How has Sir Keir Starmer turned the tables on a 'complacent' SNP?

The contrast is remarkable. Less than a decade ago, a visit to Scotland by the leader of the Labour Party threatened to turn very ugly, indeed. Ed Miliband – then campaigning for a No vote in the September 2014 independence referendum – was crowded, jostled and heckled by opponents as he walked through Edinburgh’s St James’s shopping centre.

Later, then Scottish Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale said it had been a “truly crappy day for democracy”. Labour’s campaign rooms were full of “shaken and upset” people who had been with Miliband.

Of course, back then, First Minister Alex Salmond was in full denial mode when it came to the extreme behaviour of some Yes voters. So far as he was concerned, they were all part of a “joyous” celebration of democracy.

That was bullshit. By the time Miliband made that trip to Edinburgh, the atmosphere in Scotland had become utterly toxic, with nationalists demanding the dismissal of BBC journalists and both Salmond and his then deputy Nicola Sturgeon dismissing their opponents as anti-Scottish.

Current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has already visited Scotland twice during the current General Election campaign and his welcome could not be more different than that offered to Miliband. At events with Scottish party leader Anas Sarwar, Starmer has (as a bloke with a 27-point lead in the polls has every right to) appeared like a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

SNP leader, John Swinney, on the other hand, looks like a man out of ideas and – thanks to his still baffling decision to try to undermine the process that saw former health secretary Michael Matheson suspended from Holyrood and fined 54 days’ pay for falsely claiming £11,000 in expenses for mobile data run up on a family holiday and then lying about the matter – out of touch.

Perhaps the most perplexing thing about this remarkable reversal of fortunes is that Swinney once recognised the dangers facing a party that’s become complacent.

In conversations before the SNP’s 2007 Holyrood election victory, he would speak with absolute clarity about his opponents’ vulnerability. He – along with Salmond and Sturgeon – seized on, and fed, a growing perception that Labour had begun to take victory in Scotland for granted. They spoke of “London Labour”, distant and entirely unconcerned about the priorities of Scots. They taunted Labour First Minister Jack McConnell for taking orders from his bosses in Westminster. The FM was no more than a branch manager for his party.

That line of attack – that Labour was out of step with the people – was so successful that the SNP’s first and second Scottish parliamentary election victories were achieved thanks to the support of a substantial number of voters who would, at least at that time, have considered themselves supporters of the Union.

The SNP did not move from the fringes to become the dominant force in Scottish politics because of a sudden surge in support for independence but because they promised change and stability.

This pledge landed with enough voters to let the SNP form a minority administration in 2007. The chaos that was to follow during the global financial crisis surely helped Salmond, who – freed from political responsibility for or duty to solve the banking disaster – maintained the message that, regardless of one’s view on the constitutional question, his party offered competence.

So successful were Salmond, Sturgeon and Swinney at selling this idea that the SNP won a landslide in 2011, thanks to the support of a remarkable coalition of voters, from battle re-enacting blood-and-soil nationalists who craved independence at any cost, to middle class urban Unionists, worried about the buy-to-let mortgages they’d taken out on shoddy new-build flats.

Now, during another time of crisis (when is it ever not so?), Labour enjoys the luxury of being in a position to offer change both north and south of the border. And there is very little either Rishi Sunak or John Swinney can do about that.

Sunak’s Tories are a lost cause. Their defeat – unless we are on the verge of witnessing a genuine miracle – is assured and deserved. The Prime Minister simply cannot calm the anger increasing numbers of voters feel towards the Conservatives.

Swinney and the SNP are not in quite the same hole as the Tories. Labour may lead the Conservatives by 27 points in UK-wide polling but, in Scotland, the party is just 10 points ahead of the nationalists.

The SNP is not, then, entirely out of the game, which makes Swinney’s defence of Michael Matheson all the more inexplicable.

There is evidence, too, that some of the First Minister’s colleagues are equally complacent about the impact of the Matheson expenses scandal on their party.

During a campaign event on Thursday, the day after the former Scottish health secretary was sanctioned over his actions, net zero secretary Màiri McAllan dismissed it as a "political bubble issue” which we should “forget about”.

I was particularly surprised to hear McAllan say Matheson’s actions were not cutting through with voters. The cabinet secretary must be in a minority of one because candidates from every party (privately in the case of those representing the SNP) will tell you that it’s a serious matter for voters, who know that – had they acted as Matheson did – they would be out of a job.

When it comes to Matheson, I do not believe voters want to hear excuses or to be told they don’t care. Rather, I think they would very much appreciate a degree of humility from the SNP.

Almost two decades ago, the SNP exploited Labour’s arrogance and complacency to end their grip on Scottish politics. John Swinney was a key part of that push.

How ironic it is that he now embodies the politics he once, so successfully, railed against.