd of separatists! I bet there are some of my fellow Glaswegians annoyed with themselves that they didn’t bother to vote yesterday. (I live down south now, so I couldn’t have made it 364. It’s not MY fault!)

Labour’s 3rd safest seat Scottish seat and Britain’s 25th safest has gone in the “Richter scale” victory for the Scottish Nationalists.

Yes, the Scottish National Party claimed the Glasgow East result was “off the Richter scale”, after overturning a Labour majority of 13,507 to take the seat which has been Labour’s for decades. Tactical voting played a part, with Tory supporters voting SNP just to help shift Labour. Nothing new in that. And of course this is only a by-election when voters traditionally like to kick the sitting government. But many Labour MPs and party members must be asking themselves today – “Can it get any worse?” AND “What do we do about Gordon?”

Watch your back, present prime minister!

‘Today’ programme coverage – Defence & Scottish Secretary Des Browne, and psephologist Professor John Curtice – ‘political seismologist’, Strathclyde University

Des Browne defends Gordon, and says “… people know what we have achieved. We need to unite behind this man’s leadership”.

Curtice: “Unless Labour improves they cannot be assured of winning any more [by-elections] of them.”

Do people know what Labour has achieved? Not according to OUR press. A major campaign is required to remind the voters, whoever is leader. Where or where are Labour’s PR people?

Is a comeback possible with the average Labour poll rating over the last few months at 26? It is now below 30 for the third month running. No party has ever been able to recover from this level.

Margaret Curran, Labour candidate at Glasgow East by election, awaits the result

Alex Salmond, SNP Leader: “POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE”

Sky news video on what this swing would mean for Labour. With this swing at the next general election there would be only 5 survivors from Brown’s cabinet of 25. These ministers would all lose their seats: Jacqui Smith, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw, Ed Balls, Des Browne, David Miliband, Douglas Alexander would all lose their seats. And with this swing in Scotland Brown’s seat too would be lost.

Glasgow East was Labour’s 25th safest seat. They were defending a majority of 13,500 and they lost it on a swing of 22.5% to the SNP.

John Mason, the victorious SNP candidate in Glasgow East

In a general election, if Labour suffered this swing against them to their nearest challenger, they would lose all but one of their 40 seats in Scotland, traditionally one of their heartland areas. And that one would not be Brown.

The result follows extremely poor national opinion poll ratings for Labour and Gordon Brown.

John Mason, the SNP’s winning candidate in Glasgow East, said: “Three weeks ago the SNP predicted a political earthquake.

This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake; it is off the Richter scale. It is an epic win and the tremors will be felt all the way to Downing Street.”

Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond said of the result: “I don’t think we will see an immediate exit for Gordon Brown from Downing Street. I think it is more likely he will change policy rather than change himself.”

And the Conservatives, not real contenders in this seat, even pushed the Liberal Democrats into fourth place.

Margaret Curran’s video conceding defeat.

Past Performance

Labour may try to explain this result away by saying they have lost by-elections in the past and then gone on to victory in a general election: they lost Brent East and Leicester prior to winning in 2005.

But there are important differences between the Blair and Brown eras.

First, Tony Blair had a proven track record: when he lost those by-elections, he had already safely defended Labour’s majority without losing a single by-election in the 1997 to 2001 Parliament.

People were prepared to believe Blair was a winner… more here

So it was a political earthquake after all. Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish Nationalists, was right.

Much as I dislike Salmond, and I don’t generally dislike people I don’t know, THIS time I have to give it to him. He was right.

Now look out as Salmond seeks independence for Scotland by 2010.

If he does so and he gets it, he can thank another politician. Not Gordon Brown, but Tony Blair. The man whose devolution to Scotland has brought us to this place. And the rest of us will no doubt blame the same man for giving the people what they said they wanted – devolution.

Oh what a sorry day for Labour.

