1997 General Election Blog

Days 24-26

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:48:31 +0100

29/4/97

What do polls tell the average person, let alone the average politician?

In the last 24 hours we have had three of them - or rather two polls and a survey.

The survey - the final ballot of the “Scottish 500” audience - has the SNP up to 30, and New Labour down to 37. The Tories are flat at 13 and the Liberals are up to 19 (their highest Scottish rating for years)

ICM in the Scotsman has the SNP flat at 21, Labour still up at 47, the Tories at 15 and the Liberals at 13.

And the final poll of the campaign (Systems 3) has the SNP up to 26, Labour up to 50, the Liberals down to 9 and the Tories flat at 14.

In 1992 the SNP was falling the polls in Scotland in the last week - the final Systems 3 had us down to 24 from 26. We ended up with 21 percent. If you just mirror that trend, then we would end us with 29% or so - more than good enough to increase the number of seats three fold.

But the “poll of polls” in Scotland has us at 23% (that is taking all the polls together) - which is one point up on the start of the campaign - and going into polling day on a rising trend is important.

So - some dangerous assumptions for my diary:

The Tories are down and out in Scotland - even worse than in England. They will be lucky to hold four seats. Forsyth and Lang are away, and Rifkind may well also be in trouble. A wipe out is possible, though I suspect not probable. The faithful will vote (it is just that there are less and less of them).

The Liberals had a good campaign up until last weekend - the seem to have been losing support since then, perhaps because there has been nothing new in it. Shows you can’t run a while six weeks on the basis of one personality and one idea.

New Labour will win - not because of enthusiasm for it and its policies, but because people are scunnered with the Tories. In Scotland, however, there will be some turn against them , with a lower vote for Labour here than in England (for the first time in a generation).

And what will we do - six seats minimum, possibly more and about 26% of the vote. A big step forward, and with a firm foundation for any elections to a Scottish Parliament which Labour may have to implement (although they will try not to).

The big unanswered question of polls is , of course, do they have any effect themselves on voting - do people size up what they are going to do on the basis that they want to be on the winning side? And are they getting more accurate, or less so? Certainly ICM in this election (the one that has had us lowest consistently) is also the one that got the lowest lead for New Labour in England - only 5%. Will they be shown to be widely inaccurate, and if so will the pollsters admit it - or simply say things changed at the end?

30/4/97

For some days we have been searching for the “big idea” that would end the campaign - inject some new life into the press conferences, get us some good closing pictures and summarise our message.

Angus Robertson yesterday suggested that we don’t hold a final press conference at the Holiday Inn, but instead do an outdoor rally type event, that sends Alex off on his final tour north.

It takes most of yesterday to organise it, but this morning we meet at the King James Hotel in the centre of Edinburgh, and the journalists turn up to coffee, free sticks of SNP rock (as a souvenir) and the change to chat informally to Alex and Roseanna and Allan Macartney.

At 9.55 I get the call to say we have several hundred people waiting by the Parliament Building (the Old Royal High School which was got ready for the Scottish Parliament in 1979 but which has lain empty ever since) so we send the journalists up the road in taxis and Stewart Stevenson leads us to the battle bus.

However he has lost the car park! It is admittedly in the St James Centre, which is a sprawling shopping centre just at the end of Princes St, but we go up and down corridors, find ourselves at one stage on the roof, and only eventually locate it on the other side of a barrier, which Stewart has to leap, run up a “down ramp” and then drive back to us. Roseanna is by now keeping me calm as I am getting calls asking where the hell we are.

The meeting is great - bright sunshine, lots of SNP placards and Alex and the others in great speaking form. The snappers are everywhere and the mood is fantastic.

Alex poses for some more photos in the Parliament building and then we all say good bye - at least until the voting is done and he flies down to Edinburgh by helicopter to join us at about 5.00am on Friday morning.

The rest of the day is an anti-climax. I am beginning to come down with flu and at one stage this afternoon fall asleep in front of my computer. The pressures and tensions of the last six weeks are now being replaced by an enormous tiredness - it will take me days and weeks to recover I am sure.

We get a final boost driving in a taxi to a restaurant where all the staff are having dinner together. For the last three nights we have hired the biggest outdoor projector in Scotland, and used it to shine images on a gable end in Govan, on Stirling Castle rock and tonight on Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. We ask the taxi driver to divert round Calton Hill to let us see it, and he is very sceptical - but when we spot it he bursts out laughing and keeps saying “Great, great - what a great idea”. In the gloaming you can see quite clearly a three hundred foot high SNP symbol , which must be visible from most of the city.

