Does Labour need to win in Scotland to send Sir Keir Starmer to Downing Street?

Winning north of the border is symbolically as well as politically important

The starting gun has finally been fired on the general election, and political parties believe Scotland will be at the forefront of it.

In previous years, one of the arguments SNP figures would make for independence was that the Labour party could not win in Scotland. With Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour now even tipped to win in Holyrood, this has changed to arguing Labour do not need to win in Scotland to deliver a majority.

Speaking to figures from across the parties, it is clear Scotland remains vitally important, not just for the pure arithmetic of winning, but also for what it represents psychologically.

Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour Party leader Anas Sarwar wave at supporters in Glasgow (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Blair McDougall, the head strategist for the Better Together campaign during the Scottish independence referendum, told The Scotsman the route to Downing Street “had to go through Scotland”, and suggested claims to the contrary forgot how far Labour had fallen.Now the parliamentary candidate in East Renfrewshire, he said: “It's psychologically important, it’s politically important, it’s necessary. In 2019 we had the worst result since the 1930s. To come out of it simply to govern, Keir Starmer needs a swing greater than any since the 1930s.

“That’s the scale of the political earthquake that is needed, because of the energy and the change that there has been, I think there is a risk people mistake Scotland is not needed, when history shows it is. It would be a singular moment in history if Starmer was able to win without Scotland.

"The route for him to win has to go through Scotland. Six months ago, we weren’t having this conversation, there is a sense of taking this for granted”.

SNP’s confusing message

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (right) and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar listen to shadow secretary of state for Scotland Ian Murray speaking at the launch of Scottish Labour's General Election campaign at City Facilities in Glasgow.

Questioning SNP strategy, Mr McDougall suggested they were failing to cut through, and that arguing Scotland wasn’t important was dishonest.

He said: “Their message problem that they have at the moment is apparent from John Swinney launching the campaign, it’s a strategic problem, that they have gone from saying how Scotland was the centre of British politics to now saying Scotland is utterly peripheral. That doesn’t work as a message as it’s dishonest, good messaging is based on a truth and truth that people understand. The public have a sense that Labour is competitive which opens up a choice they otherwise wouldn’t have made. People feel emboldened to vote Labour in seats to stop the Conservatives, and to reject the other governing party by voting Labour in others. It’s being recognised as the challengers and the challengers with momentum.

“The other thing that's interesting is the nature of momentum as something which parties can almost get addicted to. The SNP central organisation principle has been the idea we are the ones with momentum, on this inevitable journey, with the arrow only pointing in one direction. For them it’s pointing in the other direction now. On the level of being a political strategist, I feel for them, I’ve been there where you just cannot sing the old tunes and get them to respond to them, you lack the psychological or emotional intelligence to say the thing you need to say in the moment, and you end up stepping inside your opponents framing”.

For their part, the SNP disagree, arguing Scotland is not an “arithmetic necessity” for Labour or the Conservatives to win.

SNP candidate for Stirling Alyn Smith accused Labour of misleading voters, and argued it was the red wall that would decide the election result.

He said: "The big thing Labour high command seem to forget is most of the SNP came from the Labour party, they left the Labour party. We aren’t looking at a party we don’t know.

"The cost of living is the number one issue in Scotland, but also independence and Europe are rattling around as well. Labour should have a different response to the Tories on those, but they don’t.

"Labour is triangulating to win back those red wall seats. Scotland is not an arithmetic necessity. We are politically significant, but in terms of actually getting a labour government over the line, it’s not Scottish seats that will decide, it’s English seats.

"What Labour is promising in Scotland will question some of the things people in Scotland have taken for granted, free tuition fees, free prescriptions, and people will look at Scotland and go, why aren’t they getting those things. So they’ll stop doing them.

“We are going to be love bombed, same as it was in 2014, meanwhile they will be actively denigrating 50 per cent of the population”.

Does Labour need to win Scotland?

Mark Diffley, founder and director of Diffley Partnership, a polling and market research firm, argued “strictly speaking” Labour did not need to win in Scotland, but that it was symbolically and politically really important.

He said: “If the polls stay where they are, given the size of the Labour lead, and the projection of what it means for distribution of seats across the UK, it’s likely that Labour could win the election without winning Scotland, and without doing particularly well in Scotland.

"You won’t hear Keir Starmer or Anas Sarwar saying that for very good reasons. That relies on the polls not moving, the polls could narrow during the course of the campaign, and it relies on how efficient the Labour vote is across the UK.

“Strictly speaking they don’t need Scotland. It might make the difference between a small majority or hung parliament, and even a comfortable majority.“The message that it sends, it’s important for the size of their majority, and particularly for Anas, who will see it as the first piece of a jigsaw that will culminate in the Holyrood election in two years time. What he’ll be thinking about is the extent that this tells him that something more broadly is happening.

"We’ve had three general elections in a row, and all three we’ve had a very dominant SNP performance and overwhelmingly SNP representation in Westminster. The polling in Westminster tells us something quite different now, and the polling in the UK says something different as well”.