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Archive: lindsay roy

European election leaflets: The main parties

3 June 2009 22:53

Categories: Current affairs, Fife, Politics, Scotland

The decision to vote

A series of posts

  1. A pathetic situation
  2. Five disturbing things about democracy
  3. How should politics be reformed?: Part 1
  4. How the new politics might look: part 2
  5. European election leaflets: The main parties
  6. European Parliamentary Election literature: small parties
  7. A second opinion
  8. I decided! And I decided to vote

Scottish Conservatives

This is a pretty substantial leaflet, with lots of copy for you to read. It’s pretty slick. One thing that strikes me is that it avoids the tacky symbolism adopted by the other right-wing Eurosceptic parties. The only sign of nationalism is a rather washed-out Union Flag acting as a background.

Content-wise, it starts with a number of cut-outs of newspaper headlines chronicling Labour’s many disasters — as if we needed reminding. Below that is a picture of Gordon Brown photoshopped to make him Janus-faced, which is disappointingly base.

Policy-wise, the focus is very much on European issues. While I may not agree with all of their policies, I appreciate the effort they have taken to tell us exactly what they have done and plan to do in the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, this focus on Europe goes out of the window during the message from David Cameron and Annabel Goldie. They essentially encourage you to vote to send a message about the Labour government in Westminster. There is no escaping the fact that the European Parliamentary election is a second-order election, and will therefore often be used as a way to “send a message” to the government. But I’d rather the Conservatives wouldn’t encourage people to discard European issues for a European election.

No word on the coalition of charmers they are trying to build up either.

Scottish Greens

We have not heard a peep from the Greens. No leaflet came through the door. So I have taken a look at their website.

The blurbs are full of the sort of stuff you come to expect from Greens. For instance, it attacks “reckless growth”, apparently oblivious to the fact that it is the lack of growth that is hurting everyone so much just now. They attack the economic system, but offer little in the way of alternative ideas, apart from more control and more regulation. And renewable energy.

Among their main plans is a promise to create “hundreds of thousands of jobs”. Good luck with that one. They also advocate mutual financial institutions, glossing over the problems that hit the Dunfermline Building Society.

Scottish Labour

This leaflet is not just tailored for Scotland. It is aimed more narrowly at Fife and Tayside. We learn that Labour has the vote of Kariann and Kenneth from Rosyth, whose are pictured with their son Ryan. Oddly, they all look rather glum. Their quote says:

It’s Gordon Brown’s leadership that will get us through these tough times. Labour is the only party on the side of hard working families, standing up for Scottish people nationally and in Europe.

They’re not doing a very good job of it though, are they? As for “Gordon Brown’s leadership”, I can only imagine that Kariann and Kenneth are by now the laughing stock of Rosyth. There can’t be many towns in Scotland that have been more badly hit by Labour’s disastrous economic policies than Rosyth.

I’ll never forget the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, when Gordon Brown stood in Rosyth banging on about job security — only for 700 jobs to go at Lexmark. According to this page, 1,599 jobs had been lost in Rosyth — around an eighth of the town’s population — between 1997 and 2006. Labour’s economic legacy in Gordon Brown’s patch.

When you open up the leaflet, the first thing it does is play the unionist card, as you would expect from Labour. It’s not that I disagree with the message, but it does seem a bit ham-fisted. It is perhaps a mistake for the rest of this page to focus on Labour’s economic record, which is in tatters.

Page three concedes that “it may seem hard to talk about an upturn now”. It certainly is hard to talk about it while Labour are in charge. There is only a brief mention of what Labour’s MEPs have done, and nothing at all about what they plan to do in the future. The rest focuses on the SNP’s record in the Scottish Government. Above this blurb is a rather unflattering photograph of Gordon Brown and Lindsay Roy, two people who always look uncomfortable in front of a camera. Neither of them look particularly happy, reflecting the mood of the times.

The back page sees the return of Kariann and Kenneth, telling us what they think. They tell us that the SNP “have broken almost all their election promises”, then list all the “wrong decisions for Scotland” the SNP have made. Nothing about European issues.

