IAN Murray attacked his party’s lack of “credibility” in Scotland during a Zoom call with colleagues — and warned voters view them as an irrelevance.

Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary urged senior party figures at Westminster to change the UK party’s “culture” and stop side lining Scots when making their policies.

Taking part in a Walthamstow Labour Zoom meeting with the London borough’s MP Stella Creasy, he quoted polling by a blog that hailed the SNP’s ‘Standing up for Scotland’ message.

“It polls as the most powerful political slogan of all time, and we have to say let’s try and take this apart gradually.

“But the only way we can start is to have some credibility, and Labour in Scotland doesn’t have any, therefore people think we’re irrelevant,” said Murray, according to a report in the Sun newspaper yesterday.

The comments by Murray, who is Labour’s only MP in Scotland, come as the party tries to gear itself up for the Holyrood election next year, with polls predicting Labour will remain in third place.

Kirsten Oswald, the SNP MP, said: “As long as Labour is indistinguishable from Tories on the issue of Scotland’s future it will slide further into irrelevance.”

Murray, who represents Edinburgh South, said his remarks on credibility related to Labour “sitting on the fence” on Brexit and previous “equivocation” on indy.

Scottish Conservative MSP Annie Wells said: “This is a withering verdict from Ian Murray about the sorry state of a once-proud Labour Party.

“Communities across Scotland clearly agree with his assessment that Labour are no longer ‘credible’ or ‘relevant’, and that’s why so many pro-UK voters have backed the Scottish Conservatives in recent elections.

“Douglas Ross is leading the only party capable of providing the strong, united opposition to stop the SNP.”

Last week it emerged that Murray was on the brink of defecting to a new rebel party in frustration at Jeremy Corbyn’s performance as leader but changed his mind at the eleventh hour.

A resignation speech had been prepared for Murray before a mass walkout from the party in February last year, a new book on Corbyn’s five-year reign as UK Labour leader claimed.

Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, revealed how close Murray, came to quitting the party. The book said Murray changed his mind because of the prospect of a candidate from the Corbyn wing contesting and losing his seat in Edinburgh South in any General Election.

He won with a majority of 11,095 in December as the number of Labour MPs in Scotland fell from seven to one.

“I didn’t want to hand my seat to someone from the Corbyn wing of the party and felt loyalty to all the people who had worked so hard to help me win over the years,” the book recounts Murray telling friends.

All the MPs who joined the new party, Change UK — The Independent Group, lost their seats.