ONLY in the ranks of Scottish Labour’s super-optimists could claims that the party is on the road to recovery be extant. Yet, for those among its supporters who have been wandering in the political desert for 10 years or so, there are signs at least that they may have discovered a route out of perdition.

Such has been the scale of Labour’s annihilation in Scotland that it was being confidently predicted the party was a spent force destined to spend its remaining years in the political purgatory the Liberals have occupied for the past century or so.

It seemed that the spirit of social equality that had given the party its political and cultural legitimacy had abandoned it and was present only in the soul of the SNP.

If so, it is struggling to make its presence felt among the Nationalists. There is still a long way to go in this Parliament but time is running out for the SNP to make good on its claim to be the natural heirs of Labour’s reforming and social agenda. Labour in Scotland might just be starting to get back to what it ought to be doing: making small but significant differences in the lives of the people who have traditionally entrusted their health and aspirations to the party.

Recent events have shown that Kezia Dugdale and her strategists and advisors are still struggling to understand the essence of what the party is supposed to be about. In farcical scenes this week, Labour failed dismally to exploit the SNP’s confusion over how to advance Scotland’s interests on Brexit.

Ruth Davidson, having supplanted Ms Dugdale’s position as leader of the opposition at Holyrood, ought to be first in Labour’s sights. You’d have thought it would have been a simple task to ridicule her party’s attempts to highlight SNP confusion.

This, after all, is the party whose incompetence led us down the Brexit road in the first instance and who, in the five months since, have still to convince any of the rest of us that they have the slightest clue how they intend to expedite it.

Scottish Labour’s leadership too can’t properly plan for the future while it continues to treat Jeremy Corbyn as though he were like the Father Jack Hackett character in Father Ted. At the party’s annual fundraising dinner in Glasgow earlier this month I heard three different explanations why the UK leader, who possesses the biggest personal mandate in British politics, was absent from the proceedings.

Perhaps party strategists in Scotland were too busy arranging a student visa for Ms Dugdale to hand out leaflets for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Ms Dugdale and her team really do need to move on from their petulant stand-off with Mr Corbyn, and soon. Yet, the past few weeks have seen significant triumphs for Labour at Holyrood.

James Kelly’s dogged campaign to kick out the farcical Offensive Behaviour at Football Act and have it replaced with something more intelligent and effective suggests that the party is listening to its rank and file again.

It followed a Scottish Parliament debate on “period poverty” led by Scottish Labour’s Monica Lennon which resulted in a commitment from the Government to engage with charities to enable women and girls to access feminine hygiene products.

The indefatigable Ms Lennon, a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who has been trolled on social media by some who ought to know better in her own party for backing her leader, has been busy lately.

She cajoled the Scottish Government into finally agreeing to confer more power on local authorities to prevent bookmakers flooding main streets in under-privileged neighbourhoods with betting shops. These “clusters” of betting firms gather like black vultures in areas of multi-deprivation where desperate, hollowed-out men seek one last chance of redemption from economic hardship.

Having previously indicated that it would back councils in their fight to keep the betting industry at bay it inexplicably lost its enthusiasm until delegates at the SNP’s autumn conference in Glasgow last month chivvied it more.

The delegates’ motion had warned the Scottish Government that damage caused to communities by gambling outlets ought to be regarded as a “health and welfare” matter.

At the same conference the Scottish Cup, the oldest trophy in British football, was on display. For the duration of the conference it was under the protection of the Association of British Bookmakers (Scotland).

The way in which governments turn a blind eye to the apocalypse that high street betting firms and the predators in the online gambling fraternity bring to working class communities needs to be debated much more.

On days and nights (roughly 24/7) when there is live football on the television the number of online betting firms mesmerising viewers with the tantalising prospect of a quick financial hit at the touch of a smartphone will often reach double figures.

White, working class men are at their most vulnerable when watching their favourite teams in action live on night-time television. There will be alcohol, accompanied by the fleeting euphoria of a goal by your club against larger opponents.

That’s when Ray Winstone fills the screen and urges us to: “’Ehv a beng on thet,” before informing us that he is a member of the world’s on-line betting community and that he gambles safely. For many watching men and their families safe betting is as unlikely a concept as swimming with crocodiles.

Recent research carried out in America has revealed that the likelihood of developing a gambling addiction increases 23-fold for people affected by alcohol-use disorders and that around five out of every 100 gamblers have a problem.

Gambling addiction figures reveal a direct correlation between the severity of a gambling addiction and the likelihood of committing crimes.

It’s endlessly depressing how football clubs and ruling authorities so willingly allow themselves to be used as instruments by the betting industry to get to their most loyal and therefore their most vulnerable supporters.

There is a reason why betting firms are all over club shirts and stadiums and football competitions. They provide the easiest and most direct routes to their audience. Big football clubs are their willing accomplices.

The Scottish Government has expended a great deal of energy in posturing over the behaviour of young football fans.

This would be better spent targeting the football community for having commercial links with the betting industry.

The Labour Party in Scotland had many of its roots in the 19th century temperance movement. It would lose nothing and gain much by helping to free its communities from what I believe to be a different type of slavery.