Can Scottish Labour mount a post-Sturgeon revival?

5 hours ago

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Anas Sarwar is targeting a Labour revival in Scotland – but can he deliver one?

Scottish Labour’s conference has been awash with talk of a political comeback in the wake of .L.Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as SNP leader and first minister. But given how far the party has fallen from its peak, how realistic are its chances of a revival?

Nicola Sturgeon is the name on everyone’s lips in Scottish politics this week, after her surprising and abrupt decision to call it a day as first minister.

It was no different at the Scottish Labour conference in Edinburgh, with members striking a less than sombre tone.

“We’re coping OK,” Jackie Baillie joked in her opening address.

That might be understandable when you consider the destruction wrought on Labour by the outgoing first minister.

The SNP had already supplanted them as the party of government at Holyrood, before Ms Sturgeon took the reins from Alex Salmond.

But her immediate project in the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum was to shift the SNP to the left, and to consume Labour’s traditional base.

The following year she seized 40 of the party’s 41 seats at Westminster. In 2015 Scotland went straight from being a Labour stronghold to them clinging to a single seat, a position which persists today.

During Ms Sturgeon’s remarkable run of electoral successes, the SNP’s heartlands have mapped almost perfectly onto those which were once Labour red – across the central belt and particularly in Glasgow and Fife.

Image source, Getty Images

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In the Sturgeon era, the SNP became used to sweeping up seats in former Labour heartlands like Glasgow

So you could forgive Labour for holding some hope that the departure of their nemesis could spark a revival in those areas and beyond, as part of the wider project to retake Downing Street.

James Kelly, who lost his Holyrood seat in 2021, issued a direct message to the SNP from the conference stage: “We’re coming for ye.”

But his party will need to target a turnaround almost as abrupt as the 2015 landslide which heralded the SNP’s complete capture of Scottish politics.

At present, there are only four seats where Labour can target an SNP majority of under 10%.

Two of them have since seen the sitting MP defect to the Alba Party, while another is held by an independent – Margaret Ferrier.

There are a few others where there is a feeling that the SNP vote, while broad, may be soft.

But for all the talk of the road to Downing Street running through Scottish constituencies, it will take huge swings for Labour to make many gains. Gains anywhere near approaching double figures would look like a huge win.

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Keir Starmer will be hoping that Tory attack lines about him landing in Nicola Sturgeon’s pocket will now recede

Ms Sturgeon’s departure could be a bonus for the party in its campaigning in the rest of the UK too, though.

Sir Keir Starmer – expected to address the conference on Sunday, fresh from a trip to Ukraine – will now face less competition as the face of left-leaning politics on the UK stage.

It will enable his party to campaign as a more straightforward choice for those who want to see the Conservatives turfed out of power.

And it will blunt the attack line which the Tories have been workshopping about the SNP wielding influence over him in a hung parliament.

You could already picture the campaign advert, with Sir Keir peeping out of Nicola Sturgeon’s pocket.

But that is unlikely to have the same impact with voters in England and Wales under a new leader, who will not have anything like the profile of Ms Sturgeon.

She was first minister before Mr Starmer or indeed Rishi Sunak were even MPs, and whoever replaces her will take time to build the same level of recognition with the wider electorate.

Image source, Getty Images

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Labour may aspire to go one better than opposition in the next Holyrood election

Looking further down the road, will Anas Sarwar hope for a boost in his bid to be first minister some day?

In the last Holyrood election, Scottish Labour was pitching itself as a “better opposition” – but may want to go one better next time.

Mr Sarwar may have a better shot at winning the Glasgow Southside constituency, once Ms Sturgeon relinquishes her grip on it.

She intends to sit on the back benches at Holyrood in the immediacy, but she is unlikely to settle there for the longer term. Given her profile and talents, it is frankly hard to picture her whiling away her time as deputy convener of the public audit committee into the 2030s.

It is of course her seat in Bute House that Mr Sarwar really craves, and that would again require a massive turnaround in fortunes.

Labour still sits in third place at Holyrood behind the SNP and Conservatives, and has lost seats at every single election since devolution with a shrinking share of the vote.

To spring from that right back into government would be a huge ask, and Mr Sarwar may have to settle for arresting the long-term gradual decline.

But all of that said, the political world could look very, very different come the 2026 election.

Sir Keir may be settling in to Downing Street, and the prospect of an independence referendum could be even more distant – neutering two of the SNP’s favourite electoral arguments, about ditching the Tories in favour of constitutional change.

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Gordon Brown has drawn up constitutional reforms including the abolition of the House of Lords

If the binary question of Scotland’s future somehow isn’t the top priority in the campaign, Labour might hope to regain votes lost in recent years to both the SNP and the Conservatives.

And if independence is still a key issue – as is entirely probable – the brew of ideas bubbling up in the SNP about the best way forward means Labour’s own constitutional proposals might get more of a hearing.

Nothing can be taken for granted – and Mr Sarwar has fronted up to that, telling delegates that “we’ve still got a lot of work to do to regain the trust of the people”.

But Scottish politics as a whole is entering a period of massive uncertainty after decades of stability in the leadership of the SNP.

Labour will hope they can emerge from the whirlpool in a stronger position.

As with everything else in politics, it remains to be seen if reality actually delivers on those expectations.