At lunchtime yesterday a very British revolution took place. Saltires, Union flags, and Welsh Dragons fluttered as a cheering crowd welcomed a new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, to Downing Street.

The well-wishers were Labour party supporters, and the flags were given out by staffers with an eye for a feelgood picture. After a ruthlessly choreographed campaign, no one was going to take a chance with spontaneity now. Has anyone seen that blessed Ming vase by the way?

The scenes called to mind Tony Blair’s arrival at Number 10 after he brought a long spell of Conservative government to an end with a landslide majority. There were more echoes of the past as Sir Keir spoke of stability, service, trust, and returning politics to public service. Close your eyes and it could have been Clement Attlee introducing Pathe newsreel viewers to his “party of idealists”.

But this is not 1945 or 1997. Sir Keir may have led his party to a three-figure majority but he does not arrive in office on a wave of optimism, as Blair did or, like Attlee, with the mass of the public on his side. Labour won this election on the second lowest turnout since 1885. As polling expert Sir John Curtice said: “In many ways this looks like an election the Conservatives have lost, rather than one Labour has won.”

It is a crucial point, one that Scottish Labour should bear in mind when looking to the Scottish Parliament elections in 2026. What voters giveth at one election they can take away at another.

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This is not to diminish the enormity of Labour’s achievement in bringing the party back from a calamitous defeat in 2019 and, just five years later, into government. It is, however, to remind Sir Keir that the picture is more complicated than it may appear and that governing, even with such a large majority, will not be straightforward.

He seemed to acknowledge as much when he spoke in Downing Street........

© Herald Scotland