Labour election glory in SNP’S Dundee heartland would signal a seismic shift

The sight of Rishi Sunak outside 10 Downing Street in the rain to call a general election for July 4 may prove to be the unbeatable image of this campaign regardless of how many colourful photo opportunities our political classes muster among themselves in the coming weeks.

As I watched the announcement live, three immediate thoughts passed through my mind.

Firstly, I couldn’t help but wonder how much that suit cost.

Mr Sunak is known both for his expensive tastes and the enormity of his own private wealth to satisfy them.

Three grand? Four grand? Can it ever recover from a downpour like that? Could he?

The second reaction was one of silent fury. We’re going to have to postpone our holiday, aren’t we?

It’s been a habit years in the making that we get away as soon as the Scottish Parliament goes into recess in late June.

I simply love an election, especially one in which I’m not an active participant.

I’ve been a wholly signed-up member of the election geek squad since I was 10 years old at the 1992 election.

What a killer twist that episode had. just can’t be anywhere other than here.

The third response was simply to contemplate what this might mean for Scotland.

A general election in the summer holidays for most Scottish schoolchildren. Very few people alive today have ever seen a July election.

In truth, there’s probably little difference between a July election and a November election when it comes to turnout.

What we might lose in July to sunseekers jetting abroad, we would likely have lost to the couch on a rainy, pitch-dark-by-6pm November evening.

In light of that, I suspect that John Swinney’s fury at the election being called is less about the disrespect it shows Scotland and more to do with the now very compressed window he has to scrape off all the barnacles from his election boat – from Michael Matheson’s suspension from Parliament to Peter Murrell’s police file being passed to the procurator fiscal.

From the rapid decline of Humza Yousaf ’s reign to the rebellion from within and its break-up with the Greens, the SNP has not had its troubles to seek of late and the poll numbers reflect that back.

Political forecasting site Electoral Calculus does a wonderful job of aggregating each of the polls in Scotland and seeking to predict the result as a consequence.

It currently says that Labour will win the general election in Scotland, securing 35 of the country’s 57 seats.

That is substantially up on as little as a month ago when Labour, while still ahead, was looking at roughly 25 seats to the SNP’S 19, with remaining seats split between the Tories broadly in the northeast and the Borders, and the Lib Dems winning one seat in Fife and a few in the Highlands and Northern Isles.

The difference in these numbers is significant because, if the former is true, Labour returning 25 seats sees the party making a miraculous recovery from the 2019 result, but still returning MPS largely from the M8 corridor.

Draw as straight a line as you can from Inverclyde to East Lothian through the middle of Glasgow and Edinburgh and you get the picture.

Thirty-five seats means Labour adding on three-quarters of the seats in Fife and creeping over the Tay Bridge.

Yes, the current polling predictions show Labour winning Dundee Central (formerly Dundee West) from the SNP.

A result like that would be simultaneously seismic for Labour and earth-shattering for the SNP.

In recent times, Dundee has felt like the ideological epicentre of the modern SNP.

It is home to recent first minister Humza Yousaf, ministerial stalwart Shona Robison and long-serving MP Stewart Hosie.

The “Yes City” also has an SNP council leader.

While Labour has plugged away tirelessly for years here, it always somehow felt like too tall an order. Until now.

It’s hard to believe that as little as five years ago I wondered whether I would see another Labour government in my lifetime, so existential were the threats to the party then.

If its revival reaches the Perth Road, the party has had the most exceptional night and the tectonic plates of Scottish politics will have shifted quite fundamentally.

It always somehow felt like too tall an order. Until now

BAPTISM OF FIRE: John Swinney is being pitched into a general election campaign just weeks after becoming first minister.