Labour leader Keir Starmer's appeals to Tory swing voters may backfire badly in Scotland – Joyce McMillan

The idea that Labour will offer a ‘fresh start’ seems to have withered on the vine long before the general election

As Rishi Sunak’s government steadily unravels, all eyes turn to Keir Starmer, as the UK’s likely next Prime Minister. This week, he set British politics a-flutter by giving an economic briefing – with a matching column for the Daily Telegraph – in which he praised three post-war British Prime Ministers for coming into office with a bold and clear plan, and succeeding in implementing most of it.

The PMs he mentioned were Clement Attlee, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher; and it’s easy to imagine some future playwright constructing an entertaining one-act drama out of the scenes in the Starmer inner circle, as they decided on a list that was bound to provoke a strong reaction, given the negative feelings still associated with Margaret Thatcher in many parts of the country. “This will infuriate some of our MPs and party activists,” says one. “So much the better!” cries another. “Our supporters have nowhere else to go, and disaffected Tories in key marginals will love it!”

There are one or two things, though, that we can bet will not have been discussed by that group, at this point. One is the absurdity of an electoral system – once recognised by Starmer – that means that only a few hundred thousand recent Tory voters in key marginals will determine the result, come election day, while the millions who have always voted Labour can barely affect the outcome.

And another is the possibility that the political calculation which applies in England, in terms of the options available to anti-Tory voters, may not apply in the same way in Scotland, or, increasingly, in Wales; and that silence points to a challenging paradox facing Labour in Scotland, as it prepares for the coming election.

Even some Scottish Conservatives, after all, now privately admit that a Labour victory in 2024 represents the best hope of reducing the appeal of the SNP, and preserving the Union. The difficulty is, though, that despite all the hopes for the Union he now represents, Keir Starmer and his closest advisors show every sign of being almost as tin-eared when it comes to Scottish politics as their Tory adversaries.

In particular, both Keir Starmer’s decision to follow the UK Government’s strong pro-Israeli stance over the conflict in Gaza, and his apparent admiration for aspects of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, seem to be creating real unease on the Scottish centre-left, as Tony Blair’s uncritical support for the Iraq War did 20 years ago; and may have begun to dampen enthusiasm for the SNP-to-Labour switch that Labour in Scotland need to achieve.

Opinion polls offer a conflicting picture, with the two most recent offering a 12 per cent SNP lead on one hand, and on the other a two per cent Labour lead; and although this represents an impressive surge in support for a Labour party that was languishing in third place to the Tories as recently as May 2021, it seems clear that even after almost 17 years in government, support for the SNP – which has been unequivocal in its calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and in its dismissal of the Thatcher legacy – still has some resilience, particularly if the “Tory lite” charge levelled against Keir Starmer’s Labour party begins to gain some traction.

Labour leader Keir Starmer's warm words about Margaret Thatcher will not go down well with many in Scotland (Picture: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

To attract previously Tory swing voters in many key English constituencies, in other words, Keir Starmer must appear sympathetic to Tory attitudes and values, offering continuity, but with more competence and compassion. To recover the support of centre-left voters in Scotland from the SNP, though, Labour has to demonstrate an intention to reject Tory ideology, and bring substantial change; to raise public investment in our infrastructure, services and people, to restore positive relations with our European neighbours, and above all, to offer hope for a better future, in the shape of a credible plan for a just transition to a new low-carbon economy.

Yet in truth, many of Keir Starmer’s commitments in these areas have now been reversed or watered down to the point of meaninglessness, culminating in his infinitely depressing statement, this week, that he would not be “turning on the public spending taps” on winning office, even through the signs of the damage done by the long UK public spending drought are now pervasive in our society.

In the course of this long general election campaign, now already effectively underway, voters in Scotland may therefore have time to grow tired of Labour campaigners talking of “change” and a “fresh start”, without ever specifying what that change will be, or how it will be achieved.

And although closer and more respectful consultation between the Starmer leadership and Anas Sarwar’s Scottish party might ease some of these contradictions a little, it now seems that Labour’s best hope of taking large numbers of Scottish seats lies not in the positive appeal of their own party and policies, but in the possibility that many SNP voters and campaigners will simply stay at home, unable to muster any enthusiasm for a party exhausted by so many years in government.

Despite Keir Starmer’s adoption of so many New Labour strategies, in other words, the atmosphere of 2024 – fearful, war-torn, beset by climate change, exhausted by the pandemic and Brexit traumas, and stressed to breaking point by 15 years of economic stagnation topped by a brutal cost-of-living crisis – could hardly be more different from that of 1997. And while many voters may rightly conclude that a change of UK Government is necessary, and that Keir Starmer’s Labour is the only party that can provide it, the idea that he can truly offer a “fresh start” seems to have withered on the vine long before the election is called, leaving centre-left opinion in Scotland still divided by the constitutional question, and struggling, in ever more difficult times, to find a way of moving forward.