Forget the SNP – Conservatives are making a big comeback in Scotland

From 41 to potentially zero MPs in two years, Labour is facing electoral wipe-out in Scotland on a scale never quite seen before, and the rise of the Conservatives in their place is nothing less than extraordinary

The 8 June election could return 12 Conservative MPs and not one Labour MP (Getty)

There are many indices through which the Labour Party might choose to measure the depth of its own despair, but when you are unable even to maintain your position as the punchline of a panda joke that wasn’t even meant to be about you, it is time to panic.

When Tian Tian and Yang Guang came to Edinburgh Zoo in 2011, Scotland had 41 Labour MPs and a single solitary Conservative. Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs alike took great joy in pointing out that there were more giant pandas in Scotland than there were Tory MPs. Had they known that within four years, Scotland’s giant panda population would remain constant at two, while Labour and Lib Dem MPs would also plummet to one, a state known in conservation circles as functional extinction, it’s arguable they may not have laughed so loud.

But polling figures in the Sunday Times, analysed by the UK’s leading psephologist Professor John Curtice (who just so happens to operate, like Trident, out of Strathclyde) suggest the June 8th general election could return 12 Conservative MPs and not even so much as a single Labour MP.

From 41 to zero, via one, in two years, is electoral suicide on a scale never quite seen before, and the rise of the Conservatives in their place is nothing less than extraordinary. To go from being the first party of Scotland, to the second, to the point where you do not have any MPs at all is all but unheard of.

So what is going on? Well for a start, Scotland voting for remain in last year’s referendum hides the fact that 40 per cent of Scottish voters voted to leave. The fully 56 nationalists Scotland sent to Westminster in the 2015 election hides the fact that 55 per cent of its population voted against independence in 2014, and there is no evidence to suggest that number has reduced.

In the general election 49.97 per cent of the vote was enough for the SNP to win a near unanimous victory over fragmented opposition. Now, if pro-Brexit, pro-unionist sentiment has found a single cause to align itself with, and that force is the Conservatives, we can expect something of an aftershock to the earthquake of 2015.

Poor Labour. Poor Jeremy Corbyn. A Brexiteer and a unionist all his life, until the point at which it suddenly mattered more than anything.

It will have consequences too. Nicola Sturgeon appears certain a second independence referendum can be forced on Scotland, even if Theresa May has made it clear she does not want one. Losing a sizeable chunk of their seats, and to the Conservatives too, will make her position far more difficult. The party’s leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson, is among those who could very well lose his seat.

Referendums are meant to settle a question once and for all, though British people know better than anyone that they do not work like that. Cameron and Salmond was meant to be a political death match only one man could win. But the SNP, and Salmond himself, are doing just fine, and Cameron was sunk by something else entirely.

But if we are gearing up for Round 2, which will be a more female affair this time, is it even worth pausing to note the utter irrelevance of Labour in what was once its most important heartland?

The early miles are being marched by Theresa May, and on current evidence, the final ones will be too. If Nicola Sturgeon wants to have the last laugh, she will have to start by finding a dozen new pandas for Edinburgh zoo.

Nothing could undermine the SNP narrative more spectacularly than Brexit itself showing itself to be a recruiting sergeant to the Tory cause in Scotland.