They are “not voting for the Tories because of the last recession.” Hahahahah! Quite why the relatively benign recession that happened almost twenty years ago matters more than the one that is ruining everyone’s lives today is not entirely clear, although I suppose we have come to expect this sort of logic from Labour supporters. Anyone but the Tories, never mind the facts.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dem message on the front is simple and effective: “Stronger together, poorer apart”, illustrated by a tug-of-war team wearing orange and black. Inside, the copy focuses on “international action” that the Lib Dems help take.

Admirably, the entire leaflet focuses largely on European issues. There is a section at the bottom on why each of the other major parties are so bad. Gordon Brown is pictured shaking hands with George Bush — a bit of a cheap shot. The SNP are bad because a “broken up” Britain would be weaker in Brussels. The Conservatives would also isolate us from Europe. Apparently the Tories “only agree with small fringe parties including UKIP and Sinn Féin.” Ouch! Another low blow.

Despite the cheap shots, this is easily the leaflet that speaks the most to me. I appreciate the focus on European issues, underlining the importance of international action in certain areas — a concept I agree with.

SNP

The SNP are a major party, so there are none of the amusing loon-policies. However, what it does mean is a lot of bland platitudes. “SNP MEPs will always do what’s best for our nation, our families and our communities.” What does this actually tell us? Would any party say they wouldn’t do that?

One thing that differentiates the SNP is the promise to “Campaign for Scotland to be a member of the European Union in its own right” — in other words, independence. Surprise surprise.

Disappointingly, Alex Salmond’s message focuses on what the SNP Scottish Government is doing, rather than what the party plans to do in Europe. The back of the leaflet provides a list of what the SNP is doing to protect Scottish jobs. This feels more like an opportunity to remind us of what the Scottish Government is doing rather than a plea for us to vote SNP in the European Parliamentary election.

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A surprise in Glenrothes

8 November 2008 01:39

Categories: Current affairs, Fife, Politics, Scotland

The shock is not so much that Labour won. I had a feeling in my water as long as a month ago that Labour might win, even when the bookies and the pundits were saying otherwise. But the scale of Labour’s victory must have shocked everyone.

Yesterday, the BBC’s coverage began on the premise that it was “too close to call” or that, if anything, the SNP had squeaked it. Jim Murphy was making his excuses early (and doing a fairly good job of it, it has to be said). Coming towards midnight, it became clearer that Labour had won. The SNP were saying they hoped to have halved Labour’s majority.

Even with that knowledge, the scale of Labour’s victory when it was finally announced amazed me. The SNP hadn’t even halved Labour’s majority. In fact, Labour’s vote actually went up from the 2005 General Election result. The only real consolation the SNP can have is that the swing was 5% from Labour to the SNP. Even so, that looks minuscule compared to the swing of 22.5% achieved just a few months ago in Glasgow East.

There are all sorts of reasons why the SNP will be disappointed with this result. First of all, Glenrothes must have been a target seat for them anyway, even before this by-election was announced, with the SNP having won the similar Fife Central seat in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. When Labour was in its trough of popularity, the SNP must have thought Christmas had come early.

Labour’s campaign had seemed like a total shambles. I do not live in the constituency so I haven’t seen any of the literature, but I have heard some bad things about it. Sarah Brown’s well-publicised visit to Cardenden was a complete botch job, and Gordon Brown’s visit to a cafeteria wasn’t much better.

Labour did not need a superstar candidate either. Lindsay Roy is a very nervy and uncomfortable performer on the television. However, it looks as though that actually played into his hands. Labour emphasised the fact that Lindsay Roy is not a career politician, and his track record of being out in the “real world” helping out Fife’s schoolchildren must have gained him a few votes.

As an aside, I doubt that Lindsay Roy actually wanted to become MP. He certainly didn’t look overjoyed at having won, and even after it was clear that Labour had won his body language seemed pretty negative to me. I have heard it said that Lindsay Roy wanted to retire from headteaching anyway and that he saw this as the ideal opportunity to get an early retirement. He probably thought he had no chance of winning.

