LIFE is full of uncertainties, some more pressing than others. The date of the next General Election is not high on most priority lists. It has to be by the end of January 2025. Apart from that, we know nothing.

We don’t know if Boris Johnson will be the Tory leader. In fact, we don’t know who will be leading Labour or the Scottish Nationalists either. The former is in the hands of the Durham constabulary; the latter now subject to a plan that might have been designed to fail. Who knows? Who, to lesser or greater degree, cares? It’s summer.

If a General Election was held now, Labour under Keir Starmer would probably win. For that very obvious reason, it is not being held now or until some point at which the Tories (or Johnson personally) think it is in their interests. Repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act has restored that critical right to choose.

It’s always a tricky decision. Both John Major and Gordon Brown got it badly wrong. Neil Kinnock found that opinion poll leads can melt in the heat of battle. Mrs Thatcher was regularly 20 points behind and still won. So while the political circus keeps throwing up its mini-dramas, there is no appointed moment of truth.

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There is a school of thought which suggests Johnson will call an election before the end of the year and, more pertinently, before the Tories can get rid of him. That is plausible and could offer the opportunity for major change sooner rather than later – i.e. the election of a Labour government which, if in prospect, will alter the political dynamic in Scotland as elsewhere.

That is certainly the outcome our Nationalists most fear – which, in itself, should give anyone who thinks of themselves as being even vaguely on the left of politics food for thought. To maximise their prospects, the SNP need the Tories and preferably Boris Johnson as a bonus.

Ms Sturgeon, in her address to Holyrood last week, poured scorn on Labour as “more of a pale imitation than a genuine alternative” which “will not prioritise tackling child poverty over investment in nuclear weapons” – one of the more juvenile jibes from the leader of a party now committed to the NATO alliance.

And of course, contrary to Ms Sturgeon’s sneer, Labour did a vast amount to reduce child poverty, in every part of the United Kingdom. Just as it has done a vast amount over decades for education, for housing, for the National Health Service … to mention just four great policy areas in which, with so many powers at her disposal, Ms Sturgeon has failed so miserably; a “pale imitation” of her own self-regard.

Both history and common sense tell Labour that there is still a lot of work to be done to recover from the terrible election result in 2019. Part of that challenge is in Scotland and there is no doubt that the strength of the Nationalist vote greatly inhibits the possibility of a majority Labour government for those who need it most, in Glasgow as much as in Newcastle or Liverpool.

That has to be countered on two fronts. First, Scottish voters need to be offered – in a way that has not happened since 2005 – the serious prospect of a Labour government. That would be a hugely significant change of context which might or might not translate in the short-term into a significant number of seats.

Just as important, however, is to address voters in the rest of Britain who will not vote for a Labour government which they suspect, even slightly, might be obliged to dance to a Nationalist tune. This is the card which David Cameron played to great effect in 2015 and will undoubtedly be revived by Johnson or whoever. Not unreasonably, the rest of Britain does not fancy the idea of Ian Blackford being in a position to pull a single string.

That is one reason why Keir Starmer is right to be categorical in ruling out any deal with the SNP. However, there is another one. If Labour is the largest party, and if there is even the remotest connection between reality and the SNP’s attempts to promote itself as a ‘social democratic’ party, why would there be need for a deal? Surely their votes would be there anyway? Unless, of course, they opted to facilitate another Tory government.

An under-reported aspect of Ms Sturgeon’s oration was the presumption about the question to be asked in her hypothetical referendum i.e. a repeat of the one in 2014 which should never have happened because of the factor universally accepted by psephologists that being asked to assert a positive (yes) creates a substantial in-built advantage (five points) over the negative. And they still lost.

As I say, this is all hypothetical because there isn’t going to be a referendum any time soon. But it does reflect more than arrogance. It also implicitly ignores the existence of the Electoral Commission which just might think it a good idea to offer Scotland the more nuanced choice that most of us would probably support.

That is an audience which Anas Sarwar was addressing yesterday – people who want to see the optimum form of government for Scotland and who certainly believe that the two governments in Whitehall and St Andrew’s House should work together on matters of shared interest instead of in a climate of constant conflict.

As Mr Sarwar said: “When both of Scotland’s governments stand to gain politically from the chaos of division, it means bad government thrives and people pay the price”. That is a fair description of where Scotland currently stands and I do not know if it can legislated away through “new joint governance councils” but he is right to try.

Regardless of Ms Sturgeon’s instructions, most people in Scotland will not treat the next General Election, whenever it comes, as “de facto” anything other than an election. It will, as ever, be massively in the interests of working people and their families to elect a Labour government. That is the true choice which Scots, like our friends and families elsewhere in the UK, will be asked to make.

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