Bruce almighty

Approaching Sir Malcolm Bruce’s house through narrow, bending, frosted roads does a lot for his argument that it is unfair to paint politics as dominated by “metropolitan, London-based, professional politicians.” 

His cottage, in Torphins in Aberdeenshire, is reassuringly normal.

Sitting at his dining-room table, with a coffee in front of him and amidst the everyday clutter of a family home, Bruce presents an image pretty far removed from the one brewed up by expenses scandals and tales of Bullingdon boys.

Maybe critics of modern politics would argue the member for Gordon is a dying breed. Admittedly, he is standing down at the next General Election, and he acknowledges that politics is changing.

The image of a man relaxed at home may be misleading though. The MP, who has spent ten years on the Commons International Development Committee, is busy. In fact I arrive during his preparations for a trip to Tanzania, a country he says he does not know particularly well but can still speak fluently about, describing problems with corruption which he and his colleagues are travelling to inspect.

He talks passionately about topics ranging from Afghanistan, an intervention he believes was tainted by the mistakes made in Iraq, through to the rise of Isis, which he describes as “a threat in a way that Saddam Hussein probably wasn’t.”

As a politician, he has a pretty international perspective, even if the last year has, understandably, been dominated by events closer to home. 

Aberdeenshire voted No to independence by over 60 per cent, though Bruce maintains that in the local area the rejection was even stronger. But despite the success of the No campaign, the current outlook does not look good for any of the Better Together parties, at least if recent polling is anything to go by. I put it to Bruce that this offers a contradiction – voters did not want independence, but no sooner had they rejected it than they moved towards pro-Yes parties.

This provides the first example of something that becomes clear over the next hour – even a mention of the SNP provokes a pretty fierce reaction.

“The SNP have launched a fairly strong offensive based, I think, on a deliberate misrepresentation of what the vote was about. By the way, I am not sure that the polls are picking it up accurately because I am getting a very strong backlash against the SNP here for not accepting the result.

“We are united. The Tories aren’t, Labour aren’t. Salmond had to resign, Nick Clegg hasn’t resigned.”

“But they’re maintaining that somehow we offered devo max – whatever that is, because no one has defined it. But that is not the case, I am absolutely certain that whilst there are quite a lot of people who say that we need a parliament with more powers, most people were voting to say they don’t want to leave the UK – that was the overriding issue.

"The debate about what powers – I am not saying it was unimportant – but it was not central to the decision making of a lot of people. But actually, I want more powers because I want proper accountability. We, as a coalition, have had to take on the difficult decisions from an economic collapse, that was inevitably unpopular.

"The Scottish Government have effectively had a slush fund to spend – they can blame all the difficult decisions on someone else and the implication is somehow that Scotland wouldn’t have had to make these decisions, which I think is disingenuous and slightly insulting to the intelligence of Scottish voters, some of whom at least I think understand that that is not how the world is.”

Bruce’s dislike of the SNP is clear, but regardless of the reasons for it, the party – along with the Greens – seems to have benefited from the No vote. The Lib Dems, meanwhile, still look to be suffering from their decision to enter the coalition – a decision Bruce defends fiercely. But how can the party go about defining its place in the minds of the electorate as something other than being pushovers, used to prop up the Tories?

“We are in a very uncertain and unstable environment at the moment and there is a sort of disengagement, and that is both ways. People say politicians are disengaged from the electorate but the electorate have also disengaged with politicians.

"So it is quite difficult to sustain the discussion about the real, difficult issues we are having to face without just being faced by the torrent of slogans which they have picked up from one propaganda machine or another. And that sounds terrible. But there are voters, and I meet them on the doorstep, who do get it and will talk to you about it, but we can only talk to a tiny percentage.

"With an awful lot of them, the start of the conversation is ‘you’re all liars’, ‘you’re all cheats’, ‘you’re all in it for what you can get’, which is disappointing because I don’t think it is true of politicians of any stripe.”

But Bruce does not deny the party has problems.

“The perception is that the Liberal Democrats are weak, that Nick Clegg is weak, that we have simply rolled over and let the Conservatives govern, when the truth is that it is Cameron who is weak, it is Miliband who is weak, the strong leader in reality is Nick Clegg, who has had to stand his ground against everything coming from every direction and fight his corner and get our policies through. Somehow or other, between now and the election, we need to make people understand that Nick Clegg is not a weak leader, he is a strong leader, and that the Liberal Democrats have been almost decisive in getting the economy to the better place it is. Whether we can succeed in doing that is difficult when our opponents are all saying, ‘you’re irrelevant, you’re weak, you’re a pushover, you’re on your way out’.”

