Whether 1988 or 2025, we want politicians with something real to say

The National

2 days ago

Labour currently hold 50 of Scotland's 72 seats in the House of Commons and are growing to dislike the moniker the 'feeble fifty'. Devolution is still 10 years off, Neil Kinnock is still failing rightwards in the forlorn search for the centre ground, the poll tax is poised to roll out across Scotland and Mrs Thatcher has no notion she is entering her final years in Downing Street.
At this confluence of events in 1988, Labour found themselves defending the seat of Glasgow Govan after the incumbent MP Bruce Millan made an unparliamentary bid for freedom, escaping the House of Commons for the comfort of a European Commission job in Brussels.
Just over a year earlier, Millan won Govan with a majority of just over 19,500, with Labour taking 65% of the vote. The SNP attracted just 3851. All of which must have given Labour a significant degree of earned confidence about their chances of holding on to the constituency. But in November 1988, the political weather was changing. Labour nominated trade unionist Bob Gillespie. The SNP selected Jim Sillars.
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In contrast with Sillars's native wit and quick repartee, it became obvious Gillespie was not a polished media performer. When the gabs were given out, Gillespie missed out on the gift. Notwithstanding these obvious vulnerabilities, STV was still able to coax all eight of the Govan by-election candidates to submit themselves to the cameras to answer questions in front of a live studio audience. The raft of candidates included Gillespie, Sillars, a fresh-faced Bernard Ponsonby, my old university colleague Douglas Chalmers for the Communists, and Screaming Lord Sutch for the Monster Raving Loonies.
During the programme, the candidates were given the opportunity to cross-examine one another on a topic of their choice. What happened remains a cautionary tale for contemporary media handlers, which may go a long way to explaining the many absences of the Invisible Man currently in the running to represent Labour in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in Holyrood.
With a Cheshire cat's grin and a feline look in either eye, Sillars took the opportunity to ask Gillespie a technical question on what he thought about 'additionality' in European funding programmes. Visibly stumped, but unwilling to admit that he hadn't the foggiest what Sillars was talking about, Gillespie rambled.
A polished deflection, it wasn't. As Sillars recalls, Gillespie was so flummoxed, he managed to knock over his microphone during his answer. The debate performance was widely perceived as a disaster, and the SNP went on to beat Gillespie in Govan by more than 3500 votes. Gillespie, to some extent unfairly, got a lot of the blame from his party colleagues, who insulated themselves from more troubling questions about why they lost by concluding they'd selected a duff candidate who squandered their natural advantages.
But in 1988 as in 2025, you can only be eloquent if you actually have something to say. Labour's havers about how to resist the poll tax – if resist it they would at all – arguably had much more to do with the party's fate in Govan than one ashen-faced performance by the candidate facing a technical ambush by a wily opponent.
But the Govan debate has always struck me as an interesting political moment – and a risky strategy for Sillars to have adopted. One bad answer on an obscure issue of European policy seems unlikely to sink a political campaign – though a bad turn can certainly confirm existing perceptions and prejudices about a candidate, fixing their reputations, feeding doubts, giving their opponents reasons to feel encouraged. But gotcha moments like this can easily rebound on the clever politicians who spring these kinds of traps on their goodhearted but hapless opponents.
There's a very fine line – which has perhaps grown even finer since 1988 – between exposing your opponents' ignorance of big policy issues of the day, and coming off as an intellectual bully and a snob. Characteristically, Sillars got away with it.
I found myself wondering if painful memories of Govan may have something to do with Labour's decision not to give reporters meaningful opportunities to ask their candidate in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election impertinent questions.
You can understand the calculation. If the risks of your candidate participating in a political debate significantly outweigh the benefits to your campaign of exposing your boy to searching questions – from the media or anyone else – the safer thing to do is to pretend you're out pestering constituents at the crack of dawn or the end of the day, rather than offering up yet another viral clip to the internet, confirming all the unflattering perceptions your opponents have seeded about the numpty you might have nominated.
(Image: Gordon Terris)
STV were the first to be dinghied, Davy Russell declining the opportunity to participate in a panel debate. The reasons given for declining this friendly invitation are farcical. As STV's Colin Mackay put it last week: 'Davy Russell has told newspaper journalists that he would 'rather be chapping doors and talking and listening to ordinary voters' – but given that Scotland Tonight hustings is not on until 10.40 at night, if he is chapping doors, he's likely to get chased.'
It turns out Davy isn't a morning person either, or he is so much of a morning person, the good people of Hamilton should brace themselves to find him hanging off their doorbells at sparrow fart. Given the evolving excuses, it's difficult to say for sure. What we do know, however, is that Russell sadly 'wasn't able' to join BBC Good Morning Scotland's programme last week either. The programme was profiling all the candidates putting themselves forward to represent the Holyrood constituency – except for Mr Russell, who was inexplicably contemplating the universe or engaging in some wholesome homespun local activism instead.
Social media hits involving the candidate have also been significantly cut and edited, resulting in ungenerous questions about whether Russell can 'string a sentence together' and suggestions he's become the 'invisible man' of the campaign, at least in terms of national coverage. Curiously, Anas Sarwar's reaction to suggestions that perhaps we should hear a bit more from his candidate and that his absence from the airwaves might suggest a lack of confidence under scrutiny was to claim these criticisms amounted to class snobbery against the whole constituency.
'That's a completely disparaging comment that is below the belt,' the Scottish Labour leader said, claiming it 'demonstrates a classist approach to someone who is from this community and speaks like someone from this community'.
I don't know about you, but I haven't had to use Adobe Premiere Pro to get a coherent line or two of conversation out of folk from this particular corner of South Lanarkshire. If anything is classist, isn't it the suggestion that criticising an individual in hiding from the mildest kinds of democratic scrutiny must, somehow, represent a condescending commentary on the community itself?
If your candidate refuses to talk to the media except in the most stage-managed fashion, if his minders maintain a constant cordon sanitaire around him to prevent awkward questions being asked and answered on the record – the questions aren't about your candidate's accent or his eloquence, but whether he can produce a voice at all, and what he might use that voice to say.
People, generally, don't want to be embarrassed by their politicians. I may not be across every issue in public policy – but if you don't know where to start, we have a problem. Most folk don't like public speaking – but the shyest people in the room can be the most savage critics of other people's attempts and failures to force the words from their lips in a roughly coherent sequence.
Being an MSP is a public-facing job. Would-be politicians dodging scrutiny deserve no sympathy. If you choose to step into the circus ring, you must expect to meet lions. If you've no idea how to fend them off, and no idea how to find the gumption to even try, you're applying to join the wrong job. If you want a quiet life, become a librarian.