We have an excellent meal, although I start to fall asleep again. At 12.20 we all leave Iggy’s after a great meal and the moment I am home I collapse into bed.

1/5/97

I wake at 8.00, again at 10.00 and finally at 12.00

Election Day is the worst day of the campaign - not much to do for us in the office, but we have to be here in case of problems. I have already said I will be late, and I now feel grim - hacking cough, temperature and sneezing all the time. I shuffle about in the flat, intending to tidy up the incredible mess that has arisen over the past four weeks, but with no energy to do anything.

When I make it to the office Allison tells me about the reports coming in from the Constituencies. Some are good, some aren’t, but you can in my experience never tell anything on polling day - or rather I can’t.

In countless by-elections I have toured the stations and they might all have been voting for the monster raving loony party for all I knew!

I sit at my desk, now with a lovely basket of flowers from Lisa and Sean Mehan who have done so much for our Internet site - and who are such supportive friends. I wander about talking to staff, who are themselves wandering about talking to other people. Our telephone call centre is going great guns downstairs doing knock up, and the reports are still good.
Now I am preparing to have a meal before a final staff meeting to agree tasks for the night. By about 10.30 we will begin to get ballot box sample reports and then the first results will come in about 11.30.

I shall spend time backwards and forwards to television stations , on the phone to Alex and others and watching our computer projections spew out of the machines that are now up and working.

At this moment I ask myself why I have put myself through this whole experience. But when the adrenalin starts flowing tonight, I shall have no such doubts.

And then tomorrow the rest of my life begins!

Days 22 & 23

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:42:46 +0100

27/4/97

Just after midnight Kevin Pringle and I decide to finish Saturday by walking along Princes St. and collecting the Sunday papers from the wee kiosk outside the Balmoral Hotel .

We wend our way along Rose St., talking about the way in which “politicos” are isolated from the real world - and then I hear the words “referendum,”, “parliament” and “independence”. Outside the Rose St Fry there are four youths arguing the finer points of constitutional policy.

We pass by on the other side.

The kiosk has all but the Sunday Times - which is a pity, because that is the one that has the story about Yvonne Anderson and another lifetime Labour supporter who has decided to vote for us in Glasgow Govan.

I start to walk back along Princes St clutching a sheaf of Sunday newspapers when my pager goes off: I have to ring Yvonne who is hyper, excited and also immensely relieved that the “other Labour supporter” is her old mate Stuart MacLennnan, a Labour full time agent, former Parliamentary Candidate and standard bearer for the party in 70 elections!

We talk with me leaning against the railings at the Waverly Market, and then I start to walk towards the West End to get a taxi at the rank at the Caledonian Hotel.

Half way along I decide that the fall of the Roman Empire had nothing on this. Young people drunk, vomiting, falling over: young people wandering about the road: young people shouting and looking for action: young people taking over.

Now I live a sheltered life. Glendaruel on a Saturday night might have a touch of excitement at the Colintraive Hotel, but from my house, the sky and the landscape seems the same. Thank goodness!

Here is uncharted territory. I pick my way along the most dramatic main street in the world, with eyes not fixed on the floodlit castle, but on the weaving individuals before and behind. I never really feel threatened at all in normal life, but now I am clutching my briefcase, my papers and my phone as if my life depended on it.

I get to the taxi rank and have to wait half an hour; In front of me is a large (and I mean large) girl in a lemon jacket and the tightest leather trousers you ever saw. She is smoking aggressively, waving her cigarette about and brushing against almost everyone.

Suddenly I realise that no one looks happy. Everyone around me is talking about having a “good night” but frankly even the most exhausted of my colleagues looks happier. Is this a deep Calvinistic lesson (I am not a Calvinist - rather a dyed in the wool Episcopalian who once trained to be a priest) or just my prejudice?

The taxi comes and takes me home. Old fogey that I am becoming I reflect on how tonight has been an eye opener. We are providing nothing for our young people except the excitement of the moment - the escapism of the evening and nothing else.

Can we offer more? I think about the manifesto and wonder if we needed to re-write it for this audience. And not just re-write, but go out and tell.

Yes we can! And that is more than a slogan - more an affirmation of what we need to do.

