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Late October sunshine struggles to warm the chunky peninsula north of Edinburgh known as the Kingdom of Fife, where Pictish warriors once ruled and Gordon Brown grew up. Roads and railway platforms are gritted as biting northerly winds signal the onset of winter.
Cold weather matters more than usual in Fife this year because some of the 66,000 Fifers who may vote next Thursday in the former mining constituency of Glenrothes are worried about their fuel bills.
Brown's backyard byelection may also pass a verdict on the "Brown bounce" which has seen the prime minister's authority revived by his rescue of Scottish banks HBOS and RBS.
The prime minister will risk making his second campaign visit today. In the Kingdom shopping centre - warm and dry - Sarah Brown was chatting to voters on Wednesday. Last week, her minders were overprotective; this week was better as Lindsay Roy, Labour's candidate, shepherded voters to her.
"This is Sarah. And this is Mr and Mrs McGregor. "
"Hullo, I'm here to support Lindsay Roy on November 6. How are you?"
"We live in sheltered housing."
"I hope they're treating you all right."
"Could be better."
Mrs Brown smiles. She comes across as reserved, but it is a nice smile.
Recession means job losses, not least in Fife's HBOS offices and call centres. But winter cold means an extra £25 or so on average quarterly bills. "The most powerful election leaflets in this campaign are energy bills reminding people that Labour has done little to help them with soaring energy bills this winter," Alex Salmond, the SNP's leader, keeps telling voters as he promises more fuel help than Labour.
Glenrothes is a 1948 new town, one of Scotland's first. Its old coal-based industries died, but new ones (defence, electronics, council services) expanded, along with mature woods and masses of lush bushes. The constituency's overall unemployment, currently 5.1% and edging up, has halved since 1997.
But it is worse in outlying villages, Victorian boomtowns with names such as Coaltown, and in decayed ports such as Methil and Leven, where recovery has been slower. The nearby Rosyth naval yard once employed 25,000; today not a tenth of that number work there.
But Glenrothes feels prosperous and has become a nationalist stronghold. When Labour's John MacDougall was re-elected in 2005 in what was once a communist-held seat (1935-50), his majority was 10,664. He had 51.8% of the vote. "Safe Labour seat," say the reference books.
But the SNP's July byelection breakthrough in Glasgow East changed everything. Labour, the SNP and the bookies agree that November 6 (a 14% swing is needed) will be a close call.
Brown's September bounce is not Salmond's only problem. For the first time, the SNP is in government: both at Holyrood since 2007 and on Fife's unitary council. It has an incumbent's record to defend and Fife council's SNP leader, Peter Grant, is the party's candidate for Westminster. If fuel and food bills are a local issue, so is the SNP-Lib Dem council's decision to raise social services charges.
Pensioners' once-free alarms now cost £51 a year; £4-a-week care services are now £11 an hour. Though it is actually more complicated, wheelchair demonstrators have harried Grant. So Labour morale is higher than it was. "It's a mistake to have the council leader as your candidate," explains one Labour MP drafted in to help save the seat.
But ex-accountant Grant sounds like Brown: dour, fact-filled and unrepentant. "We inherited a council close to bankruptcy and have made a fantastic start," he says after a shopping-for-TV appearance in Aldi with Salmond's deputy, Nicola Sturgeon. "You go into politics to make a difference. You become council leader and take responsibility. If people make mistakes, you back them," Grant says.
Roy, a local headmaster and community activist, is different: a political novice, running as underdog. Activists picked him as a candidate more popular than his party. As he traipses around a grey estate at Methil he shakes hands with a white-van driver. "I used to teach him," he says.
There are Labour posters in Methil, where old mining solidarity lingers and voters remember that their last MP died of an industrial disease. Is it enough to sustain the Brown bounce? In the Kingdom's centre it is easier to find voters angry with the SNP council than with Brown. "We've voted SNP for 40 years, but not this time," say an elderly couple, offended by the new charges. Both sides will be lucky to win. They know it.
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