If you’ll forgive me wallowing for a moment in some post-Christmas gloom, 2024 looks like being a bit rubbish. Inadequate wages, yawning inequality, punishing rents and mortgages, the endless worry about climate change in a world run by idiots and narcissists: so much for the march of progress. With the economy skewered, the mood for change is powerful.

Sir Keir Starmer is the face of that change, but doesn’t look much like it. People expect Labour to offer radical progressive solutions; instead they’re going after the Tories on fiscal discipline and immigration. The Labour leader’s bland charm is all about relieving the good people of middle England of their votes, not firing up radicals.

But it’s undeniably working. If you want the Conservatives out, Sir Keir looks like the one to do it. Even in Scotland, Labour is on the march, threatening long-held SNP seats.

The problem is that this might be the right strategy to win power but it’s not the right strategy for doing much with it.

Labour is said to have a two-term plan, but it doesn’t feel that way in Scotland.

It may win back some long-lost seats here, but holding on to them at the following election will require more.

Read more Rebecca McQuillan: How Scotland can catch up with Europe on heat pumps

In Scotland, the Conservative Government has been consistently unpopular for the last 13 years. Again and again, Scottish voters have shown a preference for social democratic parties over the Tories. The crucial question is: what will Labour do to........

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