Here's how Labour can consign SNP to oblivion

Here’s the irony, though: by playing the Culture War card, Tories simply sink further into the bog of their own effluvium. By the time 2025 comes, they’ll have drowned in it. Just desserts, many would say.

If politics is war, then we’re at the siege stage. Conservatives are surrounded by Labour, holed up in their castle, eating rats to survive.

Read more: SNP needs a spell in opposition to rediscover its soul

Meanwhile, in Scotland, Labour is eating the SNP’s lunch. The big question is: will it take their breakfast and dinner too?

If the suspect art of polling is to be believed, Scottish Labour will beat the SNP at the next UK General Election. Labour will take 26 seats - an astonishing feat given it currently has one. The SNP will take 21. It will become the first time since 2010 that Red gubs Yellow, rather than Yellow gubbing Red.

So we’ve reached a historic moment. The SNP can blame nobody but itself. It's been a sorry excuse of a government for years. It stunk Scotland up with a rancid leadership campaign. It’s a party tainted by endless scandal. And it doesn’t even know how to achieve its torch policy of independence. What a pitiful spectacle to behold.

Currently, though - thanks to the constitution - the SNP’s decline isn’t as severe at Holyrood. On the constituency list, the SNP is on 36 to Labour’s 32; on the regional list, it’s SNP 30, Labour 28. Scots aren’t as blinkered as many commentators would have you believe, and seem perfectly capable of viewing Westminster through a non-constitutional lens, while maintaining their Yes/No positions at Holyrood.

However, we’re nearly three years away from the next Scottish election. If Labour takes Westminster in 2025 - which seems pretty likely - then Anas Sarwar may have unstoppable momentum the following year. You can feel Labour gaining in self-confidence every day now. Currently, though, Sarwar has an unimpressive approval rating of minus 2. However, Humza Yousaf’s popularity stands at minus 12. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross - by way of comparison, and schadenfreude - is in the toilet on minus 34.

So, it seems clear what way the future is going: Labour will knock the SNP into second place at Westminster, gobbling up the nationalist lunch; but at Holyrood, the SNP may be able to keep a little on its plate … that is, if all the gods smile, the planets align, and every good wind that can blow, blows in its direction. Who knows, it may yet manage to form a minority government at the next Scottish Parliament.

The SNP’s fatal flaw is complacency: it cannot accept its supporters would leave it for Labour. It will still be sneering about "Red Tories" when its MPs get their P45s.

Read more: SNP may be done, but independence is worth fighting for

How should the SNP respond to this coming calamity? Well, halfway intelligent supporters and Yes voters have been saying "knuckle down to the hard business of government" for years. The SNP evidently didn’t listen.

In fairness, government has been woeful not simply because the SNP is rotten at policy, but also because of the near-total division in Scottish political life. Opposition parties would hamstring the SNP if Humza Yousaf developed a plan for world peace. Clearly, the SNP carries its own share of blame for this division too. Unionists will even say, with some degree of fairness: "You started it."

What the SNP could do is double down on independence. Just as the Tories are doubling down on Culture War to appeal to their base, so nationalists could ramp up the indy rhetoric. Will it work? It certainly won’t convert anyone from No to Yes, but it could galvanise independence supporters jaded by recent failures and scandals. It might create enough noise to get that minority government in Holyrood.

If the SNP doesn’t hold Holyrood in 2026, then clearly independence is chloroformed for years. An SNP Holyrood defeat could shift independence from being a political matter to a civic and social matter, where it becomes akin to abortion, capital punishment, equal marriage, and the right to die: not something defined by party, but by conscience.

For, rest assured, independence isn’t going away. The Yes vote is in fine fettle. Basically half the nation is Yes and half No. The link between independence support and the SNP is breaking, though it hasn’t sundered yet.

This brings us to the need for Labour to change. If the SNP can’t change - or won’t change - then Labour should heed the error of nationalist ways. If Labour wants to govern Scotland, either from Westminster or Edinburgh, it must heal constitutional divisions. A savvy Labour Party would have softened its position on independence years ago, perhaps saying that support or opposition is a matter of individual conscience not party position.

Read more: SNP is pushing progressive voters into the arms of Labour

Labour must reach out to that half of Scotland who favour independence. Not all are dyed-in-the-wool nationalists. Many are ex-Labour voters disgusted as Westminster, and inclined to independence from a progressive not nationalist position, who gave the SNP a chance and are now open to their old party wielding power again.

If Labour wants to win well, this is the cohort to pursue. Mr Sarwar and Sir Keir must show they understand and respect Yes voters. A good way of doing that - and of ensuring that it’s not just the SNP’s lunch that’s eaten but its breakfast and dinner too - would be to say that if or when opinion polls ever put support for independence at 60% for a prolonged period of time, say six months, then Labour would call a referendum.

That position would closely mirror thinking from some of the SNP’S most clear-headed senior members. If Labour stole that position - a position, which one must honestly confess, is damn hard to make materialise, as 60% is a hell of challenge - then what would the SNP have left? Nothing but increasingly irrelevant grievance. Labour could consign the SNP to political oblivion.