So was it this concern that the party and its leadership appears weak that drove the decision for Nick Clegg to have a TV debate with Nigel Farage? Was it an attempt to redefine Nick Clegg as a man standing up for something?

“That was Nick. That was not some great committee-room strategy. That is his instinct, he is pro-European, he dislikes everything that Farage stands for and he wanted to take him on. He doesn’t regret it. He regrets he didn’t do better, he regrets the perception that he lost, but he doesn’t regret doing it and he says he would do it again. And the other two parties won’t do it.”
He adds: “We are united. The Tories aren’t, Labour aren’t. Salmond had to resign, Nick Clegg hasn’t resigned.”

Salmond may have resigned as First Minister but it looks increasingly likely that he will stand as an MP in the upcoming General Election. With Bruce standing down and Salmond already representing a seat nearby for the Scottish Parliament, is there a chance he will stand as an MP in Gordon? 

“There is always a chance, he has done it before.”

But how would he get on?

“Well, in the last three outings, where the electorate has been tested over the last 18 months, our vote has been up – from a low base – and the SNP vote has been down. If Salmond chooses to stand in Gordon – which voted at nearly two-to-one against independence, so basically rejected everything he stands for – then I would say to the constituency, ‘you voted No, now show him you meant it.’

"The second thing is that the record of the Scottish Government in the North East is abysmal, frankly, abysmal. They have taken the votes and taken the money and used it, with their obsession with independence in the central belt, to our detriment. I think a lot of people here in the North East question what benefit we got from electing Salmond as First Minister. Our health board has completely fallen apart, we have a crisis in education – we can’t get teachers – and we have the two most underfunded councils in Scotland. The bypass, where is it? They always put a gloss on it, they always have a spin on it, but I think people here can see that we haven’t had the benefits. I mean, this has been their heartland, I am not suggesting they are going to collapse.”
I point out that an SNP candidate came second to Bruce in 2010, and in doing so draw the response, “everybody has come second to me at some point or other.”

But if the SNP are leading in the polls, or at least doing well come May, what about the idea of a Better Together alliance? The suggestion has at least been mooted.

"The SNP say they want to hold UK parties’ feet to the fire. I say, no they don’t; they want to burn the house down. They are subversive, that is what they are there for; they want to destroy the UK. People in Scotland did not vote for that.”

“You will get tactical voting, because people on the ground know what is going on. I am not naming names but I can honestly look you in the eye and say that I have had Labour activists and Conservative activists come up to me and say, ‘don’t you worry, we will be voting for your candidate, Christine Jardine, we know what the score is here.’

"The SNP will say ‘it is all Malcolm Bruce’s personal vote and the Liberal vote will disappear’ to try and divide the opposition, but I don’t think the opposition will be easily divided. Conservative and Labour voters will know they are not going to win it, and that they haven’t come close to winning it in 32 years, and they know that it is between us and the SNP so the tactical voting element is a no-brainer. Christine Jardine is a very strong candidate and I don’t want to give the impression that I am cocky about this, but we will take this fight right to the end and Alex Salmond may be taking a big risk.”

Whether or not it is Bruce’s personal vote remains to be seen and he is right to caution that things can change between now and May. To some extent, the party’s fortune seems to rest on its ability to separate itself from the Conservatives. Again, Bruce defends the decision to join the coalition.

“I think it is undemocratic to say that you would never work with another party. Maybe if it was an outright communist or fascist party, but no matter how much you dislike the Conservative Party, it is still a party of government and has been for many years. To say ‘under no circumstances will we work with it’ – even if it gets 15 or 20 per cent of the vote in Scotland – that is not democratic either.”

So what about working with the SNP in Westminster, then? What if, despite Bruce and his colleagues’ best efforts, the SNP does bring back a significant number of MPs? On the evidence of one recent poll, the SNP would have won 54 seats, only three less than the Lib Dems took across the UK in 2010. 

“We shouldn’t get carried away with that. I was part of the Liberal SDP alliance when we had 52 per cent in the polls a couple years out from a General Election and we ended up getting 23 seats out of 650. But also, you would need to ask what you are sending them to do, other than cause trouble.”

And presumably a coalition with the SNP could cause constitutional problems?