For everyone of those young people in Edinburgh tonight needs to know. There is something better - and that is the confidence, the pride and the responsibility of independence. Not as a concept

How can we tell them - and now?

28/4/97

Alex Balfour, the editor of this blatt (as they say in Glasgow) has asked each of his diarists to say “Vote for Me!” and give reasons.

Now as I am not standing, I feel a little distant from this injunction. My job is to run the campaign, and to spin the message for the press.

But Alex has asked, and Alex has been so supportive and kind I haven’t the heart to refuse. So (being mine own man) I interpret it freely, and set myself the challenge of giving the most pressing and persuasive case for supporting the SNP that I can in 200 words.

And they’re off…….

First of all vote SNP if you believe in Independence - we are the only party that offers that choice for Scotland.

Secondly vote SNP if you believe in any constitutional change at all - the experience of the last 100 years has shown that Labour won’t deliver anything unless someone is breathing down their neck. We provide the petrol in the engine of constitutional change, and without the petrol it won’t move.

Thirdly vote SNP if you want to get rid of the Tories - both the anti-Scottish Tories who have ruled Scotland without a mandate for the last 18 years, and the pseudo Tories in New Labour who are only concerned about power in Middle England and who are now totally contemptuous of the needs of Mainstream Scotland.

And vote SNP if you believe in a society that blends enterprise and compassion - a society that measures its success not by it’s seat on the Security Council, nor by it nuclear weapons, but by how we care for those who cannot care for themselves, and how we encourage our country to be an equal partner in Europe and the World

192 words - so how do I use my last eight?

Yes we can win the best for Scotland!

200. Is that OK Alex?

Day 21

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:38:39 +0100

26/4/97

Sometimes the two halves of one’s life come together with a crash, and like the meeting of matter and anti-matter, the explosion devastates everything around.

I got to Picardy at 10.40 after a couple of interview, and immediately had to another one for the BBC. By that time a Sun photographer had arrived to take a shot of David Hayman, who is recutting his broadcast from two weeks ago.

David had rung me at about 9.30 saying he needed to talk, and now he said he really needed to talk so we grabbed a seat and a cup of coffee. Then he says he doesn’t want to do the broadcast!

Ho, Hum…..forty eight hours from transmission, twenty four from delivery and there is a problem….a real problem!

It turns out that since talking to David about what we might do for the end broadcast, sending him a revised script, arranging for Sean Connery to record part of it, booking a studio and an edit time , changing them because David was running late filming in Ireland,, abandoning my plans to chair tonight’s rally in Aberdeen well, all that time, David has been mulling over what he thinks is best and has decided that the only option is to show his first broadcast totally unchanged.

The two parts of me start to stretch apart. As a director I can understand David’s strong wish not to have his work tampered with. Indeed he is here because I was determined that the changes have to be made by him.

But as a spin doctor , directing and devising this campaign, I know that we cannot just show the film again: repetition in a campaign is diminution. You have to build and I want to build by cutting him in to introduce the film (to explain why we are showing it twice) and to crystallise the message by having some new words and a new, powerful and instantly recognisable voice delivering them.

David’s co-director Catriona is there too. The three of us argue and discuss for about forty minutes and come to a compromise - we will split the problem into two parts. First of all we will shoot the intro and then look at it in the context of the piece. Only after that , if it has worked, will we tackle the commentary.

The Sun photographer has done his bit and we start filming. Catriona has a real visual imagination and within an hour we have the intro working. We look at it and then go for lunch (mindful of the advice of an old executive producer friend: “There is no production problem so great that it can’t be solved over a good lunch!”)

Towards the end of the meal we start to talk about scripts. I have had a transcript of David’s first broadcast faxed over to me and we discuss possible ways in which we can integrate the Connery voice over.

Back at Picardy we cut the intro in , have a moment of panic because the music DAT isn’t there (there is fortunately a clean music track on the video master) and then begin to look at the ways in which the final broadcast might work.

After an hour David simply says that he can’t do it. He tells me to get on with it, and he will then tell me if he agrees or not. So I set too working out what needs to be dropped, where Connery’s message and my new script can be used, and how the piece will conclude.

It takes about two hours and then I suggest we break for a few minutes before watching the final tape. Biddy Joyce (Picardy’s dynamo and fixer) joins us and we all watch it in silence. When it is finished there is a beat and then Biddy says “Wow”. We all look at David and he holds his head in his hands.

