There’s monie hartsom braw high-jinks, the poet Robert Garioch wrote . . . in simmer, when aa sorts foregether in Embro to the ploy. To the list of attractions in Edinburgh this August may now be added the presence of Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader, and putative next or, perhaps, next but one prime minister will visit the capital as part of a five-day progress through Scotland. Other events replete with music and speeches and the dream of a better, redder, future will be held in Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Fife. JezFest is coming to Scotland.
Momentum is with Mr Corbyn. The opinion polls suggest Labour would win an election if one were held this autumn. This fact, more than any other, is what keeps Theresa May in office. The Tories, weakened by their calamitous election result, have to desire to risk a fresh encounter with the general public.
Nevertheless, Labour’s Scottish revival is easily exaggerated. Though the party won seven seats, it received only 10,000 more votes in June than it had two years previously when the party lost 41 of its 42 Scottish seats. The Labour Party avoided oblivion but remains a shadow of the party that once dominated Scottish politics.
Moreover, if part of Labour’s return to health owed something to Mr Corbyn’s anti-austerity message, just as much of it was due to the party’s opposition to a second independence referendum. Labour sent one message to older, middle-class voters and another to younger, working-class Scots.
A Labour revival of any sort, however, complicates matters for the SNP. The party’s claim to represent the interests of centre-left and left-wing voters is now being challenged by Mr Corbyn. And when Kezia Dugdale argues that only Labour can defeat the Conservatives in a general election she is merely stating an obvious truth.
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Eighteen of Labour’s 64 target seats are in Scotland; all currently held by the SNP. The Nationalists’ success was built on the proposition that only they could represent the Scottish interest at Westminster; Labour’s task is to reframe the choice as one between another Conservative government and a Labour administration. By doing so, they hope to squeeze the Nationalist vote. This places the SNP in a quandary: can it be a left-wing party in the central belt to fend-off Labour while also presenting itself as a centrist party in rural Scotland to face off the Conservatives?
Paradoxically, Labour’s election performance in June benefited from the electorate’s low expectations. Since there seemed little risk of Labour winning the election, the party benefited from votes cast in a spirit of protest or exasperation. Voters thirsting for an alternative after years of grinding austerity flocked to Labour.
The next election, whenever it may be, will be different. As matters stand, the prospect of prime minister Corbyn is a real one. Voters will accordingly pay more attention to Labour’s plans for government. Mr Corbyn’s task is to transform a movement dominated by disillusioned protest into a plausible party of government. That requires credible proposals on how Labour’s policies might be funded. The electorate forgave the absence of that credibility in June; it may not be so forgiving next time.
The younger voters who were a crucial part of Labour’s coalition are also entitled to ask questions about Labour’s approach to Brexit. Some of them may yet be surprised to discover that many of the people closest to Mr Corbyn are relaxed about leaving the European Union. They consider it a “capitalist club” of the sort Britain would be better off leaving.
Mr Corbyn has proved he can inspire; his next task is to show he can convince. Edinburgh in August is a city of revelations; it seems an appropriate place for Mr Corbyn to start.