It’s tempting to frame the forthcoming Scottish Labour leadership contest within an end-of-days scenario. Having lost the last five Scottish elections, it seems reasonable to suggest that a sixth defeat on the bounce at the next one would render it an ex-party, to paraphrase Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch.

Indeed, the party’s lamentable performance in May’s Holyrood election, when it was reduced to 17 seats, indicated that it had – to all intents and purposes – already ceased to function.

We thought they’d reached a nadir when Anas Sarwar was reduced to an unedifying scrap with Reform’s Scottish leader, Malcolm Offord, over which of them would form the official opposition, both having won the same number of seats. As it turned out though, there were still more depths to plumb.

Mr Sarwar, having presided over two Holyrood defeats and having left the party in a worse state than when he’d become leader five years ago, slunk off to a junior position in a UK Government department that few voters knew even existed. His elevation to the House of Lords, where he’ll sit with a foosty cohort of other Scottish Labour barons and baronesses, seemed to encapsulate Labour’s generational demise in Scotland.

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