The past few days need to be a wake-up call for Scottish Labour

It’s been a series of bad headlines for them.

Earlier in the week, an MRP poll predicted the party would lose all but one of its constituency seats, and then struggle to get more than one MSP returned in some regions.

On Friday, the party faithful woke up to a thumping defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-election, coming third behind the Greens and Reform UK.

Only a mere few hours later, another poll came out predicting an even worse result. It suggested Labour will fall into fourth place at the Holyrood election in May, as the SNP, Reform UK and the Scottish Greens seem to be more popular.

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While journalists at the Scottish Labour conference on Friday (spare a thought for the person in charge of Labour’s diary who booked a conference the day after a by-election they had no guarantee of winning) were trying to wrap their heads around how bad this poll was for Anas Sarwar’s party, we were listening to the party leader regale members on how Labour is the only party that can stop the SNP.

Only 18 months ago, this was a sound proposition. Labour was celebrating the landslide victory in the general election and was neck-and-neck in the polls with the nationalists.

But fast forward to now and Sir Keir Starmer’s dwindling popularity is seriously hampering the party’s efforts.

On the inside, the party knows this fine well.

Those that I spoke to at the conference did allude to the by-election defeat as being “terrible”, with another saying: “You can’t get any worse.”

Some of the usual suspects were a bit more outspoken, but there was a general cloud hanging over the conference once you dug past the surface.

Yet Mr Sarwar, who surely cannot be oblivious to this, is trying to portray the image that there is nothing to worry about.

After his speech I asked him why he is still telling people he is the only one that can beat the SNP when the most recent poll suggests he is actually on course to finish fourth.

He said: “If I believed every pollster, the Labour Party wouldn’t have survived 2021, wouldn’t have come second in 2022, wouldn’t have won the Rutherglen by-election in 2023, wouldn’t have won the general election in 2024, and wouldn’t have won the Hamilton by-election in 2025.

“We have proven them all wrong before, and we will prove them all wrong again in 10 weeks.”

Fair enough, but the state of politics is somewhat different from what it was in the past.

At this point, it probably is too late in the day to do anything other than clutch desperately at straws if you are the Labour Party, and I understand that as leader, you need to be spreading the enthusiasm and the confidence needed to fight an election.

But at what point does the party (publicly) admit this is a lost cause for them? Right now, barring a Mandelson-esque level scandal within the SNP, it seems to be all over for Labour before it’s even begun.

You probably won’t hear this admission from them - but the wake-up call needed is that Mr Sarwar is not going to get his hands on the keys to Bute House in May.