However, whereas there used to be many labour safe seats in Scotland there are now next to none. There have never been many Conservative safe seats in Scotland.
In the 2017 election the Conservatives were 12 short of a majority, and the labour party 48 short of a majority. Before the rise of the SNP that would have been closer to 26 short of a majority. With better campaigning (i.e. some actual opposition campaigning from Corbyn) and the willingness to form a liberal alliance Labour could have formed a government.
Corbyn then failed spectacularly again in 2019, losing even more seats, 14 of which were to the SNP.
I suppose Labour presently only having
one Scottish seat is very literally 'next to none'.
The grotesque irony of the 2017 election was that Corbyn had made noises suggesting he would be open to a deal with the SNP, and Nicola Sturgeon was proposing a 'rainbow coalition of the Left', to lock the Tories out of power. All of that notwithstanding, the then-Scottish branch-office leader Kezia Dugdale exhorted Labour voters in SNP/Tory marginals to vote Tory to keep the SNP out. Which contributed to the SNP losing 21 of their 56 seats. What might have been, right? The seats gained back by the SNP in 2019 were largely Tory.
It's also worth remembering that during Labour's historical failure to win any elections with Scottish seats during the period of their dominance, up until the 1997 boundary changes, there were 71 & then 72 Scottish seats with which to make no difference.
Apropos of nothing, given the unrepresentative electoral system & forthcoming voter suppression measures, impending boundary changes will remove another 10 seats from Wales (predominantly) and Scotland, and in order to maintain a total of 650, add the same number to England. Using the 2019 election as a guide, this, and boundary alterations within England, could theoretically gift the Tories 14 more Westminster seats.
So is he's 'out of step with the English public' then?
Sunak's failure (so far) to nudge the needle in the polls suggests yes, but it depends how much appetite there is within the Brexit Base for cheering the deportation of refugees & legal-by-the-back-door slavery while they can't pay their bills or afford food & warmth. All of this within the context of a system designed to make it very, very easy for Tories to win & very, very difficult for anyone else, of course.