“Well…..(long pause)….(longer pause) well (longest pause)…..I don’t think so. It is good, and better than I could have imagined this morning. But is not my film as I made it, and it still doesn’t fully represent my personal view”

I have now split in two. One part of me is working out whether I have the footage from previous years to allow me to make a new broadcast with the Connery voice over. I decide I have but it will take until about three or four tomorrow morning.

The other part starts to discuss and debate the issues again.

I walk up and down. I crouch next to David’s chair so that I can look him in the eye. I argue and exhort and so does he.

And the awful thing is that he is right, and so am I. But only one of us can win, alas.

I know that he knows that I will not show it if he says “No”. And I am glad he knows that . Politics may be my passion, but so is film - and both have to be bounded by honesty and integrity.

After half an hour we agree to make some more minor changes to see if that helps. They are made and then David looks at the whole thing again.

He thinks for a minute or two and then says;

“I don’t want to do it, but I know that you do. It is better than I thought it could be, but it is still not the film I made. But it has to be your shout. If you decide to show it, then I won’t fall out with you, publicly or privately. We all want the same thing at this election”

We chat on for a minute or two, hug when he leaves and I then sit in a quandary for ages. I want David to want his own broadcast and I don’t want to do anything he doesn’t like. But I think it is better for this particular showing to change it in this way. But if he doesn’t see it, then maybe I am wrong.

I decide to get it copied and start the delivery arrangements - but not to finish them until I have talked to Alex. I know he will back my judgment on something like this, but I want to rehearse the arguments again with someone I trust.

I have to be sure - for myself, to be honest - that I am doing the right thing and that means finding a way of re-uniting the politician and the film maker inside me.

It takes me a while, but the broadcast is delivered and goes out on Monday. Yet still I am not sure: or rather I am sure it is what we need now, and that Hayman and Connery make it absolutely right.

But I am not sure that I would have been any different from David in his situation. Nor should I have been.

Nor sure that there is not the need for eternal internal vigilance at the point where people and politics meet.

Days 19 & 20

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:24:16 +0100

24/4/97

Apologies - I dated yesterday the 24th as well, which just shows how time is losing its meaning in this endless campaign.

Anyway, this is Thursday so it must be just seven days to go. I feel like a convict scratching a notch in the wall every day to keep track of time - I lie in my bath first thing and calculate what I was doing a week, two weeks, three weeks ago. As of yesterday I now cannot remember unless I go and look at this diary, or delve through the papers that are threatening to take over the tops of both my filing cabinets.

Then a taxi arrives, whisks me to the office or to the Press Conference Hotel , there is a meeting, then a briefing, then a press conference, then a chat, then back to the office, they three thousand phone calls, a procession of people that are wearing out my carpet , then writing, then interviews, then more people, then more writing, and then at some stage late into the night Kevin Pringle (the Party’s Director of Communications and Research) and I are left pacing the floor of the press office watching television, talking , checking tomorrow’s press statement…..and still answering calls at midnight. Taxi back to the flat, fall into bed , fall asleep while reading and wake at two with the light and radio on. Then the alarm goes, followed by my pager and I start to run my bath.

It is an electoral treadmill, with the party staff as the busy hamsters running on, and on and on. And yet the camaraderie grows greater each day - I may snap from time to time (I do - and usually feel sorrry twenty seconds later) but there are still a lot of laughs and some surrealistic humour. We are truly all in this together and the shared commitment makes the difference.

Only one thing today stands out from the routine and the pressure - the first live Internet interview I have done.

Some weeks ago AOL rang (they didn’t use e-mail, surprisingly) and asked for someone to go live into their politics forum to answer questions. I said I would do it, and thought little more about it until yesterday, when I realised I hadn’t received the membership and software they promised. It arrived, though in the nick of time and - without sounding like a Computer Magazine review - it installed first time and was easy to configure. Perhaps the only surprise I got was when logged on and onto the news page, there was my photo!

I had series of chats this evening with Sunday journalists and totally forgot about the 9.00 p.m. log in time. They had to ring me, but once on line the enquiries came fast and furious. Some were off the wall, but some were serious policy points. It can run you a bit ragged typing furiously for an hour on any and every subject - and trying to be interesting with it - but the MC seemed pleased at the end, and the level of dialogue was better than you would get in a TV show.

