ANAS Sarwar has claimed that Labour will be “in the game” in as many as 14 Scottish constituencies in the next General Election.
Currently, the party has only one MP north of the Border – shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray in Edinburgh South.
However, the Scottish Labour leader told the BBC that the party could make “significant gains” at the next Westminster election.
Sarwar pointed to the results of 2022’s Scottish local elections to back up his claim.
Speaking to the BBC from Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, the Glasgow list MSP said: "I'm not going to put a number on it, but I want us to make significant gains.
"If we look at the council election results, we were in the game in around 13, 14 seats if that council election was reflected – I'm not saying we would have won 13, 14 seats – we were in the game in 13, 14 seats.
"I think in the context of a UK government where we're not just going to oppose the Tories, we're going to replace them, I genuinely believe we can make significant gains."
There are currently 59 Scottish MPs at Westminster, however this could decline if proposed constituency boundary changes are finalised.
At its peak, in 1997 and 2001, Labour won 56 seats in Scotland. However, there were 72 up for grabs at the time.
Sarwar further told the BBC: "I think Scotland is not going to be the drag on the ticket – Scotland's not going to be what stop us from having a UK Labour government.
"Scotland's going to help us deliver that UK Labour government."
Sarwar, who took the reins of the party in Scotland at its lowest ebb ahead of last year’s Holyrood election, said he thought Prime Minister Liz Truss was “more dangerous” than the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and Boris Johnson.
“We cheered Boris Johnson going, and we rightly did, because he dishonoured the role of prime minister, but actually Liz Truss is worse than Boris Johnson,” he said.
“She is more right wing, more ideological – cutting the cap on bankers’ bonuses, giving tax cuts to the richest.
“She is re-distributing wealth, but from the poorest to the wealthiest – I actually think she’s more dangerous than Margaret Thatcher, and I think the country is going to change that.”
He added that the UK Government is the most “economically illiterate, morally bankrupt government probably in history”.
The council elections earlier in the year saw Scottish Labour leapfrog the Tories to take second place. Sarwar’s party returned 282 seats to the Conservatives’ 214.
However, the result was still one of the worst in Scottish Labour’s history, and way behind the SNP’s total of 453 councillors.
