How wheels came off Labour's bandwagon

THIS was the mouse that roared - the by-election campaign that should have been a formality for Scottish Labour, but which turned into the party's most disastrous electoral experience for years.

Rachel Squire, the sitting MP, died in tragic circumstances. Her replacement candidate, Catherine Stihler, was a close friend, an experienced politician and had even shared an office with Ms Squire.

Gordon Brown lives in the constituency and Labour had a seemingly unassailable majority of 11,500. Surely nothing could go wrong. Could it?

The wheels came off the Labour campaign from the very first day. Suddenly, the Liberal Democrats thought they could actually win it, as did the Scottish National Party. The Conservatives did not harbour any realistic hopes of winning, but even they thought they could improve their vote substantially.

Labour's problems took off with the closure of the Lexmark plant at Rosyth, with the loss of 700 jobs on 24 January. Mr Brown had been in the area the day before, talking about "jobs coming and jobs going". He knew of the Lexmark bombshell, but said nothing.

Then, to deflect attention from the job losses, Labour tried to concentrate on the Forth Road Bridge, but this got the party into even more trouble. Mr Brown again was at the centre of controversy when he announced that the Scottish Executive had shelved plans for tolls of up to £4 on the bridge before ministers had taken the decision.

This "bounced" Jack McConnell, the First Minister, into an announcement that he was against the £4 toll.

Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the Scottish Secretary, then backed plans for a second road bridge across the Forth - again straying into devolved matters. Mr Brown also intervened to announce plans for a new business college in Dunfermline, without telling the Executive's enterprise minister, Nicol Stephen, a Liberal Democrat.

The impression was that Labour's big guns did not care whose toes they trod on to try to set the by-election agenda, and that Labour politicians were squabbling among themselves.

The cumulative effect of all these bungled announcements and the job losses was to undermine Labour's momentum and hand it to the opposition.

To make matters worse, on Tuesday, 31 January, Tony Blair suffered a shock defeat in the Commons over his plans to introduce religious hatred legislation, thanks to the absence of about a dozen Labour MPs staying in Dunfermline to campaign. Labour's desperation to keep Dunfermline and West Fife was starting to have an impact nationally, and the Prime Minister was the victim.

Then came the day, Thursday, 2 February, when the by-election really took off nationally. David Cameron and Charles Kennedy both came to Dunfermline High Street, bringing with them photographers, camera crews and journalists from London.

The contrast between the media circus surrounding the two national leaders and Mr Brown, who sat in a café just off the High Street eating carrot soup with a close circle of colleagues, was startling.

It appeared not only as if the by-election was Labour's to lose, but, thanks to the Chancellor, it was doing a pretty good job at achieving that.

Labour had the Liberal Democrats on one side, fighting the tight sort of by-election campaign they have mastered, and the Nationalists on the other, focusing on local issues with real resonance.

Mr Brown came back, several times, to promise thousands of new jobs and repeat his mantra of "jobs, prosperity and stability", but to limited effect.

Last night, Labour strategists were trying to sift through the wreckage of their campaign. Some blamed the war in Iraq, pointing to the pictures of the 99th and 100th British victims of the war, both Scots, whose bodies arrived back in the UK near the end of the campaign.

Others blamed the Lexmark closure, while others blamed the public spat between Mr McConnell and Mr Brown.

There was not one single factor that defeated Labour. The party lost about 8,000 votes from last year's general election. About a third switched to the Liberal Democrats, a smaller proportion went to the SNP and the rest stayed at home.

What these 8,000 voters did was register discontent and frustration with the party in power. They realised they could make a point to the government, which would be heard, and the Liberal Democrats were the party best placed to exploit it.

Labour managers can try to brush over the defeat, but there is a central truth that Mr Darling acknowledged. This was a by-election Labour could and should have won without breaking sweat but, somehow, the party contrived to lose it.

Despite his almost constant presence in the constituency throughout the campaign, Mr Brown was not in town yesterday to explain where the voters have gone. He was in Moscow talking money with other world finance ministers.

Some of his Labour colleagues might have wished he had gone abroad at the start of the campaign and stayed away.

Scotsman