Angus Macleod, Scottish Correspondent of The Times, says that sensational Lib Dem by-election win in Gordon Brown’s fiefdom is the worst possible result for the Chancellor
“Gordon Brown cannot get away from the fact that this was a political disaster right on his own doorstep. It’s not just the fact that he has his home in this constituency; one has to remember that after boundary changes before the last general election many of Mr Brown’s former constituents are now in this seat.
“So Gordon Brown and his allies cannot put this down to some sort of failure by Tony Blair. This was Brown’s campaign and he was in it from the start, a massive presence all the way through. This is looked at as Brown’s kingdom, his political fiefdom, so for him to lose here is a nightmare.
“It raises the question: if Gordon Brown cannot deliver in his own backyard, how can he deliver elsewhere? If he cannot deliver in Dunfermline, how can he deliver in Dulwich and Dunstable?
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“The Lib Dems targeted this seat from a very early point. They flooded the streets with party workers and even had activists up from southwest England. They also benefited from the fact that they were in second place after the 2005 general election, which meant that the anti-Labour vote coalesced behind their candidate and the Scottish National Party candidate was left a distant third.
“And their candidate, Willie Rennie, was strong. He is a local businessman who has been a Lib Dem backroom boy for years and was chief executive of the Scottish party. He’s approachable and very affable.
“This by-election was decided more on local issues than national issues and there were some major issues to talk about - tolls on the Forth Road Bridge, the state of Dunfermline town centre and the future of a local hospital.
“But oddly enough, all these issues are devolved to the Scottish Executive, and the irony of the result is that the Lib Dems - who are in partnership with Labour in Edinburgh - got none of the blame and all the protest vote. Labour admits, too, that voters are still concerned about the aftermath of the Iraq War and it didn’t help that two the bodies of two dead Scottish soldiers were flown home during the campaign.
“Today at the post-mortem in Dunfermline - and it was very much a post-mortem - Labour said that it was the local issues that had damaged them. But the clear message when you decoded the language from Alastair Darling, the Scottish Secretary, was that the blame was laid at the door of the Scottish Executive for not sorting out the problem of tolls on the Forth Bridge and not burying plans to raise the toll by 300 per cent.
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“The problem was that Labour ministers in Edinburgh could not give a cut-and-dried guarantee that it would not happen, so the hare was allowed to run. You cannot actually blame the Scottish Executive for that because, as they said again and again, they had to follow due process, but the irony is that the minister reponsible for transport in Scotland, and for the tolls, is a Lib Dem, Tavis Scott, and his party ended up getting the protest vote.
“Alastair Darling admitted that the Labour vote had not come out; there was some evidence of Labour abstentions. He also took the blame himself and said it had nothing to do with the Chancellor. Labour fought this campaign on a platform of jobs and prosperity but that rang hollow as well, because right at the start of the campaign there were 700 jobs lost through the closure of a computer printer plant right in the heart of the constitutency.
“Gordon Brown is a huge figure in this area. He’s been an MP here for more than 20 years and basically runs the Labour party in this area. Nobody does anything without making sure that he approves. He has always said that as long as he was in government, then this area would benefit from that - but his personal reputation has been overcome by local issues over which he has no control because of devolution.”