On an Island

       Always, the politician must inspire people; but not in a ridiculous way, obviously. Not too much …

      The Master

      When, a few weeks later, the former foreign secretary Murdoch White, himself an Ayrshire man, who had retired to the Isle of Arran after the Egyptian war, called him up and asked him to come for a visit, and to stay the weekend, Davie Petrie was ready.

      Most of Labour’s leading figures from Scotland, back in the day, seemed to have died early, or faded away from politics: Smithy himself, big Donald and wee Cookie all went far too early, while Derry, Brian Wilson up in the Highlands and John Reid, now running Celtic, had absented themselves from political life. Murdoch White, however, was still a player in his seventies, a tall, gangling, balding man with a hangdog face, he had kept the flag flying against the SNP and was a regular on the Scottish edition of Newsnight – variously known as Wee Newsnight and Newsnicht. He had retired to play golf and fish, but found that he missed the excitement of Westminster.

      The converted manse he had bought looked more like a small baronial pile, white-harled and spacious. Ostensibly, he had lured Davie there to talk about building a glass-fronted extension looking out over the Atlantic breakers. The two men spent most of the weekend walking together and staring at the view, or sitting over a chunky glass – malt for White, gin and tonic for Davie – and, as Davie put it to Mary later, ‘Just blethering.’

      Not just. Murdoch needed to know whether Petrie was ‘sensible’. By this he meant, was he basically pro-American, sound on Israel and pro-business?

      ‘A long time ago, Davie, when you were just a bairn, the Labour Party made itself unelectable with basically communist views. The Master, with quite a few of us helping him, changed all that. He showed that we can have social justice and prosperity at the same time; if we don’t shoot for the moon and if we accept the realities of the world, we can make life better for folk, and they’ll trust us. So not too much of the teenage Trotskyism, eh Davie? Another glass?’

      ‘Small one, Mr White. You can rely on me. I’m solid working-class, and I won’t sell my people out. But you know I’m a businessman first and foremost. I deal in balance sheets. Hiring and firing. Foreign markets don’t concern me – yet – but I was born with a good hard head on me. I’m not very keen on the Yanks, but who else do we have these days? The fucking Palestinians don’t make me weep.’ He rapped his forehead with his knuckles. ‘Hard heid.’

      ‘Europe?’

      ‘Ach, it’s a corrupt old bunfight, but there’s too much money there. By hook or by crook, we have to get back in. No’ the euro though.’

      ‘As for yourself, what do you want, Petrie?’

      ‘You won’t be expecting this, Mr White, but the real answer is justice. There’s a guy I want to bring down, and I’m going to bring him down if it’s the last thing I do.’

      White raised his eyebrows but said nothing as Davie – he couldn’t help himself – spilled out the story of the Forlaw massacre, the child sex ring, and Lord Auchinleck.

      When Davie had finished, Murdoch White puckered his mouth. ‘It’s a horrible story. On the other hand, Auchinleck was always a horrible man. Known him for years. Thank God he’s not one of ours. Well, once you’re an MP – if you become an MP – you can certainly take him down. Parliamentary privilege is a fearsome weapon in the right hands.’

      ‘You say if I become an MP?’

      ‘The selection’s the thing. Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond – slippy wee fishes – have almost wiped us out. After 2015, our game’s all about survival. Hold on to the redoubts. Don’t let the bastards through. Fix bayonets. Ireland rations. All that. One day, seat by seat, we’ll fight our way back. But even now there’s a few wee places the bastard Nationalists haven’t got. Glaikit’s wan. So get selected, and you’ll be elected as an MP. Can’t help it, really. The old guy’s retiring – we’ve helped him along a little, and in any case, it’s the kindest thing for him. His ticker’s shot. But getting selected isn’t a formality. It’s a plum constituency, so all the busy little bees – the sleekit Oxbridge boys and girls, never done a hand’s turn – will be up from London buzzing around. Crusade will have their union candidate too, and he – or she – will be formidable.’

      Davie had worked all of that out long ago. ‘Aye, but it’s hardly impossible. I’ll be the local candidate, unless they line up the council leader. And I’ve got a lot of friends in the party.’

      Murdoch White snorted. ‘No, you dinnae. There are no friends in our trade, laddie. You can’t control what Crusade do, so you’ll have to stitch up all the branch parties early on. Hard graft, no help for it.’ He bent over and vigorously rubbed his face with both palms, as if massaging himself awake. ‘It’s an illusion to think the local candidate has an advantage. That’s what the newspaper writers will tell you, but they know nothing. The truth is, most folk – our side, Tories, Scotland, England, anywhere – are looking for somebody they can project their hopes and ideals onto. They know fine well they’re going to get fooled again, but they want to believe – somebody fresh, bit of glamour, clean sheet of paper. They don’t necessarily want Davie Petrie, that guy who’s been hanging around Glaikit half their lives. Go into this thinking you’re ahead and you’ll fall flat on that bonny face of yours.’

      Petrie shrugged, and raised his eyebrows.

      ‘You need two things, my young friend. You need a story – something to inspire folk. I can help you with that. And you need to show some steel. That bit’s up to you.’

      Davie was uncharacte‌ristically quiet over lunch on the Sunday. He handed across the drawings for White’s extension that he’d brought with him, along with several pages of costings. He’d brought two sets. The one he passed over had a 20 per cent mark-up on them; the other 10 per cent. White wanted him, quite clearly; he might at least turn a little profit from that. Neither man was feeling like small talk. By the time a local taxi arrived to take him to the ferry, Davie’s mind was whirring over the task ahead. Murdoch White was quite right. Born politicians proved it first at the local level.

      The constituency of Glaikit covered the small town itself, once known for its weaving, and now for having one of the lowest levels of life expectancy in the UK. There were two former mining villages on the outskirts, one of them Davie’s, which had long since been swallowed up by the town. There was a skirt of rich farmland. Glaikit had returned a Labour Member almost since the days of Keir Hardie.

      Once he had informed his branch party – a small gathering in the back of the pub, all of them well known