ANAS Sarwar has insisted Labour are 'in the game' in 14 Scottish constituencies.
The party leader said that if this year's council election votes were replicated at the next general election - expected in 2024, though possibly sooner - they could make "significant gains".
While a far cry from the 41 they held ahead of the 2015 election, it is significantly more than the one MP they currently have.
His comments came as a new poll gave Sir Keir Starmer a 17-point lead over Liz Truss.
The YouGov survey for The Times revealed Tory support had dropped by four points to 28% in the wake of last week's mini-budget and Labour’s had surged by five points to 45%, with the Lib Dems unchanged on 8%.
It is the party's biggest lead in an opinion poll since 2001.
Mr Sarwar told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland on Tuesday: "I’m not going to put a number on it, but I want us to make significant gains.
“If we look at the council election results, we were in the game in around 13, 14 seats if that council election was reflected – I’m not saying we would have won 13, 14 seats, we were in the game in 13, 14 seats.
“I think in the context of a UK Government where we’re not just going to oppose the Tories, we’re going to replace them, I genuinely believe we can make significant gains.
“I think Scotland is not going to be the drag on the ticket – Scotland’s not going to be what stop us from having a UK Labour government.
“Scotland’s going to help us deliver that UK Labour government.”
Labour took 23% of the vote in May's council election, up from 21% in 2017, while the Tory vote fell from 22% to 17%.
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