IT MUST have dismayed Scottish Labour members at their conference when their leader, Anas Sarwar, announced that the party should “stop doing politics the way our opponents do it”. Because for some time they’ve been doing politics differently from their opponents, and it’s done them no good.

They’re certainly different from the SNP, who win elections. And also from the Scottish Conservatives, who, though actually winning is not realistic, present a coherent unionist stance, and have thereby grabbed a sizeable chunk of the electorate who won’t vote SNP, no matter what.

The more galling thing must be that so many Scottish Labour voters have “stopped doing politics” the way it used to be done – ie, by putting a cross next to the Labour candidate’s name without giving it a second, or indeed a first, thought.

You don’t have to be tremendously old to remember it. Despite Mr Sarwar’s optimism that any forthcoming referendum will be different, because the youngest voters would have been only four years old when the last one was held and it’s all changed since then, neither history nor altered circumstances offer any predictive guarantees.

It’s only 12 years since Labour took the largest share of the Scottish vote in a general election, but you’ll be middle-aged (let’s say at least over 35) if you recall that that wasn’t merely a fluke; it wasn’t only thinkable; it wasn’t even just normal; it was an iron law of nature as immutable as the Sun rising in the East or the Duke of Wellington wearing a traffic cone.

It was the case for every single general election from 1964 to 2010; it was even true at Holyrood (with a supposedly more proportionate system) until 2003. At Scottish counts for almost half a century you could see the quires and reams of Labour ballot papers from the other end of the room. They might as well have weighed them. The current tally of MPs is one, and the party is in third place – the worst position it’s been in for more than 100 years.

So Mr Sarwar is undoubtedly right when he says “to win again, we must change again” and that “we won’t win by talking to ourselves, about ourselves or living off our past”. But I’m afraid that what immediately sprang to mind from this conference was the Liberal leader David (now Lord) Steel’s hilarious address to his own faithful at Llandudno in 1981, when he told the party to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government”. What they should have prepared for, it turned out, was an electoral drubbing that reduced them to 23 seats.

The mystery of the Scottish Labour Party’s current dismal position is that, thinking about it dispassionately, they ought really to have almost everything going for them. There is still, according to most polling, a majority against independence (which may even be higher than it was at the referendum). Scottish political sentiment is still predominantly centre-left, and the Conservative government at Westminster is much more unpopular here than it is south of the border.

That’s before you consider that it’s currently pretty unpopular there, too; that Labour, across the UK, is becoming commensurately more electable; and that the UK Conservatives are unpopular even with the Scottish Tories, whose leader called for his own counterpart at Westminster to stand down just a couple of weeks ago.

Add in the fact that Mr Sarwar’s a relatively new leader and – compared with the competition of all political stripes – on the face of it a perfectly plausible, electable, one, and the question shouldn’t be “what could Labour be doing differently to do well?” but “why aren’t they, if not winning, on nearly level pegging with the Nationalists or at least ahead of the Tories?”

The answer, unfortunately for Mr Sarwar, is that Labour’s fortunes in Scotland cannot be revived by a new leader or a new image. Neil Kinnock swapping the red flag for a red rose may have heralded the subsequent rise of New Labour; swapping the rose for a thistle isn’t going to do the same trick for Scottish Labour. Harold Wilson, musing on the notion of image at his conference in 1965, declared that the “shaving mirror tells us” what it is. But Labour doesn’t currently have one face.

Across the UK, Sir Keir Starmer’s problem may be the recidivist Corbynites that he needs to get rid of to be electorally credible (but still all too large a proportion of his membership). But Mr Sarwar’s problem is worse. He needs to forge a consensus on the very issue the party has no clear view on, and which – for its own electoral health – it ought to be minimising.

Labour cannot make gains until things like jobs, education, the cost of living, health and taxes become more significant than the question of independence. But that isn’t going to happen, because independence is (for most nationalists) the answer to all those issues. So the natural advantage the party should have by not being the Tories has already been stolen by the SNP.

Conversely, not being the SNP is the natural territory of the Scottish Conservatives (even if some of them were telling us the other day that they voted for Jackie Baillie). It’s not even certain that all potential Scottish Labour voters are committed to the Union, but assuming they are, it’s far from clear what form they see that taking. Gordon Brown’s constant proposals for tinkering with devolution, or some imaginary federalism are a much harder sell than a staunch defence of the status quo.

The problem with a via media like some species of Devo Max (which I’m quite ready to believe might be the most popular option with a lot of people) is that there’s no agreement on what it should be – if you doubt that, look at all the middle-ground options on Brexit, like remaining in the Single Market or Efta or the EEA, which got shot down by Leavers and Remainers alike, though many argued it was what they wanted before the vote.

It’s obvious what Scottish Labour thinks it is not. It’s not (in their view) the heartless Tories. Or (still from their point of view) the reckless SNP. But that’s not enough. Until Labour knows what it is, and is for, the chief thing it’s not is electable.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.