Andy Burnham could be the man who saves Scottish Labour
Andy Burnham will give Labour a credible chance of winning the next general election and this will encourage many Scots voters to return to the party.
Westminster is a bit in limbo at the moment.
Sir Keir Starmer has confirmed he is resigning, and everyone is waiting around for Andy Burnham to become prime minister.
Earlier this week he made a speech about how he wants to massively expand devolution across the whole of the UK.
Many in the SNP will be worried.
The party demonstrated its anxiety by dedicating a whole article on its website criticising a piece he had written in The Scotsman after the speech.
The Nationalists would have been irked by his lines about how punters in Dundee (known as Yes City for its strong independence support) feel as distant from Holyrood as they do from Westminster.
But the big issue for the SNP is that Mr Burnham speaks the same language as they do.
He talks about putting place first ahead of the party and acknowledges that large parts of the UK feel left behind.
This hits the same nerve as the SNP’s message about “standing up for Scotland”.
And how could they argue against more devolution?
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Although it is unclear how he would do it, Mr Burnham’s pledge to give local communities more power will be popular in Scotland.
The public has seen the deterioration of local services and the decline of their high streets over the last couple of decades
This pushing of extra devolution gives Scottish Labour something to campaign on at next year’s council elections.
It could portray the Scottish Government as Edinburgh elites in the same way that the SNP does with the UK Government in Westminster.
It could present itself as the party of local communities.
But there are risks with taking on the SNP in a constitutional battle over giving councils extra powers.
Ultimately local government lies within the gift of the Scottish Parliament, so expanding local authority devolution would mean either working with or overriding Holyrood.
The latter could be accused of English politicians interfering with Scotland’s democratically elected government and may not go down well.
It certainly wouldn’t look good for the country’s biggest cheerleader of devolution to undermine a devolved government.
The real reason Andy Burnham will be great for Scottish Labour is that he will almost definitely increase UK Labour’s fortunes in the polls.
This is in part because he is popular, but also because he is not Sir Keir Starmer who the public greatly disapproved of.
There is a chance he will pull ahead of Reform UK if he does not make too many mistakes.
This will be what turns the heads of Scots.
In 2024 many voters across the Scottish Central Belt returned to Labour because they looked like they would were likely to return to office and could boot out the Tories.
If it looks like Labour can win again, many people who backed the SNP in May’s Holyrood election, will be inclined to vote Labour instead.
They will be pragmatic and acknowledge that the SNP cannot stop Nigel Farage from becoming prime minister.
Given Scottish Labour’s torrid showing in May it seems somewhat fanciful to predict that they will retain their 37 seats at the next general election.
But if Labour has a real chance of winning the general election and has a relatively popular leader - it could be the difference between holding onto most of them or losing most of them.
That could set the party up well for the next Holyrood election in 2031. Although, we have already seen how much public opinion can change in just two years.
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