‘Kirkcaldy moment’: the sequel

But if the old “Lang Toun” — where I spent part of my childhood — has helped to usher in a new febrile age in Scottish politics, how has the place itself fared over the past five years? It turns out that Kirkcaldy, with its industrial roots and its Labour traditions, could be the bellwether constituency in this election campaign.

On first impressions, an outsider might think that the governing party, the SNP, had a lot to answer for. Kirkcaldy High Street is a wasteland of boarded-up shops and “for sale” notices, empty crisp packets and cardboard coffee cups blowing along the street like tumbleweed.

“Aye, it’s a disaster isn’t it?” says Catriona Bailey, in town for a phone repair. “My mother is always reminding me how people used to come here from all over Fife. Now the High Street is a disgrace.”

It’s a common view, but Mrs Bailey, 45, like many around here, doesn’t blame the local MSP, or the government at Holyrood. It was Labour, she maintains, who “bankrupted the country”. The SNP is having to make the best of a bad job. “I look at the policies and out of the lot of them, they are the most realistic,” declares Mrs Bailey, a civil servant. “I don’t believe they are in it for themselves. They’re interested in the people, not just [being] career politicians.”

George, her husband, is a Londoner, “from ’Ackney, with an ‘H’” he says with a grin. And though he may have lived in Fife for only a decade, he is an even more fervent SNP supporter than his wife.

“At 14, I twigged that Westminster politicians were all in it for themselves. That parliament over there,” he says, nodding in the general direction of Edinburgh, “is squeaky clean in comparison to Westminster.”

The Kirkcaldy I knew, in the early 1970s, was a place of full employment, of coal mines and a famous linoleum factory. Less than ten miles away, Glenrothes was rising from the ground, one of a handful of new towns that symbolised an age of growth and optimism.

Then came Mrs Thatcher’s economic revolution. Heavy industry was closed down by design and across the Central Belt — Bathgate, Linwood, Methil, Kirkcaldy too — any sense of prosperity was chased out of town. You’ll find a housing estate where the old Seafield pit used to be. My former primary and secondary schools — Dunearn and Templehall — have been knocked down.

The problem for Labour, says Catherine Stevenson, bustling along near the now-doomed BHS, is that the party had a generation to try to halt the decline, but did nothing.

“It used to be that you didn’t think about it, you just voted Labour,” says Ms Stevenson, 68. “Now I see that Labour has done Scotland a disservice.

“It’s a British political party, not Scottish. I like the leader, Kezia Dugdale, but she should disassociate herself from UK politics completely, and give us all a voice, a proper choice on who to vote for.”

Ms Stevenson, who used to work as an administrator for a national charity, would vote “yes” again if another independence referendum was called. “Why would it make this better?” she wonders aloud. “Because we would be making the decisions. If we were fully involved, we would have to own those decisions. We should be responsible for ourselves.”

Ryan Murphy, 27, in town with his fiancée, Natalia Liptakova, is inclined to vote Green on Thursday. Renewable energy could power Scotland, he says, helping to replace falling oil revenues. But the industry has been thwarted by London. “We could become one of the premier suppliers of renewable energy in Europe,” says Mr Murphy, who works for a kitchen company, “but it is something we have not been able to progress. The SNP have tried to move that forward, but Westminster has blocked it. It’s crazy.”

And so it goes. In a Costa coffee shop, old friends Linda Smith and Isobel Arnott are meeting for their weekly chat. Ms Smith, 60, is a probable SNP voter. Elections matter, she says, especially when politicians deliver. That’s why, she says, she much preferred Alex Salmond as first minister to Ms Sturgeon. “Salmond abolished the [Forth road bridge] tolls,” she says. “He said he would. He abolished fees for university students. He said he would. And he abolished prescription charges. Sturgeon has taken a lot of the credit for what he did. He got the ball rolling. I don’t really trust her at all. There seem to be hidden agendas.”

Ms Arnott is still swithering with a Labour vote, and there are others who are impressed by the party’s candidate, Claire Baker, an established and popular list MSP. Moreover, most people in Fife voted “no” in the 2014 referendum and, at St Bryce Kirk, a couple of hundred yards from the High Street, there is plenty of concern about a second ballot. St Bryce’s used to be St Brycedale, the church whose minister was formerly Rev John Brown, the father of the last Labour prime minister.

Bill Kettles is a stalwart of the congregation, a former police inspector who served with the army during the Korean war. He takes a dim view of nationalism and its consequences, as he sips his tea at the kirk’s café. “Eire got independence,” he barks. “It is a much poorer country than it was when it was part of Britain. Scotland would be the same.

“I was born in 1932, I was proud to be British. I am probably more British than I am Scottish. Scotland will not get independence while I have anything to with it!”

Roland Carson, a retired electrical engineer, seems inclined to agree, and David Blair is also for the Union. But when it comes to this election, it’s about the competence of the MSP, Mr Blair suggests. He is inclined to opt for Ms Baker but accepts that he could vote for Mr Torrance, “a very nice person”. Whatever he chooses, the outcome seems predictable: that Labour’s “bloc vote” has moved “en masse to the SNP”, and while it might come back, it won’t for another five years. This being a church, it could be the moment to offer up a prayer for the Labour party. But no one does.