THE very fact that Jeremy Corbyn is spending five days this week criss-crossing Scotland gives a sense that the Labour leadership believes the political tide, which has in recent years been so strongly against the party, is beginning to turn in its favour.
At the June General Election, senior sources told this newspaper that Scottish Labour was targeting just three seats, such was the poverty of ambition the party had in the wake of the SNP’s near total dominance of the General Election just two years ago.
Scottish Labour had just one MP, Ian Murray, whose personal relationship with Mr Corbyn was – and still is – frosty; to put it mildly.
But, underlining the volatility of modern politics, the electoral pendulum that swung so favourably for the Nationalists in 2015 swung against them in 2017.
While the SNP won 35 out of 59 seats – still a remarkable result by historical standards – the loss of 21 has given great hope to the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, all of whom managed to hang on to just one MP two years ago.
This time round, Scottish Labour won an impressive seven seats; indeed, it would have won seven more if it had managed a further swing of one per cent.
The revival has begun; the question now is: how far can it go.
Can the change be put down to the persona and left wing policies of Mr Corbyn - which had no real positive effect on Scottish Labour fortunes just a year ago in the 2016 Holyrood poll, when it lost 13 seats and came in third behind the Tories - finally be attracting renewed support in Scotland?
Or is it more to do with voters becoming disenchanted with Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP?
The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
The political axis in Scotland has always been on the Left; the rightward shift south of the border that occurred under Thatcher was never replicated north of it.
While Brexit is the big unknown in British politics and the independence issue is always likely to be at the top or near the top of the political agenda in Scotland, Mr Corbyn and his colleagues now sense a real opportunity to promote their brand of democratic socialism on Scottish voters.
The old Labour religion of higher public spending, tax hikes for the better off, renationalisation, free education, defending the Union and, if the Labour leader gets his way, abolishing Trident, might be beginning to work its magic once again on Scottish ears and minds.
Mr Corbyn’s rally in Glasgow on Thursday night has sold out. Apart from visiting the Western Isles, Lanarkshire, Fife and Edinburgh, he is also due to speak at two further rallies in Scotland this weekend.
The party needs 64 seats to put the Labour leader in Downing Street, 18 of which are north of the border. “Scotland,” declared Mr Corbyn ahead of his grand Scottish tour of SNP marginals, “holds the keys to delivering a Labour government for the whole United Kingdom.”
Scotland is of major interest again; it was only a few months ago that Labour had a part-time Shadow Scottish Secretary at Westminster.
With Labour, to a degree, bouncing back in Scotland, Scots, it seems, will have to get used to seeing much more of Mr Corbyn, now in continual campaign mode, crossing the border to woo voters back to the Labour fold and sermonise about creating his vision of a modern socialist Britain.
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