The top leadership of the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) has endorsed a possible return by Bruce Golding to the party he turned his back on seven years ago.

The only obstacle now to Golding’s re-entry, political sources insisted at the weekend – despite Golding’s own recent disclaimers – is the need to fashion an argument for the move that would spare his credibility.

“All that there is to do is the mechanism of the thing,” one well-connected source told the Sunday Observer. “The matter is up to Bruce, but he is mortally afraid of the press and what it will do to his image.”

If Golding does head back to the JLP, he will now find no resistance among those elements of the party, who in the past have been, at best, lukewarm to overtures to him: the second-tier leadership, some of whom have ambitions for the post-Seaga leadership of the JLP.

Last week, the issue of Golding’s probable return was discussed, informally they say, at a meeting between Edward Seaga and his four deputies – Audley Shaw, Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Derrick Smith, and Ed Bartlett – and there was agreement that he would be welcomed.

“None of us are insecure,” said Grange. “But whatever happens would have to take into consideration everyone’s concerns.”

“I would not have a problem with Bruce coming back,” added Grange, who defeated Golding for the Central St Catherine seat in the 1997 general election. “It’s up to him.”

Golding, the JLP’s former chairman and heir-apparent to the party’s leader, Seaga, abandoned the party in 1995, saying that it was not engaging the brand of political reform, including a less tribal approach to politics, he had placed on the agenda.

Golding formed the National Democratic Movement (NDM), whose major platform has been constitutional reform, but stepped down from its leadership 17 months ago on the grounds that his former association with the JLP was limiting the growth of the party and acceptance of its message. His decision followed sharply on the JLP’s victory in a by-election in North East St Ann where the NDM’s candidate, Barbara Clarke, did not fare as well as the party expected her to.

The possibility of Golding re-entering the JLP, of which he was a member for quarter of a century, gained currency when Seaga told Gleaner newspaper editors that he would offer his former protégé an independent senator’s slot if the JLP won the coming general election.

It was an offer that Golding publicly indicated that he would accept – a response immediately interpreted as a continuation of a mating dance which some say has been taking place, at least since 1998, when Golding was still the president of the NDM.

Previously, Golding had been adamant that he would never return to the JLP, but in October 1998 it emerged that the NDM was having secret talks with the JLP on what Golding termed as constitutional reform and “initiatives towards co-operation and consensus”.

But when pressed on the Nationwide programme, then broadcast on Hot 102 FM, on whether those talks were the precursor to his re-entry to the JLP, Golding declined to be definitive, saying: “In politics, I have learnt from experience that you don’t rule anything either in or out; that you remain open to possibilities that may be in the interest of the country. I can put it no further than that.”

In the past seven months, Golding – who now hosts a radio talk show and makes no secret of his view that the People’s National Party (PNP) does not deserve a fourth term in office – has spoken at a number of fund-raisers for JLP candidates. In March, Golding shared a platform with Seaga at a forum hosted by G2K, the JLP-affiliated organisation of young professionals, who were then attempting to coax him back to the JLP.

But that initiative appeared to have been derailed, when Seaga, in response to journalists in Montego Bay, dismissed that Golding would bring much to the JLP, and made it clear that it would be up to the former NDM boss to seek, on his own volition, to return to his old party rather than expect to be invited back.

“I am not going to open a door to have somebody slam it,” Seaga said.

A day later, apparently under internal and external pressure, Seaga recanted.

“I consider Bruce Golding to be too valuable an asset to be excluded from public life and I am very hopeful that his services will be available to a future JLP government,” he said.

While Golding and the JLP appeared to have been ritually circling each other, the dance seems to have gained new urgency after recent opinion polls showed that the PNP, which had been lagging behind the Opposition party, had gained momentum in the election race. It was 3.4 percentage points ahead in a survey conducted in mid-August.

The suggestion is that Golding’s re-entry would help revive the JLP and bring on board many of the large number of Jamaicans who the surveys show are disenchanted with the country’s politics. It is believed, too, the cheque books of the party’s financiers would open up if Golding was on board.

“The door has always been open for Bruce to return to the JLP,” said Delroy Chuck, the party’s spokesman on justice. “In fact, many persons persuaded him not to leave the party.”

Added Ruddy Spencer, a senior officer at the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union and the party’s candidate for South-Eastern Clarendon: “I would welcome Bruce’s return to the JLP. In fact, we share similar views about how the organisation should operate.”

Pearnel Charles, who was Golding’s Cabinet colleague in the 1980s, said he too, shared similar ideas to Golding’s.

“Bruce is not the only person who has ideas for change,” Charles told the Sunday Observer. “I look forward to the day he returns because his philosophies for change will be discussed. and where valid, consensus reached.”

According to one JLP insider, it would not only be Golding himself who would enter. He was likely to bring too, Wayne Chen, a highly respected and articulate businessman and former JLP supporter who joined Golding in the NDM as its spokesman on finance, and Christopher Tufton, a young academic who served as the NDM’s chairman.

“What is likely to be the strategy is not for Golding to come now before the election and run in a parliamentary seat,” said a JLP insider. “Rather, it would be initial endorsement. He would also be bringing other good people.”

NDM officials have, in the main, been measured in their response to Golding’s flirtations with the JLP, but quietly, some of the language has been vitriolic.

“Traitor” was a word used by one to describe Golding, according to a Sunday Observer source.

Golding himself has been away and unavailable for comment on the latest developments and he seemed to have been fashioning the kind of argument within which to package any return to the JLP.

“I continue to be one of the chief proponents of the NDM’s policies,” he told the Sunday Observer for a story published a week ago. “I believe that the message of the NDM is much larger than the NDM itself.”

The party’s support, over the past year-and-a-half, has slipped from between five and seven per cent of the electorate to under one per cent, and its officials partially attribute this to Golding’s distance from the party.

They have argued, too, that his perceived relationship with the JLP made it difficult for the NDM to organise in the field.

But, said Golding last week: “As important as it is for the NDM to gain traction, what I think is more important to the country is for the message to gain traction. And I keep pushing it.”

The issue was whether he would get support from within the JLP, which, according to Audley Shaw, would be no problem.

Said Shaw: “There have been other cases where persons have left and have returned. Every application is considered on its own merit. I am part of a team and a party that will examine every application.”