Labour fears as they face the threat of total wipeout
LABOUR is set to experience a wipeout in Scotland with the party’s only MP facing a battle to keep his seat at Westminster.
Ian Murray was the only Labour candidate north of the Border to win a seat in the 2015 general election – with the party losing 40 seats across the country two years ago.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale yesterday insisted that she relished the chance to ‘oust’ the Conservative Government at Westminster, but her colleagues did not seem so confident.
One Labour MSP last night struggled to name a single seat he felt his party could win in Scotland – and said that he expects the Conservatives to do ‘very well’.
The most recent Panelbase poll on Westminster voting intentions for Scotland also put Labour on just 14 per cent – a further 10 per cent lower than it polled in 2015.
And, according to Professor John Curtice’s seat predictor, this would see the party lose its sole remaining MP north of the Border.
But party strategists yesterday insisted they were ‘confident’ that they will hold on to Mr Murray’s seat after he increased his majority in Edinburgh South in 2015.
A senior source said: ‘We are very confident Ian Murray will win.
‘I would be very surprised if the Lib Dems and the Tories put up much of a fight.’
Mr Murray won with a majority of just 2,637 votes, with the SNP making considerable gains in the area.
Nationalists will be confident that they can gain the seat in June’s General Election, but the threat of wipeout means Labour will be determined to hold on to it at all costs.
Asked if she was confident that Mr Murray would be re- elected, Miss Dugdale said: ‘I was the Labour party organiser with six weeks to go in 2010 when Nigel Griffiths resigned and Ian Murray stood to take on that seat.
‘People wrote him off then, people wrote him off five years later when he was defending a majority of 200 and he returned a majority of over a thousand.’
Miss Dugdale was forced to push back the start of her local government election campaign launch yesterday after news broke that Theresa May was to hold a snap general election.
Breaking away from her planned programme for the launch, Miss Dugdale insisted that she would work with candidates to ‘elect Jeremy Corbyn as the next Prime Minister’.
However, she admitted that that with Labour 20 points behind in national polls this would be a significant challenge.
She said: ‘It is clear that we are going to the polls again, and this country faces a significant and historic choice as we approach the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. At the last election in 2015 we said this would be a clear choice between a destructive Tory party or a better future with Labour.
‘At this general election the choice again will be very clear, it will be the Tory party intent on a hard, destructive and damaging Brexit or a Labour party that will oppose a second independence referendum and fight for a better future for everybody.
‘We will work tirelessly every single day until that General Election to elect Jeremy Corbyn as the next Prime Minister.’
‘The polls are undoubtedly very challenging, but as Jeremy Corbyn has said in the past we are on an election footing and we have been on an election footing for months.
‘And why? Because we relish the opportunity to take on and oust this Tory government.’
It will be the first UK General Election where all candidate selection for seats in Scotland is entirely controlled by Scottish Labour, rather than the UK party.
Officials began the process of selecting their candidates yesterday.
Miss Dugdale is due to take part in a meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee in London today.
‘Undoubtedly very challenging’