Reading about the Glasgow East by-election and the claims in today’s Independent that (even more) knives will be out for the PM if Labour loses, reminds me of another infamous Glasgow by-election exactly 20 years ago – Glasgow Govan – in which I had a small and unhappy part. I feel for Labour in this one.

Glasgow Govan was a similarly safe Labour seat that suddenly came under threat, following the sitting MP’s resignation, from a resurgent SNP. Locally, Labour screwed up the selection, letting in a hard left trade unionist (Bob Gillespie) who had led a strike against Labour’s best friend in the Scottish media, the then Maxwell-owned Daily Record.

Good start.

It got worse.

The candidate had tattooed knuckles and had allegedly left his wife for a teenage beauty queen.

The late, great Donald Dewer was then Labour’s leader in Scotland. He assembled a by-election team - Wendy Alexander, then head of research for Scottish Labour and in the news again recently herself; Michael - now Speaker – Martin; Pat McFadden, now a trade minister, was put in charge of the diary; and one Gordon Brown provided the attack lines and policy initiatives from London.

I was working for Peter Mandelson at Labour HQ at the time. He called me into his office and said something like ‘I’ve got good news and bad news’, the good news being that Donald had been on the phone singing my praises, the bad being I had to go to Govan for the next two months.

It was a nightmare of a campaign, only made bearable by the company of Wendy and Pat and Michael Martin’s good humour about being the Catholic ‘minder’ to an Orangeman candidate.

The candidate himself was hardly a unifying force in the local party, the only story in town was a resurgent SNP with the charismatic Jim Sillars as their candidate, and The Proclaimers (then in their heyday) were driving round Govan on the back of a flatbed truck urging everyone to kick Labour where it hurt.

Which they did.

However, then Labour leader Neil Kinnock didn’t jump or get pushed after this debacle. Indeed the following year Labour came back to win the European elelctions (but lose the subsequent 1992 election).

Twenty years on memories of Govan must be at the back of Gordon Brown’s mind too.