Will UK turmoil sink Labour’s hopes at Holyrood?

London: Sir Keir Starmer’s sweeping government reshuffle sent shockwaves through Westminster – and Scottish Labour.

The changes were prompted by the resignation of Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister, but it quickly became a fundamental shake-up with great offices of state changing hands.

And one of the first signals that it was going to be a big one was the news that Ian Murray had been sacked as Scottish secretary.

There is plenty of sympathy in the party for Murray, who spent 14 years slogging away in opposition then barely lasted 12 months in post.

So what does all of the turmoil mean for his replacement, Douglas Alexander – and more importantly for Labour in Scotland, eight months out from a crucial Holyrood election?

The news that Murray had been ousted came as a surprise to many in the Labour Party north of the border.

Murray had spent years as Labour’s only MP in Scotland, its sole survivor of the SNP’s landslide victories in 2015 and 2019.

And yet after the party’s return to power – partly built on a resurgence in Scotland – he got barely a year in post.

He was clearly none too happy. The line in his statement about being “hugely disappointed” is not the half of it.

As an added indignity, someone snapped a picture of him miserably drafting that statement in an airport lounge and it was printed in a newspaper.

Scottish Labour figures described the move as a “shocker”, a “disgrace”, and various other frankly unprintable terms.

Duncan Hothersall of the Labour Hame website told BBC Radio Scotland that it would make it harder to persuade activists to get out knocking on doors.

And this was acknowledged by Downing Street to the extent that Murray was later offered not one but two junior ministerial roles – in the department of Culture, Media and Sport and the department of Science, Innovation and Technology – turning his sacking into a mere demotion.

This was clearly a very late addition to Starmer’s pre-planned manoeuvre – Murray talked about going back to the backbenches in his statement, so he had no inkling it was coming.

Rather it seems to have been an attempt by Downing Street to calm the discontent in the party’s Scottish ranks.

Something which wasn’t remotely surprising was the fact Douglas Alexander was given the job of Scottish Secretary.

He only returned to Westminster last year as MP for East Lothian, but he spent 18 years representing Paisley and has more experience of government than almost anyone else around the cabinet table.

He was last appointed to this post in 2006, in a joint role where he was also transport Secretary.

He toured the globe as Gordon Brown’s international development secretary, and was shadow foreign secretary in opposition up to the point where a 20-year-old student named Mhairi Black sensationally knocked him out of parliament.

Who would have imagined that 10 years later Alexander would be back in the cabinet while Black would be out of the SNP and touring the stand-up comedy circuit?

Alexander had actually just been given another job, co-chairing Scottish Labour’s election campaign alongside Jackie Baillie.

And that is perhaps his most crucial role even in the eyes of the prime minister, who will see next year’s elections to the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales as a massive test.

Picture a world where Labour loses Wales after 27 years, and the SNP takes a majority at Holyrood to ramp up pressure for an independence referendum.

That would be a blow the prime minister might struggle to recover from.

It means disgruntled Labour activists will get behind Alexander regardless of how they feel about him supplanting Murray, because they can’t afford not to.

It does make their job harder though.