Is Labour really Scotland’s best hope to ‘get the Tories out’?

The SNP is on the slide. Labour is breathing down its neck. But if Keir Starmer wants to win big in Scotland, he must explain what he means by the ‘change’ he’s promising, warns Andrew Grice

The loyalty of some SNP supporters will be hard to break (PA Wire)

Keir Starmer’s most important electoral test to date will take place 400 miles from Westminster, in the parliamentary by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, expected in October.

He cannot afford to fail it. “People would rightly ask: what is the point of us?” one Starmer ally told me. All the talk about a Labour revival in Scotland would turn to dust. So, crucially, would Starmer’s hopes of winning 20 SNP-held seats at next year’s general election, which could make the difference between a hung parliament and a Labour overall majority.

The backcloth to the by-election could hardly be more propitious for Labour: the implosion of the Scottish National Party amid the police investigation into its finances; the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon, and the wobbly start by her successor Humza Yousaf.

The image of the police forensic tent outside Sturgeon’s home will stick in many Scottish minds; it gave some people permission to act on their inner doubts about the SNP and desert the party. For good measure, the by-election was triggered after the Commons suspension of former SNP politician Margaret Ferrier for breaking Covid lockdown rules.

Her 5,230 majority is within Labour’s reach, but the party is taking nothing for granted after its nasty shock at last month’s by-election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Senior Labour figures in London and Edinburgh are quietly confident the tide is turning in their party’s favour in Scotland. The SNP’s fundamental problem is not the police inquiry, but that Labour finally has a good chance of winning power at Westminster and so can offer Scots a means to “get the Tories out”. Although support for independence remains in line with the 45 per cent who backed it in the 2014 referendum, the SNP’s ratings are on the slide and Labour is breathing down its neck. The latest survey shows the SNP four points ahead, with its lowest vote share since 2018, while Labour has its best score since 2014.

It is dawning on the SNP that it has blown the best chance it might get for many years to secure independence – the dominance of the impressive Sturgeon, Labour’s UK-wide collapse and a detested Tory prime minister in Boris Johnson. Yet the needle has remained stuck at about 45 per cent support for a breakaway. “If not then, when?” is the private fear in SNP minds.

The SNP is not without ammunition: it attacks “sellout Starmer” for refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax, touching raw Labour nerves, and for his weak stance on Brexit – which matters in a country which voted by 62 per cent to 38 per cent to stay in the EU.

I think Starmer will pass his test in Rutherglen, probably with the help of disgruntled SNP supporters staying at home. Some SNP figures seem resigned to defeat and are preparing to argue that Labour should have won by an even bigger margin. But Starmer’s general election hurdle in Scotland will be much higher because the 20 seats in his sights are marginals. There will be several close battles and the SNP won’t give up without a fight. “The tide is going out, but that takes a long time,” one Labour insider told me.

Although Labour is picking up pro-union votes from the Conservatives after pushing them into third place, the loyalty of some SNP supporters will be hard to break.

Since 2014, the public mood in Scotland has been a demand for change. As the tectonic plates shift, Labour is supplanting the SNP as the vehicle for that change. But Labour sources admit the party has “an opportunity rather than a guarantee of success”. Starmer is less popular in Scotland than the party’s Scottish leader Anas Sarwar, a good communicator who has played a big part in Labour’s revival there.

Sarwar is one of Starmer’s closest allies but like Michael Shanks, the party’s candidate in Rutherglen, has licence to oppose the two-child limit. Starmer must wrestle with the dilemmas of devolution: he has promised to let local politicians “take back control”, but there are tensions with Labour mayors such as Andy Burnham in Manchester and Sadiq Khan in London. He has imposed “command and control” over the selection of parliamentary and mayoral candidates which even some of his natural allies think has gone too far.

Starmer needs to spell out what “change” would mean, and rebut the SNP’s charge that Labour is “no different” to the Tories. Such a perception might help Labour reassure wavering voters in England but is very damaging in Scotland. It’s a tricky balancing act for the Labour leader. A strong showing in Scotland would mean his party needed fewer gains south of the border, but the Tories won 345 seats in England in 2019, while the SNP landed 48.

So it’s time for Starmer to answer the question that unites voters across Britain: “Why Labour?” when there will be no money to spend on the party’s traditional goals.