Down but not out: Scottish Labour stays positive despite the polls

There was not a single mention of Keir Starmer in Scottish Labour’s conference handbook.

After all, Anas Sarwar doesn’t want to talk about the prime minister – the man he first told to stay away from campaigning in Scotland, and then said should leave office.

But after the Gorton and Denton by-election result, discussion about the PM, the party and the polls was unavoidable. Some attendees had stayed up through the night for the results, still others had travelled down to campaign. There was a sense of vindication for Sarwar, who made himself look so isolated in calling for Starmer to quit even as cabinet ministers publicly rallied round the embattled PM.

The by-election result certainly hasn’t shaken the conviction of the MSP block that Sarwar made the right call.

But neither has it shaken their faith in their own party.

Despite woeful polling, despite a conveyor belt of scandals and dramas – Mandelson, the loss of Morgan McSweeney, the antics of Labour Together – and now despite slumping to third place behind the Greens and Reform in Greater Manchester, Scottish Labour believes the Holyrood election is still worth fighting for. Far from sombre or depressed, the mood at Paisley Town Hall was several shades lighter.

It’s not that there’s an attitude of triumphalism – Scottish Labour doesn’t want to be seen to be indulging in ‘I-told-you-so’s’ – but there is a sense that the by-election didn’t teach the party what it didn’t already know: Starmer is unpopular, many of his government’s policies have been own-goals and the threat from parties which were once in the wings is growing.

These are things candidates and activists are hearing on Scottish doorsteps, and have been for weeks – it was this, of course, that swung Sarwar’s decision to stand against Starmer.

But, importantly, they’re also hearing a great many people say they don’t know who they’ll vote for in May. And that gives them hope.

So what if an MRP has them limping home with just 15 seats in what would be the party’s worst result of the devolution era? No one Holyrood spoke to thought that data held water. “Jackie Baillie on 14 per cent?” one insider scoffed. “That means the rest of the data is untrustworthy.”

And with 10 weeks to go until the polls open, time remains for the doorstep contacts the party thinks can win it the support it needs.

“We just need four or five days where we get people to focus on who is running the NHS, who is running police and schools,” one MSP said. “I don’t think it changes anything,” said an MP of the by-election result. “This election is about who runs Scotland and that’s what [Sarwar is] focused on. Any time spent talking about anything else is time wasted.”

“There are loads of undecideds, and loads of them voted Labour last time,” said one candidate. “Maybe they just voted Labour last minute to lend us their vote. Maybe they’re just not very impressed. Maybe they will vote Labour again.”

To that end, the party is working hard to be as distinctive a political force as possible.

Rather than its signature pillarbox red, Scottish Labour issued Saltire-bearing passes in a cool blue, and Sarwar appeared again in front of a backdrop that screamed ‘Scotland’, not ‘Labour’. In fact, the reddest thing about the pre-election get-together was the crimson seats and curtains of Paisley Town Hall.

The party more or less filled it – the venue’s upper-tiers were far from packed, but there were just a dozen empty seats in the lower hall for Sarwar’s speech. Unlike many political conferences, it was untroubled by protesters, which may or may not be a sign that no pressure group saw it as an event worth targeting.

In the press room, reporters tried to decide what the attendance figure had been. Five hundred? Four hundred? Importantly, those there included a good number of MPs, including government ministers Douglas Alexander, Michael Shanks and Zubir Ahmed, as well as MSPs and councillors – a sign that Sarwar, at least for now, is a leader they want to be seen with.

The Glasgow MSP was asked if he’ll stand down if he loses his Bute House battle in 10 weeks. “I'm going to win in 10 weeks’ time, and I'm going to be first minister of this country. I don't do hypotheticals,” he went on, “because every hypothetical has been put to me in the last five years has proven to be wrong, and I've been proven to be right.”

Ready for his speech, Sarwar’s walk-out music was Home by Nathan Evans and Saint Phnx. “I'm waking up every night thinking of all of the places I wanna go,” the lyrics say. Bearing a formidable composure, Sarwar doesn’t look like a man having sleepless nights, and he’s certainly dreaming of Bute House.

Just 70-odd sleeps to go to see if that comes true.