Douglas Alexander: Labour can disprove critics and stage fightback in Scotland

Douglas Alexander said his party - which one recent poll put 20 points behind the SNP - had been “written off” in the past before going on to win.

It came as he dismissed claims Labour in Scotland is a branch office of London, calling them "nonsense".

The latter was put to him following Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to sack Ian Murray as Scottish Secretary on Friday afternoon.

Mr Murray's treatment sparked a backlash within Scottish Labour, and he has now been brought back into government as a junior minister in the departments of Culture, Media and Sport, and Science, Innovation and Technology.

Appearing on BBC Scotland's Sunday Show, Mr Alexander said: "It's the Prime Minister who makes the decisions in a reshuffle, and however interested individuals are in who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out, ultimately it's the Prime Minister who has the right to choose his team."

Presenter Martin Geissler asked if Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar had been consulted about Mr Murray’s sacking, and said there was a “hanging allegation that Scottish Labour is a bit of a branch office”.

Mr Alexander responded: “Respectfully, I believe that’s nonsense, and I say that's nonsense for a couple of reasons. First of all, of course there is regular dialogue between Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer. I can attest to that personally.

"Not only are they politically close, but personally they just get on and are able to dissuade a lot of journalists from the idea that somehow there's a zero sum game between the Scottish Labour leader and a Labour Prime Minister.

"But secondly, if you know Anas Sarwar at all, he's nobody's branch office manager. He is a man preparing himself to be First Minister of Scotland.”

Mr Murray was sacked as part of a major reshuffle of Sir Keir's top team following the resignation of Angela Rayner, who was found to have breached the ministerial code over her underpayment of stamp duty on a seaside flat.

"I'm not pretending that the loss of Angela Rayner doesn't hurt many of us in the Labour Party and the Labour movement," Mr Alexander said.

The New Labour veteran returned to frontline politics as the MP for Lothian East last year. He previously served as Scottish Secretary 18 years ago under Tony Blair, and was the International Development Secretary under Gordon Brown.

He has also been appointed co-chair of Scottish Labour's campaign ahead of next year's Holyrood election. A recent poll put the party on just 17 per cent of the constituency vote, compared to the SNP’s 37 per cent.

"Respectfully, we were written off in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election with very similar arguments," Mr Alexander told the Sunday Show. "'You were dead in the water before you'd begun', according to the Scottish media.

"We will come back in Scotland the way that we came back in Hamilton [by-election], by hard work, by humility, by listening to people, doing the work on the ground, making the arguments directly to the public.”

He added: "Our responsibility in the coming months is to do what we did just a couple of weeks ago in Barrhead [East Renfrewshire Council by-election], do what we did a couple of months ago in Hamilton, which is to take our case to the Scottish public and then disprove the critics and the cynics."

Scottish Conservative deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said: “Labour are in complete meltdown and their integrity is in tatters after only 14 months in government. Ian Murray’s sacking was entirely in keeping with the chaos that surrounds Keir Starmer’s shambolic government.

“The fact Ian Murray has now had to be shoehorned into a junior ministerial role after such backlash is systematic of the weakness of Keir Starmer and his long list of U-turns.

“The uninspiring appointment of Douglas Alexander, who is nothing more than a yes man for Labour, will mean more of the same broken promises.”