Sir Keir Starmer’s tour of key battlegrounds kicked off in Scotland on Friday. His message was singular: change. And his target was singular, too: take out the SNP.

In four elections on the bounce, Labour has been nearly wiped out in Scotland by the SNP. In 2019, the party returned one MP to Westminster from Scotland. It now has two. The task in this election campaign is to turn that into dozens.

“This is an election about change, and Scotland’s voice is vital. It needs to be a leading voice,” he said in a slick campaign event with hundreds of people holding up “change” placards and cheering Sir Keir and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on.

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“Send a message, send a message: that is the height of the SNP’s ambition, to send a message of protest to Westminster. I don’t want Scotland to send a message. I want Scotland to send a government. A Labour government.”

Ask Labour strategists, and they say Scotland is vital to get Labour over the line to a majority because of how far behind Labour were in England back in 2019. They are operating a twin attack on two failing governments – the SNP one in Holyrood and the Conservative government in Westminster – to implore voters to switch back from the SNP to kick the Tories out.

Starmer told me in Glasgow that winning in Scotland was important numerically but also to him personally, because he wants to be a prime minister, should Labour win, that governs for the whole of the UK.

He has been emphatic that there will be no deal with the SNP, whatever the outcome of this general election, to hammer home the point that if Scots want to be rid of the Conservatives they have to vote Labour in.

But in truth, it is not true that Labour need to win big in Scotland to win a general election.

Yes, since the 1950s, Labour hasn’t formed a majority with fewer than 40 seats in Scotland, but Tony Blair actually had a majority in 1997 on seats won in England alone.

To put it into context, there are 91 parliamentary constituencies in the South East of England and 59 in Scotland.

When the country moves against a government – like the polls are suggesting is happening now – and Labour are doing well in local elections in battlegrounds across England, they should be able to hit a majority without needing a huge amount of the 59 out of 650 parliamentary seats in Scotland.

It is, if you like, a version of Project Fear, as Labour try to sell to the Scots that a vote for the SNP is a vote to keep a Conservative government in.

But there is also a sense – and this is where Starmer has got lucky after 14 years of SNP dominance – that the travails of the SNP, which has been embroiled in scandal around former leader Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, and a leadership crisis, has finally given Labour an open goal to win back Scottish voters that turned away from a Labour Party that had for too long taken Scotland for granted.

But as Starmer looks to steal votes from the SNP, with Scotland a key battleground, there are fault lines in this election too for the Labour leader among his base that will emerge as a big theme of this election. As we look at geographical battlegrounds – be that Scotland, the Red Wall across parts of the Midlands, the North East and North West, or the Blue Wall in pockets of the south – there are also demographic divisions emerging. And the schism between Sir Keir Starmer and Labour-voting Muslim communities over the Israel-Hamas war is perhaps one of the most salient going into this general election, with prominent MPs from Jess Phillips to Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting facing challenges in their constituencies.

I asked Starmer about this on our second tour stop of the day, when he travelled to South Ribble – a Labour target that switched to Labour in 1997 only to return to the Tories in 2010 – to address building depot workers.

He said, in the wake of the West Midlands mayoral victory by a whisker, that he had listened to voters (the independent candidate in this race took tens of thousands of votes from Labour).

And he left me thinking that while he has a clear message to sell to voters in Scotland, to those who feel let down by Labour, he hasn’t got the answer.

He told me there “needs to be a ceasefire straight away” and more humanitarian aid and “the beginning of a process to a two-state solution, including recognition of Palestine” but demurred from committing to formally recognising the Palestine state in its own right, as Ireland, Norway and Spain have done in recent weeks, saying that policy was to recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution and that “it was only going to happen if we work with our partners on it”.

The US, UK and other Western countries have backed the idea of an independent Palestine existing alongside Israel, but insists statehood should come as part of a negotiated settlement.

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Starmer is at pains not to diverge from the US and other close allies as he eyes Downing Street.

But there is a cost to him when it comes to some of his traditional voters. His majority doesn’t just rest in the marginals, he has to secure his base too.

On the final day the House of Commons sat before the election, the view from the back of the chamber said it all.

