New Labor back on track to win 20 Scottish seats in next election

Former Labor Party Cabinet member Douglas Alexander, here with Gordon Brown in 2007, returns as an MP candidate. Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty Images

Check out the list of names in Gordon Brown's last cabinet ahead of the 2010 election, when Labor was out of power for almost a generation and many of them retired from politics.

Ed Balls become a TV star with Dancing with the Stars. Alan Johnson writes police reports. David Miliband changed not only profession, but also countries, leading a charity for refugees from New York.

But not Douglas Alexander. Having been at the top of the political ladder for so long during the New Labor years, he is back on the first step: the MP candidate.

«Time away gives perspective» — ​​Labor candidate for seat. from East Lothian, near Edinburgh, told The Telegraph about his decision to return to politics on the front lines.

“Just having a pleasant enough life seems not enough. Not when so many people are fighting for their lives.

“I realized that the fire is still burning brightly, and I am passionate about two things that brought me into politics — a thirst for social justice and love for Scotland.”

There may be another reason. : There is a very real possibility that at the end of next year the government will be led by Labor for the first time in 14 years, and not by the Conservatives.

And Mr. Alexander is not alone. North of the border, other New Labor stalwarts are back in the ranks, running for MP amid signs that the political tide is changing.

Blair MacDougall and Kirsty MacNeil served as advisors to Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. p>

And this week it was revealed that Blair MacDougall, an advisor to five different government departments during the Blair and Brown years, is also running for Scotland.

Mr Alexander did not turn his back on politics at first. He was Ed Miliband's Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2011 to 2015 and would have held an important public office had Labor won the general election.

Former New Labor figures who ran for Sir Keir Starmer in Scotland

Instead , Mr Miliband led Labor's defeat in 2015. Alexander was swept away by the SNP surge when the Scots turned to the Nationalists after the 2014 independence referendum.

However, now that cracks have appeared in the SNP's long dominance in Scotland, there is a sense that Labor's return could help elevate Sir Keir to 10th place.

«When Labor was elected back in 1997, the Chinese economy was was still smaller than the British one,” Mr. Alexander said, offering a broader perspective.

“When the SNP was elected in 2007, the iPhone had not yet been invented. When the Conservatives were elected in 2010, Donald Trump was still selling real estate in New York.

«And I believe that this new world is one where people want their governments to bring stability, not chaos, to make some basic things right… and that they feel like it's time for a change.»

Former New Labor giants like Ed Balls and Alan Johnson have found new careers

Sir Keir's own team never forgets the opportunity offered in Scotland.

In 2015, it was Labor's defeat — they won just one of 59 Scottish seats, as did the Conservatives — that made Mr Miliband's hopes of winning a majority in the House of Commons almost impossible.

The next general election is due in the fall 2024 — A resurgence in Scotland is seen as a key part of the plan to make Sir Keir prime minister.

A source working on Labor's election strategy in Scotland told The Telegraph that 20 seats was a realistic target. This will be a significant increase from 2019, when the party won just one constituency under Jeremy Corbyn

“If we got less than a dozen seats, we would be very disappointed,” the source added.

Since 2019, the SNP lead has halved

In the 2019 general election, the SNP led Labor by 19 percentage points. The average of recent public opinion polls shows the SNP lead by only five points, which means that the gap has narrowed by almost three-quarters.

One factor was the upheaval in SNP leadership. Nicola Sturgeon stepped down as First Minister of Scotland to be replaced by Humza Yousaf, who polls show is less enthusiastic among the public.

The party was also thrown into disarray over a police investigation into SNP finances when Mr. Ms. Sturgeon was arrested without charge. She denies wrongdoing.

Sir Keir has made repeated trips to Scotland in recent months, a sign that the Labor leadership senses a chance for major gains as the SNP falters.

Professor Sir John Curtis, one of the country's leading opinion pollsters, believes the failure of the Conservative Party at Westminster is more important in explaining the surge of the Scottish Labor Party.

He says Labor is on the rise in Scotland

Reaction The Leese Truss administration's financial woes have left Scots, as well as voters across the country, more enthusiastic about overthrowing the Tories, he said.

Scotland could play a decisive role in the end result. “It's a pretty simple rule of thumb,” Sir John said. «For every dozen or so seats Labor can get in Scotland, you can drop the two points of advantage they need across the UK to get a majority.»

Sir John explained the math. The Labor Party must defeat the Tories by about 12 percentage points across the country to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons, such is the leadership of the Conservative Party inherited from the 2019 election.

If Labor wins another dozen Scottish seats, the overall advantage required for the share of votes will drop to 10 points. If Labor wins another two dozen Scottish seats, that number will drop to 8 points.

In other words, this could greatly affect how well the party will have to perform elsewhere in order to win power.

During the New Labor years, Mr McDougall worked adviser in the Department of Labor and Pensions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Culture, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Department of Trade.

This is a kind of long experience in government, which the Labor Party, which has now been in opposition for 13 years, is not a lot.

'Moment of 1997'

“Of course, there is a feeling that everyone wants to put their shoulders behind the wheel,” said Mr MacDougall, who also led the pro-British Better Together campaign in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

“In any parliamentary party, in any government, there is always a need for a mixture of an outsider who is ready to challenge the way things work, and people who understand how things are currently in terms of public service, in terms of the connection between the dynamics parliament and the changes you can make to government.”

Mr McDougall, who is hoping to be elected Labor candidate in East Renfrewshire or Paisley and South Renfrewshire, feels that in 2024 the moment of 1997 will come.

“My first general election campaign was in 1997. ,» he said. «I think there's a similar feeling in the air in terms of people's desperation for something else. I just thought it was too important a moment to miss.»