To some extent, Gordon Brown deserves the plaudits he’s getting this morning. Yes, the Labour victory in Glenrothes will be have been catalysed by a number of factors – the quality of their candidate, Lindsay Roy; the financial and economic crises; the deployment, cynical though it may have been, of Sarah Brown; and the failings of the opposition campaigns. But in the background to all that was an uncharacteristic risk by our PM – his decision to closely involve himself in the campaign, made when party support for him was at a low ebb. And it paid off.
The post mortem now begins for the other parties. All will be asking questions and having questions asked of them. The SNP: whether their nationalist approach works during an economic downturn, when the Scottish public may be less inclined to be cast adrift from Westminster and the cash it represents.
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