I should have gone home when it was finished, but stayed and worked, and then started to watch “Trial by Night”. Almost as bad as I had feared - and who was that staring eyed, loud mouthed bearded man with the maniacal laugh?

I think I recognise him from my bleary glimpses in the mirror each morning. And I think he is starting to fade away before my eyes……..

25/4/97

A wonderfully cloak and dagger day.

Yesterday evening Allison Hunter got a call from the husband of a Labour Councilor in Glasgow who said that she wanted to vote for us at the General Election and was going to tell the papers next week.

I have dealt with a number of individuals in her position over the past year and I know at first hand what lengths New Labour will go to smear them. I feel that she needs advice and help, and I also want to talk to her - to decide on whether she can take the strain. Politics may be life and death, but it shouldn’t ask people to destroy themselves.

Allison and I agreed that we would have to meet her, and the only the possible time was early Friday evening in Glasgow.

I had just finalised arrangements for Andy Collier ( a freelance journalist who used to be the Scottish Sun’s Political Correspondent) to undertake a world exclusive interview for the Scottish Sun with Sean Connery - which because of logistics had to be done over the phone from Collier’s house in Eaglesham, near East Kilbride.

Edinburgh to Eaglesham then on to Glasgow is not a standard journey in Scotland and as I have taken a total self denying ordinance on driving for the next week (having almost fallen asleep at the wheel twice recently) it was agreed that I should get a car and driver.

Walking out the office at 1.40 I was not prepared for a man in a uniform, with a dark Ford Scorpio. But this is what I had, so I determined to enjoy it!

I duly fell asleep in the car but was jerked awake at East Kilbride in order to navigate through roundabout city - the worst aspect of new towns, and there are many. I arrived at Collier’s early, to find his wife on tenterhooks about a new house they were trying to buy. Being unable to focus on anything other than politics, I suspect I was less than sympathetic, particularly when she politely asked me not to smoke a cigar in her house, and I had to stand at the open doors of the Conservatory to take my puff.

Andy arrived back in time for the call to Sean, and the interview was great - he is a man of enormous intelligence and passionate commitment to Scotland, independence and the SNP. In the conversation with Andy , held on a speaker phone, he confirms not only that passion, but also his generous financial support for the party and his dearest wish to recite the “Declaration of Arbroath” (the founding document of Scottish Independence) at the first session of an independent Parliament. Inspiring.

The interview finished just after 4.00 by which time my driver had returned.

He was already exhibiting signs of great suspicion - he had assumed (having driven Alex on several occasions during the past five weeks) that I was on some sort of speaking or interview tour. Arriving at a semi in Eaglesham without obvious cause worried him, as did my admission to the house by a woman obviously in on her own.

Now we drove on to Glasgow. The original location was to be a hotel in Giffnock, in the southern suburbs, but I was paged as we turned onto the Fenwick Moor road, and told that I should now proceed to the Bay Horse Public House in Pollokshaws Rd. He took the change of venue stoically, but suspicions were rising.

The Bay Horse turned out to be a dingy looking pub, behind a bus shelter on a main road.. His suspicions were now astronomical and went into outer space when I asked him to ask the driver to park round the corner, so that I could walk up to the pub.

Keeping out of the way of the pub regulars was particularly important as every time we stopped the driver seemed to instantly dematerialise from the driving seat, and rematerialise opening my door. Although this is clearly something they teach at the school for chauffeurs a uniformed driver opening the car door for a bearded , six foot tall man with dark glasses outside a pub would - in Glasgow - signify either the arrival of a Senior Labour Councilor fresh home from a junket , or a drug dealer coming to collect the debts.

The lounge of the Bay Horse was deserted apart from a couple at the bar, and a huge video screen showing the tackiest of satellite television. I ordered a gin and tonic and sit in the farthest corner. Conspiracy was beginning to get to me.

When Allison arrived I felt like mouthing some sentence heavy with code, but we did acknowledge each other reasonably normally, and carried on our wait.

Yvonne Anderson (who arrived half an hour late) turned out to be a pleasant, thoughtful but very stressed lady, with more than her fair share of personal problems. Her reasons for joining us were clear and politically straightforward: a belief that Labour would fail to deliver a Scottish Parliament because Blair had no commitment to it, and a revulsion at Gordon Brown’s determination to be an Iron Chancellor and leave Scottish Government in the spiral of decline which has meant more and more redundancies, more and more school closures, and more and more suffering.

