Once upon a time, a minor sport for election-watchers was the laying of bets on Michael Forsyth and Stirling.

The book opened in 1987, when a Tory majority of 5,133 began to shrink to mere hundreds. The betting ended a decade later when the Secretary of State for Scotland was thumped by Labour. Lord Forsyth, as we these days know him, fought hard and long.

You could say the same about a "Tory-free" country. In 1983, Conservatives won 21 seats - after losing an MP - and 28.4 per cent of the Scottish vote. It took until 1997, with a share reduced to 17.5 per cent, before the last Tory MP was sent packing. Even then, amid a Labour landslide, the humiliated party still held on to almost half a million Scottish votes.

The Scottish Conservatives have regained a constituency since, in the form of David Mundell's Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Upper Tweeddale, but have otherwise exhibited few signs of life. The 17.5 per cent in '97, Year Zero, has exceeded any Tory achievement in Westminster elections in the 21st century.

The 16.7 per cent achieved in 2010 was talked up as a recovery, of sorts, only because it was slightly less grim than the scores in two previous polls. From these bits of history, two conclusions emerge. First, entrenched old parties are not destroyed overnight. The electoral system and voting habits can keep patients on life support long after vital signs are gone.

Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats are close to that condition now. Habitual local support will preserve a platoon of MPs next year. A vote share of 17.5 per cent, the level at which Scottish Tories were wiped out, is a forlorn hope for Mr Clegg, but he'll survive.

The precedent matters, nevertheless. As old Liberals knew, there is no rule that says a once mighty party is entitled to resurrection. A contemporary example can be found in the question: "Whatever became of the Ulster Unionist Party?" In 2001, it held 10 of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies. By 2010, the party that once ran the province as though by right had lost the lot. No-one is betting on a comeback.

Even its more optimistic opponents know Scottish Labour is nowhere near that condition this autumn. Where Westminster is concerned, it has history, the electoral system, and habits on its side.

In the west of the country, it has mighty majorities for insurance. It has the knowledge that Scotland's voters make different choices, traditionally, where the London and Edinburgh parliaments are concerned. It still has "Keep the Tories Out", to say nothing of Ukip, as a slogan.

Some of the Yes voters in the referendum have been getting carried away. They have looked at the numbers for Glasgow, in particular, and jumped to the conclusion that the apocalypse will be along shortly. They have seen the remarkable rise in SNP membership, in Green and Scottish Socialist membership, in the numbers signing up for "Anyone But Labour" campaigns, and run several paces ahead of reality.

Labour's self-evident panic hasn't exactly discouraged them. Still, that party will not be reduced to impotence overnight (despite the best efforts of some of its senior figures). After all, it managed 42 per cent of the Scottish vote in the 2010 Westminster elections. The SNP has meanwhile failed to perform particularly well in its efforts to win votes or MPs for the UK Parliament in the 21st century. In the 1990s, the Nationalists did better than 620,000 votes in two elections for the Commons. Since then, 491,386 in 2010 (19.9 per cent of the vote) has been their best shot.

You might want to say the referendum changed everything. Ironically enough, Scottish Labour might even now harbour the suspicion that you're right. The Glasgow Yes vote, above all, has produced a near-comical reaction from the party. The demands for a new name, fresh faces, "radical" devolution policies, and a pledge - those are always good - never again to campaign alongside Tories might comfort the remaining faithful. A lot of other voters will detect a poor joke.

After all, no-one in the Labour wing of Better Together felt the need for such gestures before the Glasgow Yes vote was in. Led (like it or not) by Gordon Brown, it began to devise schemes for improved devolution only after the referendum had become a strange reality. Now, suddenly, party self-interest is held to coincide with the interests of Scotland. A strange old coincidence, that one.

The indictment laid against Scottish Labour is simple enough: it cannot and will not disentangle its needs from the needs of the country. Isn't that just the nature of party politics?

Not if you claim Scottish Labour's history. Not if you make the promises Scottish Labour has made. Not, in the end, if you hope to be taken seriously by voters who have - let's be fair - heard it all many times before.

Mr Brown has now taken to attacking David Cameron and the Tory Party. It turns out they are not to be trusted to deliver the form of devolution the Labour MP devised for us.

Worse, Mr Cameron might not have the best interests of Labour at heart. This is high comedy, with a serious question at its heart: does Mr Brown truly expect anyone to believe he saw none of this coming - "English votes for English laws above all" - when he begged us to stick with Westminster and the UK?

It's risible. It sounds, in fact, like an attempt to prepare an excuse for the collapse of the "more powers" prospectus and the inevitable failure of the Smith Commission to satisfy the Scottish electorate. Mr Brown is readying the ground for Labour to claim, yet again, that all blame lies with the Tories, those erstwhile allies. Voters might instead conclude that we could have been rid of all such nonsense. Trust in Scottish Labour will be eroded further, in any event.

Because it has no choice, the party clings to the belief that things can be fixed. Such is the Labour way, after all. The party wants to forget the immense damage caused in campaigning alongside the Tories in a Tory-funded campaign to shut Scotland up.

Conspicuously, Mr Brown saw that "trap" ahead, but his party made its bed with the Conservative 16.7 per cent (2010) and allied itself with the losers in Scottish politics. That's a bad habit to acquire. The odour lingers.

By the end, the Union depended on Scottish Labour and a former prime minister. The latter has now decided to cry foul while making it obvious - if it wasn't obvious before - that all those "home rule" vows were never worth a damn.

Their chances of surviving the grinding of the Westminster machine were always remote. But who would have known that better than the man who once ran the UK?

Mr Brown's Scottish party must answer for its actions. It is, now, as simple as that. The Yes side in the referendum could manage no better than 45 per cent, but that minority contains a big, angry part of what was once Labour's support. They haven't finished making history.