Labour: Business as usual while going out of business

Start with fundamentals. Labour are in dire straits in Scotland. The party's leadership of the campaign to secure a No in the referendum now looks like the worst move it ever made. Poems - well, limericks - will be written about the strategists who brought the party to this pass. Voters, the ingrates, have turned their backs on the victory parade.

This week, Labour have had a choice of opinion polls. The difference between the findings amounts to the difference between a hanging and a firing squad. One, conducted by Ipsos Mori for STV, shows the SNP at 52 per cent - for a Westminster election - with Labour on 23 per cent. The illusion of solace is provided by YouGov for the Times: Nationalists on 43 per cent; the once "natural party of government" in Scotland on 27 per cent.

Take that final number in its context. In 2010, when Scots last saw their choice of a Westminster government over-ruled by voters elsewhere, Labour took 42 per cent of the vote in these parts. That was an improvement on its previous showing. All concerned were very proud of themselves. Four years on, on the very best reading, the party is 15 points adrift.

Guessing the number of MPs therefore at risk is a mug's game. Uniform swings, reducing the old regiment to 10 (YouGov) or four (Ipsos Mori), are rare. The majorities enjoyed by some mean that even the usual misuse of the word decimated doesn't apply. There are a few months left, meanwhile, until the elections. Jim Murphy might even have the restorative effect of a wee dose of Irn-Bru before the voters catch on.

It's all whistling in the dark. Scottish Labour are paying a price three times over. First, for making common cause with Tories in the referendum and assuming, with magnificent complacency, that it wouldn't matter. Secondly, for allowing the reality of deep internal divisions to be made manifest with the resignation of Johann Lamont. Thirdly - and there is no airbrush big enough to conceal the detail - for having Ed Miliband as Westminster leader.

His unpopularity among Scots is stupendous. His lack of support within his own Scottish party is something to behold. Most of those backing Mr Murphy don't count as friends, if he has many, of Ed. In YouGov's polling "trust" in Mr Miliband falls below even the grudging level granted to David Cameron. The Tory leader scrapes together a "total trust" rating of 19 per cent; the leader of the Opposition gets 15 per cent. Those who trust Labour's man "a lot" come in at a comical two per cent.

It hardly needs to be said that Nicola Sturgeon enjoys the trust of 48 per cent (against 47 per cent), or that, according to YouGov, 65 per cent believe Scottish Labour "represents the views and interests of Scotland" badly or very badly. The upshot is plain. When Mr Murphy and his fans make the traditional claim that a vote for the SNP will only hasten a Tory Westminster government, they are liable to get a dusty response. Something like, "And Miliband's the alternative?"

Voters might also ask why a Better Together group like Scottish Labour is trying to impose a government against the wishes - if that's the way things pan out - of the people of England. Treating an electorate as fodder, while an old Labour favourite, tends not to impress. We've seen this stunt before, too often. The fact is singular: dislike for Mr Miliband is profound. Yet he is what's on offer from the party of No.

There's Mr Murphy too, of course. He wants us to believe those dismal polls have everything to do with Ms Lamont's decision and nothing to do with the party he hopes to lead. Like his backers, he seems to believe that Scottish Labour's electoral college, with one-third of the votes granted to trade unions, can be overcome as his bandwagon rolls along. A tendency to trust one's own hand-crafted publicity is becoming evident.

The electorate will get to know Mr Murphy better in the coming weeks and months. His Boys' Own enthusiasm for nuclear weapons is no secret. His patronage of the neo-cons and sundry Atlanticist oddballs of the Henry Jackson Society continues. He has been a staunch adherent of Labour Friends of Israel through every assault on the Palestinians. His devotion to Tony Blair is meanwhile unwavering. Just as important, he does not quibble much over austerity economics.

In terms Mr Murphy would like us to forget, he is a man of the familiar and failed Labour right. Is that the path the Scottish party wants or needs to follow? The leadership candidate's backers have convinced themselves. Since the hoary politics of Blairite triangulation is the only game they or Mr Murphy understand, such is the strategy: bring a small-c conservative country to understand its own nature better and all will be well. Mr Murphy's Labour will lurch to the right, taking the middle class for granted, not the left.

Funnily enough, none of this is a million miles from the path blazed by Michael Forsyth when he was trying to reconcile Scotland with Thatcherite Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lord Forsyth of Drumlean remains a staunch Unionist, but his dreams of persuading "the land of Adam Smith" to get with the programme have withered somewhat with the years. Despite all of Ruth Davidson's energy, his old Scottish party is as moribund - say those polls - as ever. So that sounds like a smart Labour choice.

The referendum result produced a certain false consciousness among the parties of the Union. Now they face a rolling programme of polls: Westminster, Scotland, Europe. How quickly do things need to improve for Scottish Labour before that prospect stops being dismal? Quicker than Mr Murphy can clamber aboard an Irn-Bru crate or paint himself as the softly-spoken underdog, I'd have thought. Mr Miliband will remain a fly in the corn flakes at least until next May.

All of this is only 90 per cent perfect for the SNP and Yes parties. If Ipsos Mori is right, that loose alliance has 59 per cent support among Scots at the moment. So why was the referendum lost? Partly because parties and causes do not occupy the same political space; partly because some No voters have spent a few weeks recognising the pedigree of the pup they bought. When Ms Sturgeon ponders manifesto drafts, these things will have to be thought through.

It's a minor detail, for now, while Labour stages big dinners amid the protests of food bank campaigners, while Anas Sarwar swears he won't step down as Scottish deputy and then - for why would a poor voter notice? - clears a path for Team Murphy. Conducting business as usual while going out of business is an ingrained habit among those who never learn.