It was Jim Callaghan, as shrewd and experienced a politician as his generation produced, who observed that “there are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.”

Callaghan, a Labour Prime Minister, knew in his bones that he was on the wrong side of the crashing wave which brought in Margaret Thatcher in the 1979 election. However, I suspect Rishi Sunak, as shallow and untutored a Tory Prime Minister as the last one, will be ruefully coming to the same conclusion this weekend.

Anything Rishi Sunak has or hasn’t done to steady the Tory ship after the madness of Liz Truss and the badness of Boris Johnson made not a jot of difference to the outcome of the local government elections in England last week. The council elections routed the Conservatives. From the high rises to the country lanes, it was blue murder.

The main message from these real votes cast last Thursday is that the Tories are toast. There is nothing Rishi Sunak can do to placate the fury people have about the Tory-fuelled cost-of-living crisis, the sheer born-to-rule arrogance and, lest we forget, the inept and scandalous handling of the pandemic which cost thousands of lives and millions of misspent pounds.

Large or small, majority or minority, Labour is going to form the next government and Keir Starmer is going to be Prime Minister. The scale of victory is very much dependent on Scotland where the polls show Labour coming up fast on the outside rail. It is important to remember not a vote has been cast here but Labour is challenging the SNP in more than a dozen seats now. This does not mean that we will win these seats but, with each percentage point of increased support, more and more SNP-held constituencies come into play.

The second message out of the English local elections is that a good performance by Labour in Scotland will be the difference between a Labour government which transforms people’s lives or one hamstrung by a hung parliament. Only Labour can replace the Tories at the next election and for each Labour MP elected across Scotland that becomes more of a certainty.

There is nothing Tory ministers like at the Commons despatch box than looking across at a sizeable contingent of SNP MPs. Benches of nationalists guarantee the Tories one thing – that they will stay on the governing side of the House and Labour will be in opposition. In that respect, the SNP and the Tories have been each other’s dream teammates in recent general elections.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer celebrates with party supporters in Chatham, Kent, where Labour took overall control of Medway Council for the first time since 1998 (Picture: Gareth Fuller/PA)

But this time the Tory scare campaign depicting Keir Starmer in the nationalist pocket of Humza Yousaf will be, let’s face it, just laughable. The SNP’s continuity leader is not a serious politician, the party he has inherited is mired in financial scandal and is so deeply divided that, seen from space, SNP HQ could be mistaken for the Great Glen faultline. None of that will stop the Tories or the SNP themselves from vainly attempting to make the nationalists look somehow relevant to the battle for Westminster.

The latest, desperate claim from Mhairi Black MP that the SNP would somehow “drag Labour to the left” is arrant nonsense. Left-wing? From the party that has fought against a windfall tax on oil and gas giants and spends more time talking about the Stone of Destiny than our NHS? Pull the other one, Mhairi. This is no more credible than Mhairi Black running down the left wing and scoring the winner for her beloved Partick Thistle in the Premiership play-off against Queen’s Park. There’s nothing left-wing, Mhairi, about dividing people from each other.

Keir Starmer has made it clear – no deals with the SNP before, during or after an election campaign. People believe him and Scots know that the only way to get a Labour government and get rid of the Tories is to vote Labour. The basic question for the SNP going into a general election is would they support a Labour government or will they side with the Tories to bring one down?

The SNP will inevitably demand independence and a referendum during an election campaign but it is not just Labour which has ruled that out, even the SNP has ruled it out. Michael Russell, the SNP president, in a rare, candid moment has admitted that his dream of independence could not be achieved “right now”. Humza Yousaf told the BBC only the other week that he wants a "consistent majority for independence" but that leaves him in the same trap with the impatient SNP membership that led Nicola Sturgeon opting for a ‘de-facto’ referendum in a general election. Voters will laugh at that strategy.

Since last Thursday’s results, some Tories have been trying to pretend that they are not in a hole, that what we are about to see is a repeat of 1992, when John Major unexpectedly hung on to power, and not 1997 when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown swept away the whole Tory edifice. They do not want to believe what their eyes and the political seas are telling them.

With renewed calls for a referendum, it also seems that some in the SNP leadership have not yet woken up to the quagmire of scandal their party is in. They don’t realise that there has been a sea change in politics, one which was apparent before the resignations, the lies about membership figures, the lack of auditors and the blue forensics tent on the lawn.

Jackie Baillie is MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader and her party’s spokesperson for health

Rishi Sunak's Tories are toast but Scotland is vital if Labour is to win an outright majority at next UK general election – Jackie Baillie

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