EUAN McCOLM: As Starmer starts to tackle his in-tray, securing the future of the Union must be top of his list

As landslide election victories go, it lacked a certain pizzazz. Sir Keir Starmer may be our new Prime Minister with a remarkable majority of MPs but the transition of power between Rishi Sunak and his successor was peculiarly low key.

There was none of that ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ energy of 1997 when Tony Blair led Labour back from the political fringes into power.

Instead, each paid polite tribute to the other and quietly got about their business, Mr Sunak of moving his family out of No 10, thereafter to console himself with nothing more than their nourishing love and the multi-million pound fortune he shares with his wife, and Mr Starmer of running the country while trying to fix our fractured and discredited politics.

There are a number of reasons this Labour landslide feels different from 1997. For one thing, Sir Keir is no Tony Blair, a politician who, right up until they stopped doing so, a great many voters viewed with real affection.

In 1997, Blair cut an inspiring figure. In 2024, Sir Keir cut a blandly reassuring one.

Clearly, the Labour leader’s lack of X factor has done no harm to his party. 

Indeed, perhaps after the chaos of the recent years of the UK Government under the Conservatives, it’s a bonus.

Many who supported Boris Johnson may regret putting their faith in a politician on the grounds of his big personality.

Of course, it would be churlish not to accept that Starmer – in leading Labour from the brink of extinction under Jeremy Corbyn just five years ago to becoming PM with a commanding majority – has just achieved something rather remarkable.

But, after the outrage of Partygate under Johnson, the financially disastrous consequences of Liz Truss’s brief premiership and an appalling Tory election campaign that saw such lows as Sunak leaving D-Day commemorations early to take part in a TV interview, much of Starmer’s success may be down to the simple fact that he is not ‘one of that lot’.

The UK Conservative Party has, in recent years, become so hopelessly divided as to be unfit for office. Sir Keir is now PM in part because he offers something that looks vaguely like a plan.

Here in Scotland, the recent Conservative Party story is very different from the one that has played out south of the Border.

Indeed, while the party in England moved further away from Scottish voters, the party in Scotland enjoyed a rebirth. Under the leadership of Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives established themselves firmly as defenders of the Union.

After the bitter division of the 2014 independence referendum, the Conservatives – once thought of as an utterly spent force in Scotland – brought a degree of stability back to Scottish public life, seeing off the threat of a second painful referendum campaign and holding the woefully underperforming SNP government to account.

Labour may – under the leadership of Starmer at a UK level and Anas Sarwar in Scotland – have started to get its act together again, but even Thursday’s result, with the SNP’s losses and Scottish Labour’s gains, does not mean the party is yet a viable proposition for government at Holyrood.

Labour did not lose its once seemingly solid grip on Scottish politics for no good reason.

In part, there was the ebb and flow of politics – success ends, failure is overcome – but beyond that there was the undeniable fact that the party had, for some time before it lost the 2007 Holyrood election to the SNP, been taking voters for granted.

The old joke ran that Labour could stick a red rosette on a donkey in certain parts of Scotland and it would win. The betrayal voters felt when they lost faith in Scottish Labour was deep and – as several elections have since shown – lasting.

First Minister John Swinney – rattled by the scale of the SNP’s losses on Thursday – talks of his willingness to work with the new UK Government in Scotland’s interests. His support for this not entirely novel approach is prompted by necessity rather than desire.

Another reason last week’s Labour landslide is so muted in comparison with the carnival of 1997 is that it took place against a backdrop of absolute despair at the state of our politics. 

A vote for Starmer wasn’t so much a vote of enthusiasm for his and Labour’s policy agenda but a vote to make the Tories stop doing whatever they have been doing these past few years.

Sarwar will, on the back of Thursday’s result, now feel more confident that not only can he lead Labour past the Tories to become Scotland’s second largest party at the 2026 Holyrood election but that he can go that crucial stage further and nudge the SNP aside, too.

It is entirely possible that, less than two years from now, perhaps with the support of Tories voting tactically, Mr Sarwar will be our next First Minister.

It should not be enough for him to lead Labour to victory merely because it is not the SNP and he is not whichever poor soul is leading that ever-fracturing party by then.

Scottish Labour made grave mistakes while in leadership at Holyrood between 1999 and 2007. 

The party was overly cautious on the use of powers and Ministers in Edinburgh unnecessarily deferential to colleagues in London who, in return, were brutally dismissive of MSPs (‘jumped-up councillors’, as one had it) in private briefings.

Scotland has been failed by politicians in recent years.

On two of the biggest issues of importance to voters – the constitution and the plan to allow transgender people to self-ID – only the Conservatives have been firmly with the majority of Scots.

If Sarwar is to maximise his chances of becoming First Minister, he and Starmer must begin showing – immediately – how Scotland benefits from its place in the Union and prove they both understand the frustrations that drove many to lend their support to the nationalists in the past.

The Prime Minister can afford to cover Swinney with hugs and kisses during what must be regular trips to Scotland but, equally, he can afford to ignore the First Minister the moment he suspects him of playing political games

After almost two decades of ruling the Scottish political roost, the SNP has just been humiliated in the polls. 

Swinney, the man brought in to save his party after the chaos of Humza Yosuaf’s leadership, just presided over the sort of election performance that cost him the leadership the first time he held it 20 years ago.

And so the new UK Government need cut him no slack when it comes to the SNP’s usual, predictable and unreasonable demands (these will come. And soon). 

But this position of strength can’t let Labour take Scots for granted.

Anas Sarwar mustn’t waltz into power simply because he’s not a Nationalist. 

He has less than two years to prove that, under him, Scottish Labour truly has changed for the better and that he can be trusted to lead.

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