Fraser Nelson of The Spectator came up with a memorable phrase on Sky this morning on Brown’s “personality” problem. He described him as “an introvert in an extrovert’s job”. EXACTLY. And didn’t some of us warn Labour that Blair would be a hard act to follow? Oh how Labour must be missing their election winner now. Well, you should have all joined MY little campaign in September 2006 instead of turning a blind eye as the knives were plunged into his back.

Now the same knives are being sharpened as we speak for the chief assassin.

THE RECOUNT: One Too Many Currans?

At about 12:30am the SNP candidate John Mason drifted into the count, cheered like a hero. Then at 1:30am, word went round that there was to be a recount.

It seems that there was a Frances Curran standing for another minor party, the Scottish Socialists, as well as the Labour candidate Margaret Curran. In the end the recount failed to find several hundred spare ballot papers for Margaret Curran in Frances’s pile.

WILL LABOUR TRY TO REPLACE BROWN?

Probably not. Simply because there would be such a furore at the idea of yet another Prime Minister with no electoral mandate.

The only one with an electoral mandate was Tony Blair. The three times winner. The one who will go down in history as never having been beaten at the polls. Another record, probably unlikely to ever be beaten.

And today, Gordon Brown must be wondering whatever happened to his long-standing dream of leading Labour to victory. Now it seems he is leading his party to the pits.

At the Glasgow by-election there was a turnout of 42.25%, down from the 48% figure at the last general election.

In the 2005 general election, which was Tony Blair’s third election victory, Labour recorded a majority of 13,507 over the SNP.

This vote was a combination of countrywide and Glasgow East dissatisfaction with Brown and Labour, as well as some aspirational ambition in Salmond’s crew. Add to that Tories voting tactically for the SNP and the result was catastrophe for Labour.

The Times says that Labour’s young turks need to resist the temptation to give in to the Unions, turn the clock back or borrow their way out of the present difficulties.

The Milibands, Purnell, Balls et al also need to ensure that Labour’s policies are designed to attract the supporters that once filled Tony Blair’s big tent. If any of them decides to ignore this tasks – hoping, for instance, to gain an advantage in a future leadership election with statist ideas such as the latest nursery school plans – they may find themselves the sole political beneficiaries of Gordon Brown’s will, inheriting an estate with a net worth of zero.

It was Harold Wilson’s ambition to make Labour the natural party of government. Under the leadership of Tony Blair, this ambition came close to becoming a reality. There was a good reason why it did so. Mr Blair’s combination of moderation, free markets, social justice and Atlanticism is electorally potent and a good governing philosophy.

For Gordon Brown, the challenge of staying alive and hoping for the best may tempt him to squander that mandate in acts of politcal expediency. The task of tomorrow’s Labour leaders is to protect the competence of the Government. Not just in the interests of the country, but their own.

You may recall that Blair’s attempt to move the party away from dependency on funding (and control) by the Unions almost landed him and others in the dock, despite the “loans” arrangement having been widely used by the Tories for years. The MET Police were inexcusably naive in following this “complaint”, in my humble opinion. They never needed to; they ignore many complaints by the public.

And who made the complaint against Labour and Blair? Guess who … a Scottish Nationalist MP,  aided and abetted by Welsh Nationalist MP.

POLITICALLY MOTIVATED? YOU BET!

That experience for Blair’s government undoubtedly put the frighteners on them. They no longer pursue big donors, and big donors no longer pursue them. Still big donors contribute to the Conservatives! There is stalemate on any arrangements on party funding for general elections.

And now the Labour party is back where it was, dependent on Labour’s Old Left. Brown is already being called on by a major union to call a leadership election.

Such a pity Blair was stopped from this wholesale reform.

Such a pity Blair was stopped. Period.

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Tags: 1. Tony Blair, Alex Salmond, an electoral political earthquake, Brown (Gordon Brown & his Labour Government, from June 2007), Brown Labour loses, glasgow by-election, Glasgow East by election, Labour MPs call on Brown to go, Scottish Nationalist Party, SNP, SNP wins