Scotland Votes: Mid Scotland and Fife Part 1: Fife

This simply covers the Fife seats. The Mid Scotland seats are here and Regional Seats are here.

Mid Scotland and Fife is a rather heterogeneous region. It covers four council areas: Fife, Clackmanshire, Perth and Kinross, and Stirling. The latter three are all quite small in population terms, and so have four seats between them, whereas Fife, as the third most populated council area in Scotland, has five seats all to itself. The region also demonstrates a significant mix of party loyalty with all four main parties having areas of some strength, only the Conservatives do not hold a constituency seat in the region, but this is more due to the traditional Conservative Party problem of inefficient voter spread than anything else.

For the purposes of our analysis I’ll be doing the five seats of Fife first and then doing the other four seats later. Fife is a notable region at Westminster because it is home to two former party leaders, both Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell have their seats in the area, with Brown representing Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath and Campbell representing North East Fife. Indeed, from 24^th of June 2007 until 15^th October 2007 two out of the big three party’s leaders represented Fife constituencies! Fife is more Labour leaning than the rest of the region, likely reflecting a stronger British identity due to the fact that the area is largely coastal. It is a rural region, however, with Kirkcaldy, population 40,000, being the largest settlement. Fife also contains St. Andrews University and the local presence of students from across the UK likely makes for a more ‘British’ in identity, not to mention the effect of students at the University themselves. Nonetheless the SNP do have areas of strength, and the Lib Dems also hold their own here.

Constituency	MSP	Notional Majority	Swing Required		First Elected	B-V.co.uk
Cowdenbeath	Helen Eadie	3839	7.3%		1999	LAB Safe
Dunfermline	Jim Tolson	77	0.2%		2007	Too Close
Mid Fife & Glenrothes	Tricia Marwick	2283	4.6%		2007	SNP Lean
North East Fife	Iain Smith	4566	7.8%	10.6%	1999	LD Lean
Kirkcaldy	Marilyn Livingstone	3354	5.9%		1999	LAB Lean

Cowdenbeath MSP Helen Eadie has been a fixture in the Scottish parliament since 1999. Originally elected to the Dunfermline East constituency, her new seat is Cowdenbeath. Her new seat is covered, partially, by Gordon Brown’s Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency so she may get a bit of a hand from the big clunking fist. Either way it will be a big ask for the SNP’s Ian Chisholm, a councillor in Fife, to get the 7.3% swing necessary to unseat the long-time incumbent. A safe Labour seat I’d say.

Dunfermline MSP Jim Tolson is an impressive fellow. The Lib Dems came a distant third to Labour’s Scott Barrie in this constituency in 1999, and fourth behind the SNP and an independent in 2003, when Tolson was a candidate. So it was a total shock when Tolson came from fourth to take this seat in 2007, more than doubling his party’s vote and defeating Barrie on a 10.8% swing. A surprise only increased by the fact that 2007 was the ‘year of the SNP’, where the great SNP wave unseated Labour, and the SNP were ahead of the Lib Dems in the seat. Clearly Tolson worked the seat extensively between 2003 and 2007, and won a strong personal vote. Labour’s candidate is Alex Rowley, their leader on Fife council. Tolson won what was, then, Dunfermline West by just 476 votes in 2007. Boundary changes to his new Dumfermline seat reduce his notional majority down to an achingly tight 77 vote notional majority. Normally if someone presented me with a constituency with such numbers, considering the national polling situation, I’d pop it straight into the ‘Labour lean’ column and move on my way, but Tolson’s 2007 result gives me pause. Generally speaking when a candidate manages that kind of swing against the national picture in opposition they gain sizeable majorities when they are tested as incumbents. This is especially true of Lib Dems who gain seats on tiny majorities (step forward please Mark Oaten, Tim Farron and Norman Lamb). It will take a lot to turn the local tide against the national Lib Dem picture, and I’m sure Labour are dragging up the fact that Tolson claimed his 2009 remembrance day poppy on expenses, so it is not like he is unblemished. This seat could really go either way in my opinion.