Yvonne’s husband joined us and I outlined to them what they could expect from New Labour - vilification, smears and vicious personal abuse. I was impressed by the way they were prepared for it, and prepared to do what was right in order to be free of the lies and deceits that being in New Labour had imposed on them.

Allison and I left together and in a quick confab agreed that we would welcome her decision, support her to our best ability as New Labour attempted to destroy her, and help to negotiate her entry into the party and into the Glasgow Council Group of the SNP - doubling it at a stroke!

As I turned to go, the driver shimmied into existence and the door glided open. By now I think he had decided that I was involved in something terrible, but that it was probably best to keep on my good side. What’s more I was beginning to think that I was in the Cosa Nostra, and that next stop would be an Italian restaurant where the boys were busy buffing up their violin cases.

I dozed again on the way back to Edinburgh , stopping at the Harthill services to get cigars - and although trying to exit the car quickly, again being treated to the “beam me up Scottie” approach to professional care of one’s passengers.

It took only about ten minutes in the office for the feeling of sinister power to wear off. One cannot hope to be mysterious and conspiratorial when faced with the prospect of a PEB edit tomorrow - nor with fifteen messages , twelve e-mails, and at least one candidate whose belief (nay certainty) he is going to win against a 20,000 Labour majority is making him ripe for care in the community and driving the rest of us to an early grave.

Days 16 - 18

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:17:09 +0100

21/4/97

Press Conference with Alex and John Swinney first things, and then as Alex undertakes an interview with Robbie Dinwoodie of the Herald, I start to go in search of what I think might be the story of the week.

Since the RTE broadcast on Thursday night various Scottish journalists have been trying to get hold of a transcript or a tape. Late on Friday I spoke to a friend of mine in RTE (no names, no pack drill) and he promised to get a copy to me as soon as possible. This morning it was still in Dublin, but as ever the charm and efficiency of RTE arranged to have the item played down the line and into an Edinburgh studio early this afternoon.

My memory of what Brian Wilson said is getting a bit sketchy after four days of a General Election campaign, and my normal self doubt is fueled by the fact that Peter MacMahon of the Scotsman was on the same programme with me and Brian and picked nothing up. Two journalists to whom I have mentioned my recollection are very keen however to hear the tape, so this afternoon we will find out.

Just after 11,00 I get a fax from the ITC. Incredibly, given the establishment bias of all such organisations, they have ruled in our favour, and Channel 4 and Channel 5 will have to broadcast our PEBs. There is of course a sting in the tail - our first broadcast is deemed to have fallen, as we complained too late!.

That is rich coming from a body which has taken seven days to make up its mind, but we accept the victory with good grace - and then go back for more!

At 3.00 I hold a press briefing to announce the results of our broadcasting monitoring exercise. Having had several knockbacks from the Scottish courts on the issue of balance and impartiality, we have been using the Broadcasting Monitoring Company (the market leader) to survey all the political items in the first half of April. Two very senior Scottish statisticians have analysed the reports (it is amazing just who is in membership of the party when you go and look) and the report from our Research team based on this analysis is fascinating.

There is no doubt that the Scottish viewer is immensely disadvantaged by the present broadcasting set up. There is no problems with coverage from Scottish organisations - but less than 20% of News and Current Affairs seen in Scotland is made in Scotland. The Network is responsible for the rest, and the Network has involved the SNP in only 14% of all the political items!

The briefing is robust and fun. The harder they press, the harder I fight back. There is no doubt that coupled with the ITC decision we are making headway on the broadcasting issue, so dear to my heart.

If I could be granted, by one wave of the magic wand, one real change in Scottish society (of course in addition to independence) , it would be that it had a fair, productive and truly national broadcasting service. Because without it, the cause of Scotland will always be mis-represented, under reported and often ignored.

The RTE tape arrives during the briefing, and a couple of journalists come into my office to hear it. After a lot of searching we find the moment - Brian Wilson, Labour’s Rebutter General has admitted that a Labour Scottish Assembly would not be allowed to exercise its sovereignty and move on to independence. Wilson has arrogantly and impertinently rebutted that famous plea for liberty from Parnell himself

““No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation: no man has a right to say to his country - thus far shalt thou go, and no further!”

The journalists set off on the hunt. And I reflect on a lucky break - and on the forensic skills of Vincent Browne the RTE interviewer who brought a fresh mind to the theological complexities of Scottish constitutional change!

