In the week of the Scotland Bill, Currer renews the Ball’s rallying call to the Shadow Foreign Secretary
Dear Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP
How’s your political future looking? Here’s my guess: for this Parliament and the next, the Opposition benches, led first by et tu Ed Miliband, then by someone else similarly insufficient. Before you know it, you’re 50. By today’s ageist standards, you’re over hill; meantime, the next generation of Labour politicians rocks up, snapping at the heels of the old guard, chasing after jobs like your own.
But you’re better than that, aren’t you? So might Currer recommend another career path? Here it goes: trade in the House of Commons for Holyrood; take on Alex Salmond and the SNP; kill the cause of Scottish independence; win the next Scottish Parliament elections; enjoy the glory; bide your time; then return to Westminster, Labour’s most powerful politician since Gordon Brown, saviour of the Union, and your party’s White Knight – the only Labour politician left who knows how to win.
Sounds like a plan, eh?
But wait a minute, Currer! Aren’t you getting a bit carried away? Sounds like you’re putting a wee bit too much faith in me. I mean, it’s me we’re talking about: Douglas Alexander; Otto von Bismarck, I ain’t.
I agree: Douglas, I’m not your greatest fan; I’m no cheerleader, either for yourself or your party. I’m all too aware of your limitations: prepubescent face and whiny voice chief among them. But it doesn’t matter: you don’t need to be Bismarck to pull my masterplan off.
In Scotland, after being handed the safest possible Labour seat at the first possible chance, you’d inevitably rise to the leadership of your party, where you’d be up against Alex Salmond.
Let’s not kid ourselves: he’s a formidable opponent; but let’s not get carried away either: he’s no Bismarck himself.
Let’s consider who the SNP Führer’s been up against up north.
First, Jack McConnell: the archetypal mediocre politician, for whom that great euphemistic word ‘workmanlike’ was invented. But worse than the man himself, was all the crap McConnell had to put up with – most of it none of his fault. Like the backlash against the war in Iraq, which of course the SNP opposed. And the prevailing feeling that Scotland had been let down by New Labour – and that after 10 years of Tony Blair, people were ready to give the Labour Government at Westminster a kicking by voting SNP in Scotland.
So, not only was his rival no great shakes, the circumstances were ripe for Salmond to swoop into Government. And he did; but only just. In 2007, the SNP won 47 seats – one more than the foundering Scottish Labour Party.
Next up, Iain Gray. If McConnell was ‘workmanlike’, Gray was egregious. Currer’s told that he’s a lovely man, but he’s the sort of guy whom you look at and think, ‘I wonder how he ever got into politics?’ Gray was nothing short of unelectable.
So, despite the recession exposing the SNP’s fantasy economic agenda (in 2007, just one year before the credit crunch struck, Salmond had urged Scotland to free itself from the shackles of the Union, and join the ‘arc of prosperity’: Ireland to the east, Iceland to the north, and Norway to the west. 18 months later, 2 of those 3 countries, the SNP’s economic exemplars, were bust; Salmond’s soundbite was later redubbed the ‘arc of insolvency’), and the Scottish Government’s bizarre decision to free the Lockerbie bomber, even given those quite glaring errors, because Labour, both north and south of the border, hadn’t cleaned up its act, and with the idea of the SNP in power now demystified, Salmond moonwalked to victory.
But don’t be fooled by the scale of the SNP’s triumph last month: it’s not because Salmond’s been irresistible; he’s not an irresistible politician.
You don’t believe me? Well, think back to when Salmond was up against Donald Dewar, the one and only class politician he’s had to contend with since the Scottish Parliament got going in 1999. And I’m not just talking about the SNP’s underwhelming display at the inaugural Holyrood elections, or Salmond’s resignation as leader the following year; I’m talking about how he faired personally against Dewar. And here’s the truth: Salmond was second best.
I hasten to add, it isn’t my intention to disparage Salmond, or to snub his undoubted qualities: he’s a first-rate communicator, a canny media operator (I saw him on Question Time the other week, and he ran the show); he relishes a political fight; and he loves the limelight.
But his affection for the sport of politics means that sometimes he just can’t help himself. Like in 2008, when Salmond (off the back of a by-election victory; Currer’s 5th Law: Never Extrapolate A General Election Result From A By-Election Result), predicted that the SNP would win 20 seats at the 2010 election, and ‘make Westminster dance to Scotland’s tune’.
Trouble was, that prediction was plain stupid. The SNP had 7 seats at Westminster before 6 May last year; after election night, they were left with 6. What’s more, in all their other 14 target seats, they weren’t even close to winning.
Salmond’s 20 seats rallying call was so absurd that he should’ve been made to pay for it; he ought to have been ridiculed for such a ridiculous statement – and he would’ve been if he’d been up against an opposition leader competent enough to convert this open goal.
And that’s where you come in, Douglas. Salmond isn’t quite the political force that he’s cracked up to be. Yes, he’s good, there’s no getting ‘round that, but Dewar’s expert handling of Salmond proves that he’s beatable. I honestly think that you’ve got what it takes to get the better of him.
Because the news gets even better, Douglas. You’d be coming home to a country that’s dying to vote Labour, and doesn’t want independence. Opinion polls vary drastically – but only on the degree to which Scots don’t support independence: anything between 85 and 65 per cent.
So, your job wouldn’t just be to ensure that independence stays so unpopular, but to stop Salmond wriggling out of the simple Yes/No referendum that would kill his cause and party.
If you take the fight to Salmond (now in Government, so naturally on the defensive), you can end the SNP’s separatist dream now and forevermore. And still have time to return to Westminster, stinking of glory, and with a shot at the leadership of your otherwise struggling party in the Commons.
And even if that part of my masterplan doesn’t pan out, you’d always be remembered as the man who led the fight to save the Union. Think, Douglas: ‘Alexander the Great’.
Yours unionistically
Currer Ball
