Britain’s Labour Party has won a hotly contested special election in Scotland, a sign that its battered popularity is recovering.
The vote in the former coal mining town of Glenrothes is the first since British Prime Minister Gordon Brown launched an unprecedented and widely praised bailout of some of Britain’s leading banks last month. Brown’s governing Labour Party has lost four special elections since he replaced Tony Blair in June last year. The win breaks the losing streak and could breathe some new life into Labour’s third term.
“It is a truly remarkable performance,” John Curtice, who studies political attitudes at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, told BBC television. “Right at the very top of its [Labour’s] expectations.”
PHOTO: AP
Last month, as Brown’s approval ratings against the opposition Conservatives plummeted, Labour appeared resigned to losing the election in a landslide to the Scottish National Party (SNP), which advocates independence from Great Britain.
But Brown has bounced back, winning plaudits both at home and abroad for his adroit handling of the global economic crisis.
Support for his Labour Party had plumbed historical lows, but more recent surveys showed a slight increase in support.
The economic crisis hit Scotland particularly hard: Two of its most iconic businesses, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Halifax Bank of Scotland, had to be bailed out by British taxpayers in a deal brokered by Brown, SNP leader Alex Salmond’s nemesis.
The implosion of Iceland’s economy — once held up as a model by Salmond’s separatist followers — was a further embarrassment.
Brown, a fellow Scot, argued that the bank rescue showed that Scotland could not do without the rest of the United Kingdom. Some Scottish voters seemed swayed by Brown’s performance on economic issues.
“We need someone like Brown,” 19-year-old mother Kitty Macpherson said before the election.
Brown was also helped by roots in the area. He is from a neighboring district in Scotland, and his friend, Lindsay Roy, a school principal, was the Glenrothes Labour candidate.
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