22/4/97

The hunt has been successful and the papers have good coverage of the Wilson remark on RTE. But the New Labour spin doctors decide to tough it out. The problem of that approach is made clear when, at the end of the New Labour Press Conference in Glasgow today Brian Taylor, BBC Scotland’s Political Correspondent asks this question of Jack MacConnell, Labour’s Scottish General Secretary and my counterpart in their organisation

"Jack, why worry, isn't the electoral system (of New Labour's devolved parliament) designed to prevent the SNP getting power?"

MacConnell replies with one clear word: “Correct”

This breaks just as I am about to leave our Press Conference. The BBC crew arrives back for a new interview and the in the office the phones are ringing off the hook. We get a statement out and wait to see what happens.

A lot, but I don’t think enough.. Although it leads the BBC Scottish News, and is featured well in Scottish Television, it becomes clear that the print media are having difficulty with it, and that it is not igniting as strongly as the Blair “sovereignty” quote. It doesn’t make the network.

Partly it is the success of the close down operation from New Labour - though that operation is offending many journalists who are being treated like pariahs and told that they have no right to ask questions.

And partly it is that people seem already to accept without question and without remark that Labour can’t be trusted (as a majority said in the Scottish 500 programme last night - 56% at the end of an hour with Robin Cook, though it was only 33% when the programme started. At that rate two hours of Robin Cook would wipe out the Labour vote in Scotland entirely!). And that New Labour will do anything to get into power, and that includes selling out Scottish democracy and Scotland itself. After all, of what interest is that to their key voters in the shires?

I draft a first stab at Alex’s regular “Herald” article and discuss it with him. We will use the Parnell, and hit this subject hard.

But as the day goes on I feel a chill in the air about New Labour..

If this is how they behave in opposition, God knows how they would be in government.

Blair called some Scottish journalists “unreconstructed wankers” earlier this year in Scotland - an off the record remark which was picked up and reported by that fair minded, professional (and immensely likable) journalist John Arlidge who writes on Scotland for the Observer and who treats his role as a sort of “foreign correspondent” in the best Cameron tradition!. Now Blair won’t even speak to the Scottish media, save those he approves of .

And Brian Wilson, wearing his other hat as eminance grise of the West Highland Free Press (which in its early days was the best and most radical Scottish local paper) now simply uses the paper to punt his politics (fair enough I suppose) but also to vilify the SNP and even its candidates. For a man who used to inveigh against the power of Press Barons he now plays that despicable game with the worst of them.

Rumour has it that Wilson might be Secretary of State for Scotland if Blair wins. George Robertson certainly isn’t up to it, and now there is a lot of internal Labour briefing against him.

A Blair government with Wilson as Scottish Governor General? A prospect as near to totalitarianism as one can image. In terms of fair Scottish governance and the inclusion of all the people, a prospect just as grim as we have now.

I finish the day depressed. Not by our campaign, which is going better than we could ever have imagined, but by a political party which used to stand up for what was right, and which now is devious, dishonest , vicious and vindictive. Drunk with the prospect of power and with so little moral principal to help them exercise it responsibly.

Somewhere in the heart of all former Labour Party voters in Scotland (and I am one of them) is a little corner that remains in awe of what that Party attempted to achieve for the people. We remember, because it is part of our inheritance, the passion of the Red Clydesiders, and the thousands who cheered them on to the train to London, to speak for the people who were ignored and exploited.

And that little corner shrivels in shame when one witnesses the betrayals, the cynicism and the sheer arrogance of today’s New Labour.

Am I naïve to think that politics is, should be and has to be, about honesty and hope?

Probably so, but I am proud of that naiveté. And proud of my party, because it believes it too.

24/4/97

If I am ever commissioned to write a manual of the black arts, called “Teach yourself spin doctoring” I shall have to include the injunction:

Never agree to take part in “Trial by Night”

Trial by Night is a Scottish Television programme that gets an audience to debate propositions , and then vote on them, But least that implies the stately elegance of a Senior Common Room, with the crystal sherry decanter to hand, the producers actually have in mind a public stoning , with the addition of a scourging in the stocks and a little bit of ritual disemboweling.

Gordon MacDougall, the producer, was the organiser of Scotland United (an all party movement that had great success just after the last General Election until Labour shafted it) and I like and admire him. But even someone of principal and political passion like him has been sucked into the myth that poltiics on TV is automatically boring.

