Skipper

Revisiting the by elections, I note Rod Liddle, the tousle haired decadent looking ST columnist seems to think most of Davis's voters believe he's wasting their time by resigning and that they agree anyway with the 42 days detention rule. In a curious article reporting from the constituency, he seems to suggest Davis thinks Labour would have had a chance if they had put up a candidate. He also says Davis reckons turnout might even be below 20%; if it does hit such a low point then the exercise will surely have been a washout. Resigning your seat to rouse the nation about its civil rights being strangled and only one in five voters- friendly voters at that- bother to turn out? That's a disaster surely?

As for the other one in Glasgow, there is a typically shrewd article by Rawnsley in the Observer today which, rather like Kettle on Friday, suggests Brown's goose could be cooked if, after the Crewe debacle and the 5th place after the BNP in Henley, he loses a 13K plus majority in his own backyard. Rather like in Crewe and Nantwich, the SNP for indigenous consumption and the Conservatives for UK consumption, Labour's opponets can play a card which, like the 10p tax one, is potentially fatal. After ten years of Labour in power, Glasgow East suffers from standards of living and life expectancy which are the lowest in the Union:

Labour will lambast the SNP for not fulfilling election pledges to increase police numbers, to give cash to first-time buyers and to write off student debts. Labour's opponents will counter that the voters of Glasgow East are the victims of promise-breaking on a much more profound level. They will depict this constituency as symbolic of the way in which Labour has not kept the faith with its own people in the party's heartlands....We will hear a lot about the atrocious levels of unemployment, benefit dependency, crime, drug use, illiteracy and ill-health on the constituency's sink estates. The first exchange of fire between the parties has been provoked by the SNP's claim that life expectancy in Glasgow East is lower than it is in the Gaza Strip.

If Glasgow East does go west for Labour, Goirdon's position will become frail indeed and I would not be surprised if a plot to unseat the dour Son of the Manse from Kirkaldy, is not already being hatched to reach culmination around the conference season, just like Brown's own attempted coup against Blair in 2006.