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United they stand

• Brian Taylor
• 3 Apr 07, 12:13 PM

Political power is mutable, not fixed. At least, in a democracy.

Electoral churn is critical to refresh the system. (I still rather like the story of the defeated American congressional candidate who acknowledged his failure thus: "The people have spoken…….the b……s!")

You can tell, too, when power is palpably shifting. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jack McConnell were in Glasgow today. Together. In the same room.

Somehow, curiously, it was the Prime Minister who seemed fractionally marginalised when they all met the media.

Maybe that's because the topic was the Holyrood elections. Jack McConnell has a certain interest in the outcome.

Gordon Brown, ditto, because of a potential backwash at Westminster.

Tony Blair will, as he reminded us, be gone from office shortly, after Scots go to the polls on May 3.

Maybe also it's because the theme was the economy - or rather the latest chapter in Labour claims that the SNP's sums are flawed. (Nationalists, of course, dispute this assertion.)

Perhaps the intriguing element is not the relative (I stress, relative) eclipse of Tony Blair.

Perhaps it's that the First Minister was not utterly sidelined as, frankly, he has appeared in the past.

For example, Gordon Brown previously intervened in the election campaign with a hastily arranged (and mostly tedious) economic lecture at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh.

On that occasion, Jack McConnell seemed, variously, like a warm-up man or a slightly uncomfortable onlooker.

Labour has learned. Indeed, I understand that party strategists have explicitly drawn lessons from the Corn Exchange event.

Perhaps it was the succession of journalists stomping out of the hall, bellowing "well, that was a waste of time" that offered a clue. (Yes, dear reader, I was one of them.)

Anyway, this time, both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair stressed the distinctive role of the First Minister.

Mr McConnell himself frequently intervened to take questions, even when, on occasion, those had initially been addressed to Mr Brown.

The FM, it would appear, has had enough of sitting in the shadow, enough of the opposition taunts. More to the point, his Westminster colleagues seem to grasp the concept - that these elections have their own status, not just as mid-term commentaries on UK issues.

Now, of course, rival parties will continue, entirely legitimately, to attack.

They will say that Tony Blair is irrevocably associated with war in Iraq.

They will demand apologies from Gordon Brown over pensions. (Mr Brown said today that the decision 10 years ago on dividend tax credits was right for the wider economy - and he'd do it again. Il ne regrette rien.)

Those attacks will be sustained - and will be potentially salient in the election campaign. However, for today at least, it seems that Mr McConnell has found dodged another dose of the TB/GBs.

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