It is that myth - that anti-democratic, patronising to the audience myth - that drives good creative people to construct programmes that resemble the final encounter between the legions of the Mad Mhadi and Gordon of Khartoum.

Trial by Night doesn’t do politics as such, so tonight’s “special” is called “The Spin Doctors Speak”. Weeks ago I agreed to do it, but when I get the studio I am already beginning to have second thoughts. These are accelerated by a glimpse of some of the audience arriving: there are half a dozen “hooray-henry’s” from the Tories in the Conservative canvassing outfit of dark blue blazer and open necked striped shirt (probably from Pinks of Jermyn St) and a small man with an earnest stutter who introduces himself as “The supporter of the Natural Law Party”. He is so dapper, neat and - well, dull - that one wonders if stamp collecting would not be too exciting for him, let alone the rigours of Yogic flying.

The four party guests adjourn to an office upstairs. Three of us go off to smoke in the cubical set aside by STV management for those with unacceptable habits, while Jack MacConnell walks around with a far away look on his face. I’ve known Jack for a number of years and have sparred with him on innumerable programmes. But tonight’s Jack is showing distinct signs of strain - a fact that is also remarked on by Andy Miles, the Liberals Chief Exec.

Allowing for the fact that he is exhausted, like the rest of us, there is a distinct air of a man who has been told that his future is not all he might have wished. Acute watchers of the Labour scene have taken much from the fact that he was recently relegated to chasing the chicken from Labour Press Conferences.

Could it be that his reward for attempting to neuter all the finer feelings of Labour Party members in Scotland in the cause of victory for the Great Helmsman may not , in the event of government, be a place in the sun , but actually a sub postmaster’s job on Muckle Flugga (with no guarantees in the event of privatisation)?

We go onto the set at about 9.20, but there is a further delay while a technical problem is sorted. Each of the Spin Doctors sits with his “team” of supporters - ours resplendent in “Youth for Independence” T shirts.

The Liberal Democrats have clearly had problems recruiting young people: either that or their liberal policies have merely attracted the would be young, who still have never had a piece of the action. The “Hooray Henrys” have bedecked themselves with curious cards stuck onto their persons. This is an attempt to put slogans in camera shot but actually makes them look like demented bag ladies, carrying around totems of vast, mystical and loopy significance.

As one would expect, there is a blandness about the New Labour youth. A word out of place and it is Siberia!

The programme happens. The presenters are clearly being badgered through their ear pieces and told to keep order, but are also trying to whip up hysteria. The result is bitty and bad tempered, and looks thoroughly unedifying. But for viewers in the wee sma hours, it will probably match their mood, and give the odd laugh.

McConnell is sitting next to me, and incredibly tries the old spin doctor trick of browbeating the presenter off camera with the claim that his people are being ignored. I have to do the same standing next to him, in order to show how ludicrous it is! To her credit Charlene Sweeney doesn’t bat an eyelid, and proves my suspicion that has the makings of a very good presenter, providing she gets experience of a wider range of programmes.

In one of the programme breaks McConnell suddenly becomes animated, starts shouting at me about the SNP plans for conscription (there aren’t any) and lunges to grab the manifesto from my hand. A nightmare vision of brawling spin doctors flashes through my mind, but then he subsides and goes back into a trance.

The programme ends at after 11.00. It has been far too hot, completely chaotic , hugely confrontational and at times has taken trivialisation not just down the drain, but under the sceptic tank! Towards the end I resist a line of questioning on drugs which attempts to divide all the parties, and - some anger stirring in me - talk about the need for people and communities to work together to solve not some tabloidised “drug problem” but the many drug problems that exist in society. That answer seems to provide a moment of unanimity and stillness.

At the end we go back upstairs - followed by five of the studio audience who are clearly from the SWP or some such organisation. As usual they have spent the entire programme whining about the way in which politics ignores the” real” issues (which for them are general strikes, nationalisation of the commanding heights, and overthrow of everything and anything ) and then (as usual too) are the first to the free drink - presumably because it is a gesture of contempt for the establishment and a practical exercise in the redistribution of wealth.

Andrew Wilson and Sam Barber have kindly come with me, and Andrew drives me home - giving a lift to Andy Miles and one of his Liberal Colleagues. I am so tired by now that I fall asleep in mid conversation, and am only wakened when Andy is dropped of in Edinburgh.

Only a week to go. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz