Corbyn will claim Labour can win 20 extra seats

Leader to say party on the cusp of a major resurgence

Jeremy Corbyn will take to the stage in Dundee today to claim Labour are in line for an extraordinary resurgence in Scotland.

The UK leader says his party are poised to batter the SNP by more than tripling their Westminster seat tally to 27 – but he got into a muddle over how many they won last year.

Labour is eyeing up one of their former heartlands by hosting their Scottish conference in Dundee, a city which has only sent one Labour representative to Holyrood or Westminster since 2007, the year the Nationalists swept to power.

In his speech to Caird Hall this afternoon, Mr Corbyn is expected to say: “This time last year there were more than a few people in the media who had written the Labour Party off.

“In Scotland we were told that Labour was dying. The truth is that we very much are alive and kicking. Labour in Scotland is back.

“Led by Richard Leonard...we are making Labour’s voice heard for a radically fairer society.

“We won six seats for Scottish Labour at the last general election, and we are on the cusp of winning around 20 more.”

The party in fact gained six seats and opposition parties stuck the boot in on the Labour leader’s arithmetic.

George Adam, the SNP MSP, said: “Scottish Labour’s MPs have made such little impact that Corbyn doesn’t even know how many there are.”

Jackson Carlaw, for the Scottish Conservatives, said: “This blunder shows exactly how much attention he pays to events north of the border, and the Scottish Labour branch office.”

The SNP won 35 out of the 59 Scottish constituencies in last year’s general election, compared with 13 for the Tories, seven for Labour and four for the Lib Dems.

The conference, which runs until Sunday, is set to be dominated by infighting over the party’s Brexit stance.

Mr Murray and his ally, the former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, have challenged the leadership of Mr Corbyn and Scottish chief Richard Leonard by launching a campaign group opposing their refusal to stay in the single market.

The Scottish Labour for the Single Market group is running a fringe debate tomorrow, just before Mr Leonard’s speech.

Several local constituency branches had called on the party to allow a vote on remaining in the single market, but in a heated meeting at the Apex Hotel in Dundee last night the party’s Scottish executive committee formally backed party policy in a “unity motion”..

A senior pro-EU Scottish Labour source said: “It will be a democratic outrage if a vote on permanent single market membership is blocked in this way.”

Picture: PA. Jeremy Corbyn receives a gift that depicts him riding a llama, as he has a selfie taken with Katie Abey during a special event in Alfreton, Derbyshire, on International Women’s Day yesterday.