Alex Salmond's timing of his resignation as SNP leader to coincide with a Daily Record opinion poll giving his party a 2:1 advantage over Labour is fortuitous.

It waves him goodbye in a blaze of glory while leaving the task of realising these figures at the general election to his successor Nicola Sturgeon.

The 2 per cent figure for "complete trust" in Ed Miliband will doubtless be used by new Labour plotters to continue their niggling against the party leader.

But this derisory total reflects most likely a general level of alienation from the Westminster parties and the scale of anger by Labour voters over the party's inept anti-independence campaign in the Better Together alliance with the Tories.

Salmond emphasises that he expects Sturgeon to lead Scotland to independence.

He could be right, but the extent to which many Labour voters backed the Yes camp as a protest against the Westminster elite's austerity agenda cannot be ignored.

Just as David Cameron claims that the best way to solve the problems caused by his cuts programme is to press ahead with more cuts, Labour has opted for similar logic.

The over-represented new Labour remnants who backed unity with the Tories and are committed to continuing the conservative coalition's public spending cuts after the next general election believe that the best way of winning back voters repelled by these choices is to propose as Scottish party leader someone up to his neck in advocating them.

Jim Murphy is a Blairite par excellence, a defender of the criminal invasion of Iraq and of cuts in public spending to rescue the private banking system.

Such is the hollowing out of individual Labour Party membership in Scotland and the tendency to select right-wing candidates to represent the party in Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels that the three-way electoral college is forecast by the bookies to return him as leader, with Kezia Alexander as his deputy.

Only the trade union movement has gone against the grain, plumping impressively for Neil Findlay MSP and Katy Clark MP as a left-of-centre dream team.

Their pronouncements are in line with Scottish Labour policy if not the record of the party in office.

Opposition to renewal of Trident, replacing the minimum wage with a living wage, building a new generation of social housing, renationalising the railways and taking wasteful PFI contracts in-house are realistic and progressive policies capable of generating mass support.

If Labour's depleted Scottish membership rejects this investment in hope for another spoonful of the medicine that nearly killed the patient last time round, its decision will have dire implications.

Labour has always counted on a solid phalanx of its MPs coming from Scotland and a mass capture of Labour seats by the SNP will affect Ed Miliband's chances of becoming prime minister.

Disillusioned former Labour voters crave hope about jobs, pay, housing and equality, along with the NHS and state education.

In contrast, the metropolitan in-crowd and media obsess about a multimillionaire "entertainer" berating Miliband for his proposed mansion tax that targets "grannies" living in houses worth £2 million-plus that are often "like a garage."

Labour sets greater store too often by the self-regarding bleats of this rich and selfish minority than people hoping against hope that it might put the working class first.

The party's Scottish membership has the chance now to chart a different direction.