Labour given early preview of General Election campaign

The party has benefitted enormously from the crises facing its two main opponents, both in Scotland and down at Westminster.

The legacy of Boris Johnson’s reign as prime minister is the public’s widespread revulsion and mistrust of the party he once led.

His recent appearance before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about partygate and deny that he intentionally misled the House of Commons was an unmitigated disaster.

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Add on the many examples of Tory sleaze (the latest, just last week) and you’ve got an enviable set of conditions for a resurgent Labour party.

While the party have been well ahead in UK-wide polls for quite some time, they have failed to make any real progress in Scotland.

Could that be about to change?

Scottish Labour seem to think so.

The crisis currently engulfing the SNP has clearly been a source of some considerable joy for party activists in recent days.

Of course, if the SNP do lose a chunk of their previous support come election time, it doesn’t automatically mean that Scottish Labour would reap the benefits.

While the fortunes of the main party of independence might have taken a nosedive, there’s no evidence that support for independence has.

How likely is it that, come election time, Yes voters will forget the sneering contempt that Scottish Labour has shown them for the best part of a decade?

Nevertheless, Anas Sarwar is hoping to position himself as deftly as Keir Starmer has.

Anas Sarwar will hope to position himself as deftly as Keir Starmer

He wants to be seen as a steady pair of hands and draw a clear contrast in voters’ minds between stability with Scottish Labour and chaos with the SNP.

Scottish Labour haven’t settled on a soundbite to illustrate this point yet but, given the prospect of an upcoming by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, we can expect one imminently.

There are obvious pitfalls in relying on the incompetence or lack of integrity of your opponents to win support for yourself.

Namely, you have to prove to voters that you are guilty of none of the things that you are accusing them of.

Keir Starmer recently had his first taste of how this is likely to play out during the next General Election campaign.

A viral video which clips together video footage of his “flip-flopping” over the years has caused a stir on social media.

It’s an excruciating watch, as the Labour leader’s “then” and “now” positions on various issues are placed side by side for everybody to see.

Freedom of movement, once something that must be defended and argued for, has gone and isn’t coming back, says Sir Keir: “We don’t want open borders.”

On nationalising the big six energy companies, Starmer’s “commitment” to do so suddenly changes into a hard “no”.

It goes on: he changes positions on whether he would ever write for The Sun, whether Jeremy Corbyn was ever his friend and whether he would join strikers at a picket line, among other things.

In an interview with the i newspaper, one shadow minister gave a faintly damning summary of Sir Keir’s ever-changing positions.

“He has his inclinations, but he’s happy to change his inclinations. Sometimes I think even HE doesn’t know who he is,’’ they said.

One frontbencher predicted that the video was a sign of what’s to come for the Labour leader: “The General Election campaign is going to be full of videos of Keir, he said this, now he says that.”

His allies insist that, far from being an example of the Labour leader’s lack of substance and willingness to say anything to win votes, this is proof that their man has learned from Labour’s political missteps in recent years.

A problem that Labour – and their Scottish counterpart – will face at the next General Election is that they are trying to appeal to vastly different bases.

Sir Keir’s focus will be on pro-Brexit Red Wall voters.

Anas Sarwar will be simultaneously trying to appeal to pro-Union Tory voters and pro-indy disillusioned former SNP voters.

What will both men say – and promise – to these voters to win their support?

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And how will what they say in the heat of an election campaign line up with what they’ve said before, and more importantly, what they do, when the votes are counted, and the campaign is over?

There is the potential for many more videos like the one of flip-flopping Sir Keir.

You can see it now: Anas Sarwar promising a Scottish Labour that will work for all of Scotland, spliced with footage of him explaining why he’ll never support a second independence referendum.

Starmer and Sarwar should be mindful of the dangers that lie ahead as they revel in the current misfortune of their opponents.