THE former Chancellor Alistair Darling will have been well aware when he went out campaigning in Edinburgh South this week that he was doing so on an extremely significant anniversary. Lord Darling hit the streets on May 1 – 20 years to the day since Tony Blair won the 1997 general election in spectacular style, wiping out the Conservatives in Scotland. Now, two decades on, Labour are just a single seat away from the same fate. How on earth did it come to this?

There will be some who will blame Jeremy Corbyn for the current state of Labour and, certainly, when he was asked about his leader, Lord Darling was in no mood for loyalty. Asked if he would support Mr Corbyn, Lord Darling could only say: “Well, he is the leader.” He also said that party leaders come and go and in a way, his comments should come as no surprise. We know that Lord Darling has no love for Jeremy Corbyn, and it follows a similar non-endorsement of the Labour leader from Tony Blair. But even so the lack of support from a major party figure like Lord Darling in the middle of an election campaign is still pretty extraordinary.

The former Chancellor’s intervention is also unlikely to do anything for the Labour cause in Scotland or convince more Scots to vote for the party or Mr Corbyn for Prime Minister – why should they support him when even Lord Darling cannot? In fact, he could not even bring himself to mention Mr Corbyn’s name. It will be a reminder to voters of the profound doubts that much of the Labour party have about their own leader.

However, blaming Mr Corbyn for the state of Labour is to miss the longer term trends and indeed the role that Tony Blair himself played, despite that famous victory in 1997. Labour is in a particularly deep trough at the moment, but the causes go back to Mr Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq. Then there was the independence referendum in 2014 when the party was seen by many to have sided with the Tories. All of these factors have led Labour to where it is today.

As for the way forward, there are no obvious answers in Edinburgh South, where the party has managed to hang on for a number of reasons. The local MP Ian Murray has worked hard for the area, and the party organisation is good, but it is a reflection of how times have changed that Labour’s chances rest on appealing to moderate Conservatives and Lib Dems who want to stop the SNP. At the last general election, Labour held on to the seat largely because of Lib Dems lending them their support and if anything this trend is likely to be even stronger this time.

But even if Labour do win Edinburgh South again, it is still a long way from recovery. Almost every political party suffers from peaks and troughs and perhaps it is inevitable that Labour will rise again just as the SNP looks like it is falling back from the extraordinary high at the last general election.

However, even with a win in Edinburgh, Labour’s issues in Scotland remain profound and Lord Darling may simply have looked at the evidence and refused to endorse his leader for good reasons. Labour still has a serious problem in Scotland and no one seriously believes Jeremy Corbyn is the answer.