Today’s Westminster by-elections in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry and Aberdeen South could see Scottish Labour sink to a new historic low. Nothing suggests they have a clue how to address their descent into oblivion.

The plight of the Labour Party in Scotland has never been more evident than in its lamentable attempts at a campaign in the twin by-elections for Westminster taking place today.

The Arbroath and Broughty Ferry contest, triggered by the SNP’s Stephen Gethins’s retreat to Holyrood, was always expected to be a challenge for this chaotic party. During a very short resurgence, they narrowly lost in 2024, but have since become a national irrelevance in Scotland.

The party was reduced to squabbling with Reform UK as to which of them would form the main opposition at Holyrood, having each returned 17 MSPs.

It’s what might happen in the Aberdeen South contest that may require the life-support machine to be turned off for the current Scottish leadership.

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Labour insiders fear by-election wipeout in Aberdeen

Party activists have already told The Herald’s political editor Andrew Learmonth that they fear losing their deposit in Aberdeen South, such has been the chaotic bin-fire masquerading as a campaign in the last few weeks.

It’s not been helped by UK Labour’s foolish attitude to oil and gas production in the North Sea, an approach devised by Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Mr Miliband was the least effective and most forgettable Labour leader in its history. Others might cite Michael Foot, but at least that very clever man possessed a set of observable........

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