Scottish Labour may be down but they’re not out. The polls have not been moving in their favour over the last few months and on the eve of Labour’s conference in Liverpool a Norstat survey for the Sunday Times brought more bad news: never mind losing out on first place at the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour could crash into third next year thanks to a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s leaderless tartan outfit. It would be a pretty humiliating state of affairs.

Yet despite all this, the mood in Scottish Labour is oddly buoyant, even upbeat. At the conference’s Scots Night, the Prime Minister made a quick cameo – bouncing into the soulless basement room to inform attendees that, no doubt about it, Anas Sarwar was going to be Scotland’s next first minister. Cue the applause from

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