“Yes and it would destabilise the economic recovery because instead of concentrating on reducing debt and generating growth, they are going to be totally disinterested in the rest of the UK. It would not be constructive. They say they want to hold UK parties’ feet to the fire. I say, no they don’t; they want to burn the house down. They are subversive, that is what they are there for; they want to destroy the UK. People in Scotland did not vote for that.”

But still, they don’t fit the ‘no communists or fascists criteria’, do they?

“No, no, but they are an anti-UK party and as Liberal Democrats, we are pro-Scotland and pro-UK and in terms of our positions, that is a big difference. There are people in Scotland who want to vote for something pro-Scotland and pro-UK and that is the stand I want to represent.

“Come the next election, voters will have some tough thinking to do. In Scotland they have got a whole set of issues to face up to. Do we really want to re-run this referendum so soon? Didn’t we agree we would park it for a generation? I think that in areas, like this one, where people voted much more than 60 per cent No, we will see. But I think if the SNP are running on a mandate that they want to do it again then they might find the electorate comes back and bites them.”

But what about idea of having another referendum if the UK votes to leave the EU against Scotland’s wishes? Would that not provide the constitutional justification the SNP need?

“Well, first of all, I think Nicola Sturgeon’s argument on that is just fundamentally and totally wrong. The fact is the single market that matters most to Scotland is the UK. That doesn’t mean that the EU doesn’t matter but the UK matters more. She seems to imply that somehow it would be alright for Scotland to be in the EU and the UK to be out. That would be a disaster for Scotland.

"So if we are a pro-EU part of the UK – though I am not sure Scots are significantly more pro-EU – the best thing we can do is make our contribution to winning the EU argument for the whole of the UK. That was the problem with the independence argument, the biggest economic issue is the single market – that is what the act of the union was all about – the single market.

"Now the SNP seem to dismiss that but it is absolutely central. And as a Liberal, the SNP and Ukip are two sides of the same coin, the SNP says all our trouble comes from being part of the UK, and Ukip say all our trouble comes from being part of the EU. They are living in a fantasy world and they are playing to people’s fears.”

It is on the EU that Bruce and the SNP may see eye to eye. In fact apart from the Lib Dems and the Greens, the SNP may be the only other significant force in British politics willing to assert a strong pro-EU message. This seems an area where the party could draw in support.

“I think it will help us financially for a start, I think the vast majority of business people want to stay in the EU. The EU has problems but the thing that Cameron gets wrong is the idea that 27 countries are going to stop to address Britain’s problems.

"It is a continuous process, there are issues debated at every Council of Ministers meeting and the ironic thing is that the UK is doing quite well at winning the argument and winning allies as we are, but there are some arguments we are clearly not going to win, like the free movement of labour. It might be there are issues to do with benefits we can address, so the issue is how much reform, but it is clear that pushing towards leaving the EU is not in our interests and it actually hurts the negotiating ploy.”

Europhobia is on the rise, while during an era of austerity it can be harder to justify spending on foreign aid. Is Britain shrinking back from its role in the world?

“The problem is that we are not coherent about it. People think Britain can occasionally look like it has ideas above its station but we have historically been an internationalist country, we have legacies all over the world that require us to have international dimension that smaller countries don’t.

“Oversees development assistance is partly about using soft power to try and anticipate problems and deal with them. It is mostly focused on poverty and poor countries, but what you are trying to do is help those countries sort out their own problems.

"Partly because it is the right thing to do – because we are rich and they are poor – but also because in the end if we can lift them they will become trading partners. I don’t think it is realised how much influence we get from our role in development, when we speak at the World Bank, within the UN and the EU, people listen because we are the biggest contributor in many cases. We are the second biggest bilateral contributor in the world.

"It gives you influence and it offsets some of the more aggressive foreign policy positions we take – I don’t say that in a cynical way but they do tend to fit together.”

And so what about the idea, pushed by the Scottish Government, of enlarging Scotland’s international role? Is there scope for that?

“Why would you do that? As far as I am concerned that is just in order to undermine Britain’s role – that is not what I am about. That is what puzzles me, because they have a very powerful propaganda machine that is feeding people the idea that somehow there is a superior Scottish moral compass attached to a decadent UK. I find that deeply and fundamentally offensive. Are you telling me that my Scottish children have higher moral values than their English cousins?

"I want an adult debate where Scotland plays a full part. Not a Scotland that is running away from the world and that waving the saltire and repelling allcomers will somehow solve our problems.”