And they caution that it is not yet clear who exactly the once-unthinkable rise of Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK in Scotland will benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll it takes is a couple of points swing towards us and [a Scottish Labour government] is within reach,\u201d a senior Scottish Labour official, granted anonymity to discuss strategy, said. \u201cBut on the other hand a few points toward the SNP, and they win a majority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urban warfare<\/p>\n
At the center of Labour\u2019s hopes is a clutch of constituencies across Scotland\u2019s central belt \u2014 the mostly urban bit of Scotland where the majority of its population lives.<\/p>\n
In these seats \u2014 which are typically either in the two biggest cities, Glasgow or Edinburgh, or in the commuter towns outside them \u2014 Scottish Labour believes an extremely narrow path to victory exists by convincing Scots to hold their noses and vote for the party most likely to oust the SNP.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly, we\u2019re spending a lot of money on it,\u201d the official quoted above said of the central belt push. \u201cIt\u2019s about convincing anyone who doesn\u2019t like the SNP \u2014 most of the country \u2014 that we are still the best way of getting them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Labour can rally anti-SNP voters behind them in a set of key constituencies, the theory goes, then the SNP is in danger of being well off the critical 65-seat mark it needs for a majority in the Scottish parliament.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And they caution that it is not yet clear who exactly the once-unthinkable rise of Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1353,5943,5040,141,1360,22,1224,7408,3495,94,7409,432,95,185,3807,7388,1369,1143,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-15640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-borders","9":"tag-cities","10":"tag-competition","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-elections","13":"tag-far-right","14":"tag-hospitals","15":"tag-humza-yousaf","16":"tag-john-swinney","17":"tag-keir-starmer","18":"tag-labels","19":"tag-migration","20":"tag-nigel-farage","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-poll","23":"tag-produce","24":"tag-rights","25":"tag-scotland","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116418250249309488","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}