God Bless the Queen. She turned up in the U.S. to honor the 400th anniversary of the ill-fated Jamestown colony. Her Majesty is not known to enjoy presiding over commemorations of colonial failures. It was said that her affirmative RSVP came because the observance happily dovetailed with another famous event Elizabeth R has always longed to attend - the Kentucky Derby. She’s quite a pro in the horse business. The seven days of Royal races known as Ascot is surely the true holy week for the woman who also reigns over the Church of England
Tongues wagged that she was happy about her holiday schedule for reasons other than the promise of a Mint Julep by the weekend. On the day QE 2 arrived stateside, ballots were being cast throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. No big deal, one might think, for a woman who has seen plenty of politicos come and go in over 50 years on the throne. But her instincts must have tipped the Queen that this particular election was going to be a galloping big deal. And so it was.
In Wales, the Labour Party lost three seats, enough to force the other parties there to form a coalition government. In England, despite low voter turnout, the Conservatives won 870 English council seats. These gains, if fully translated at the next general election (expected to be called sometime in the next two years) would assure the Tories a win over Labour and bring about the election of David Cameron as Prime Minster. These will not be comforting thoughts for Gordon Brown who, for the past ten years, has been Tony Blair’s understudy for that part.
Mr. Brown, a native of Scotland, must have awakened on Friday morning to the feeling that a cold and ominous wind was blowing down from the North. The Scottish National Party had finally gained majority status in their own Parliament, albeit by only one seat (47 to 46) over the Labour Party, ending 50 years of Labour running the show.
A bit of a history lesson is required to explain why this is another bad omen for Gordon Brown. May 2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union. Under this agreement, England and Scotland were joined to establish The Kingdom of Great Britain (KGB). They pledged fealty to one monarch and blended their independent parliaments to create the Parliament of Great Britain. The center held, so to speak, until 1934 when the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party merged to form the Scottish National Party. The SNP won their first KGB (fretful initials) parliamentary seat in 1945, and not another until 1967. But by the 1970’s, the SNP was receiving almost a third of all votes cast in Scotland, held nearly 40 percent of elected offices at the regional and district levels and had sent eleven members to serve in the KGB Parliament.
Writing in the Sunday Observer a month before the May 07 elections, Andrew Rawnsley made an accurate prediction, with a nursery rhyme twist. “Numpty, according to a survey, is Scotland's favourite word,” he twinkled, “a great term to describe someone who is an idiot. The Labour high command are behaving like a bunch of numpties as they desperately try to stop the Scottish National party.”
The current head of the Scottish National Party is a 52-year-old economist named Alex Salmond. On the morning after the elections, Salmond, now in line to become Scotland’s First Minister, said: “Never again will the Labour Party think that it has a divine right to government.” Once caricatured in the press as “Smart Alex,” he is now more frequently referred to as “the Braveheart of the 21st century.” Gordon Brown is known as a dour Scot who looks like he has dried egg on his tie, even when he doesn’t.
In the next four years, the SNP has announced its intention to hold a national referendum on securing complete independence - also known as devolution - for Scotland. This will be require a nifty sales campaign as only 25% of Scots presently indicate they want full sovereignty. Partial devolution has already been achieved via The Scotland Act of 1998. This legislation granted the 126 seat Scottish Parliament the right to govern on its own in social matters such as education and health policies, and the supervision of its prison system. Power to make decisions which affected the whole United Kingdom, or those which were international in nature, continued to reside with the Parliament at Westminster in London. Since 1999, The Queen has had a standing invitation to parade up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and to join in a celebration of all things Scottish. Her own family ties to Scotland run deep, but this must seem like another post-colonial sort of occasion to add to her busy calendar.
Please take note. During those four pre-referendum years, the SNP will have more to do than raise a public groundswell for liberty while they manage the homeland. Poll workers and voters across Scotland last week experienced problems which one man quipped “made America’s hanging chads seem like nothing.” An estimated 100,000 ballots or 10 percent of all votes cast in Scotland’s constituencies were tossed out as “spoilt.” Salmond promised a full judicial inquiry into the vote-counting debacle when he becomes First Minister and immediately blamed the voting chaos on Labour’s ineptitude and loss of moral authority. How the Numpties have fallen.
This takes us back to Gordon Brown who, despite his party’s death by a thousand cuts, continues his slow motion lurch into history. These polling results and the doings on his home turf will not keep him out of Number 10 Downing, but they do little to assure him a long lease on the PM’s official residence. The centrists have vowed not to stand against him as Party Leader when the vote comes up in June or July, but a challenge against Brown, from the left wing of the Labour Party, is still a possibility.
This is a troubling thought for those who do not seek a return to the bad old days of hard-core socialist (versus Blair’s New) Labour. Could Gordon Brown be seduced by the left wing? Might he be tempted to return to the dark side of the force? What does his record suggest? Who in the World is (James) Gordon Brown? Answers will follow in Part Two of this report, but if one believes in signs and portends, ponder this:
There sits Elizabeth R in Kentucky, at Churchill Downs, trying to enjoy her holiday and forget about what may soon become a war of attrition - waged at the Welsh and Scottish borders, back home. She looks over the field of competitors in the Derby and is overcome by a sense of irony.
What does HRH find but a horse named Sedgefield (running at 50 to 1 odds) and another, Storm in May, (at 30 to 1 odds). What is so ironic about that? For 24 years, the seat Tony Blair held, as a Member of Parliament, was the constituency of Sedgefield.
And the second horse? Well, just like the man who is set to become the 11th Prime Minster to serve under Elizabeth R, Storm in May and Gordon Brown are both blind in one eye.