UPDATE: I originally called this as a seat as a 'too close' based on the factors I mentioned above. Based on the comments on this article, however, it is clear I made a bad call here, and the seat should be considered a fairly clear Labour lean. I would like to thank everyone who commented for their comments.

Tricia Marwick was the SNP candidate in what was then the Central Fife seat in 1999 and 2003 and then gained it was then one of the gains on the night of the SNP’s victory. In 2003 she secured a 15.3% swing and was elected as a regional list MSP; in her 2007 victory she secured a 7.6% swing. Basically, Marwick succeeded in turning a Labour safe seat into a marginal into a SNP held marginal over the course of three elections, an impressive feat. Of course our old friend the boundary commissioner has struck again and she is now MSP for the new seat of Mid Fife and Glenrothes. Lucky for Marwick, her majority has been increased on the new notional boundaries. Her Labour Party opponent is Claire Baker, a regional MSP. By putting up Baker, Labour are clearly attempting to retake the seat and retaking seats like this is easily their best route back to power in Scotland. All things considered I think the edge is with Marwick, who, based on prior performances, appears to be a talented campaigner, but a 4.6% swing is far from out of the question for Labour and they have a decent candidate in Baker. Certainly a SNP Lean, in my view.

At Westminster the North East Fife constituency has been held by former Lib Dem leader, Ming Campbell since 1987. This constituency is slightly smaller, but broadly similar, and has similarly been held by the Lib Dem’s Iain Smith since 1999. He has maintained sizeable majorities in the range of 14-17% for all three terms in parliament. Yet this is a very different set of circumstances, with the Westminster coalition and all, as such a seat previously very much safe, is now in play. However, this is seemingly a slightly right-leaning affluent part of Fife (possibly connected to the presence of St. Andrews in the constituency) and the Conservatives are the second placed party here. However, I find it difficult to see Lib Dem voters switching to the Conservatives to punish the Lib Dems for going into coalition with the Conservatives, and while local by-elections are not necessarily reflective of nationwide trends, we at Britain votes have noted that the Lib Dems appear to perform much better versus the Tories than against Labour. Nonetheless the Conservative Party’s candidate, Miles Brigg, a political adviser who has previously worked in Canadian provincial politics, cannot be ruled out completely. The spanner in the works is the SNP who hold a reasonable third place. While it is difficult to see disaffected Lib Dem voters switching to the Tories, it is much easier to imagine them switching to the SNP. The SNP are running perennial candidate Rod Campbell who ran in North East Fife in the 2005 and 2010 Westminster elections and the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. On a uniform swing this seat would still be held by the Lib Dems due to the strong majority, and indeed this seat is their safest on mainland Scotland. That said the polls are as such that a uniform swing may not necessarily be the best guide (the Lib Dems are losing about 8% nationally, but in a lot of seats they have less than 8% already, so they must be losing more votes elsewhere). That said I think the three-cornered nature of the contest and the long-time incumbency of Smith will mean that the seat remains in Lib Dem hands. It is not out of question that either the Tories or the SNP could take the seat, but this is still a Lib Dem leaning seat in my view.

Kirkcaldy is partially covered by Gordon Brown’s Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency. Incumbent MSP Marilyn Livingstone has been a MSP for the seat since its creation in 2007. The changes in boundary have meant that her notional majority has increased by about 700 votes. Her SNP opponent is David Torrance, a councillor in the seat. The seat is within reach for the SNP, but the 5.9% swing will be a fair achievement on current boundaries and the SNP don’t really seem to focusing strongly on Kirkcaldy. As in Cowdenbeath the local Labour Party may also get a bit of help from the big clunking fist of Gordon Brown. Brown is still popular in Scotland as a whole, and in Fife I suspect he is even more liked. A strong Labour Lean then.