There is also the fact that the SNP Scottish Government was still in its honeymoon period. Some people are reluctant to say that the honeymoon is over, but there is no doubt that this is at least a slap in the face.

Let us not forget that one of the SNP’s flagship policies was designed to please Fifers in particular. The SNP must have thought that the abolition of bridge tolls would have secured a few votes in Fife. Glenrothes in particular is within comfortable commuting distance of both Edinburgh and Dundee, meaning that many residents will be frequent users of both the Forth and Tay Road Bridges. The fact that the voters of Glenrothes in particular have given the SNP the cold shoulder is a major snub.

Nationalists may counter that Fife is fertile territory for Labour. Time and again I saw pundits on the television saying that Labour benefited from a “halo effect” spilling over into Glenrothes. Fifers, apparently, are proud that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister.

Let me just say, as someone who has lived in Fife all my life, that this is a complete load of tosh. Since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, I have never heard anyone say that they are proud that the PM is a Fifer. In fact, I have sometimes heard people wonder out aloud how it could possibly be that Kirkcaldy can have such high unemployment when the Prime Minister represents the constituency. (I once heard someone say, referring to the perceived unwillingness of Gordon Brown to help his local area, that Kirkcaldy has the highest rate of unemployment in the country, although I doubt that.)

Fife is not Labour loopy. Yesterday there was the opportunity for three of the four constituencies in Fife to be represented by a party other than Labour, leaving just Gordon Brown’s seat in tact. That didn’t happen. But the fact is that the Kingdom of Fife has the capacity to elect any one of three parties. As such, Glenrothes’s decision to vote for Labour should not simply be batted away because it was supposedly as “safe seat”. According to Alex Salmond, there is no such thing as a safe Labour seat these days, and Glenrothes certainly wasn’t one for the reasons outlined above.

The SNP may complain about the negativity of Labour’s campaign. But they should be alarmed that it worked. In retrospect, the decision of the SNP to select Fife Council leader Peter Grant as candidate must be seen as a major tactical error. The Labour Party was able to tap into some real dissatisfaction that people have with Fife Council at the moment.

Because of the complexities of this situation, it is not exactly clear what message the voters were sending out. There is no doubt that there was a message of some sort. But was it a verdict on the Labour government in Westminster? Was it a vote of confidence in Gordon Brown? Was it about sending a message to Holyrood? Or was it about punishing the leader of Fife Council?

Whichever, the SNP should take this seriously. I have no reason to doubt that they will, and the reaction from SNP members’ blogs is sober and reflective (see, for instance, Richard Thomson). There was some real evidence that the SNP were becoming complacent with their position. In the run-up to the election it was looking as though the SNP was giddy on power.

Alex Salmond’s supreme confidence was completely misplaced. And his attempt to attach himself to Barack Obama’s election as US President was crass in the extreme. Voters can smell this sort of thing a mile off, and I’d be amazed if it didn’t cost the SNP votes.

It is no longer enough to rely on the dissatisfaction with the Labour Party that many people have. With Labour’s vote having gone up, it’s pretty clear that they benefited from some serious tactical voting, with the Conservatives and the Lib Dems being squeezed. If this election shows anything, it is that while Labour are unpopular among many voters, the SNP are also loathed among many others.

A word on the Lib Dems, who must be very disappointed. For the second Scottish by-election in a row, they have come in fourth and lost their deposit. Glenrothes is practically sandwiched in between two Lib Dem constituencies — Dunfermline and West Fife and North East Fife. While there is no reason to automatically assume that the Lib Dems should therefore win Glenrothes, they must be disappointed by their complete inertia just now.

It is tough for smaller parties in by-elections anyway. But the current political climate cannot be doing them many favours. Despite PR, Scotland is beginning to look a bit like a two party system. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections, one of the biggest changes was the almost complete disappearance of the small parties. Now it looks as though both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are wilting in a highly charged political atmosphere that pits the SNP versus Labour, leaving little room for much else.

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