As Theresa May – in her familiar flame red suit – left the chamber after a speech by Ben Wallace, the Tory benches were packed, Labour’s almost deserted.

MPs were taking part in a “Valedictory Debate”, an unprecedented and hastily convened piece of parliamentary business for departing MPs to say their farewells.

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And while the debate was going on, an historic milestone was reached: the number of Conservatives standing down exceeded the number in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule.

With an announcement by the 74-year-old Bexleyheath and Crayford MP Sir David Evennett, the total number of MPs retiring or quitting had reached 76 – one more than the 75 in 1997.

And by the time parliament prorogued at 8.25pm, the number had reached 78, after two shock announcements, first from Michael Gove and then former cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom.

In a moment of pure parliamentary theatre, the news of Mr Gove’s departure was broken to stunned MPs in the Commons by Matt Hancock, who’d earlier made an emotional farewell speech.

Then while the prorogation ceremony was taking place came the bombshell announcement from Dame Andrea, now a junior health minister, that she’s quitting too. And with a barb at Rishi Sunak too!

“I will continue to support the Conservative Party…” she declared pointedly in her letter to Mr Sunak. Most resignation letters from departing ministers offer personal support for the prime minister. Ouch!

So at prorogation the total number of MPs standing down had reached 121, four more than 1997, though still short of the 149 who stood down in 2010, after 13 years of Labour government.

Inside the chamber, the debate had been emotional. There were tears as well as laughs. There were anecdotes and gushing tributes. And even, from one departing MP, bitterness, anger and allegations.

Many of those quitting on both sides of the Commons are distinguished ex-ministers, or prime minister in Mrs May’s case. But many are much younger and in many cases surprise departures.

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One of the youngest, Dehenna Davison, told MPs: “I never thought I’d be speaking for the last time in this chamber, let alone at the age of 30.”

Some Tory MPs, it must be said, are leaving parliament after being embroiled in some form of scandal or facing misconduct allegations which resulted in them losing the party whip.

The MP making angry accusations, accusing a government whip of bullying and harassment, was Julian Knight, who faced allegations of serious sexual assault investigated then dropped by police.

Mr Hancock, health secretary during COVID, who lost the Tory whip for appearing on TV reality show I’m A Celebrity, talked in his emotional speech about the effects on his children.

“The impact of the scrutiny of politics, especially when people make mistakes, has a huge impact on them, and they have put up with a lot,” he said, close to tears.

There were tears too from former sports minister Dame Tracey Crouch during what she said was “one of the most emotional speeches I have ever made in parliament”.

Besides Mrs May, Mr Wallace, Mr Gove, Dame Andrea and Mr Hancock, 12 more current or former Tory cabinet ministers departing: Sajid Javid, George Eustice, Alister Jack, Dominic Raab, David Jones, Alok Sharma, Chris Grayling, Brandon Lewis, Nadhim Zahawi, Chris Heaton-Harris, Sir John Redwood and Greg Clark.

In her valedictory speech, with her husband Sir Philip watching on from the public gallery, Mrs May paid tribute to her “best canvasser-in-chief” who was there to “make the beans on toast and pour the whisky” on the difficult days in Downing Street.

And at the end of the debate, there were tributes to Craig Mackinlay, who made a triumphant, defiant and emotional return to the Commons this week after sepsis but now acknowledges he won’t be fit enough to fight the campaign.

Also going is the inscrutable but always cheerful Sir Graham Brady, who’s chaired the 1922 Committee almost interrupted since 2010 alongside five Tory prime ministers.

Two deputy speakers, the dames Eleanor Laing and Rosie Winterton, and Tory backbench grandees Sir Charles Walker and Sir Bill Cash are departing.

And on the Labour side, the distinguished Dame Margarets, Beckett and Hodge, along with the Mother of the House Dame Harriet Harman, who told MPs Rishi Sunak was two when she was first elected, are leaving.

From the smaller parties, the former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford and the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas are off too.

And besides Mr Knight, several MPs who’ve lost their party whip, Tories Crispin Blunt, William Wragg, Mark Menzies and Mr Knight and Labour’s Nick Brown and Conor McGinn, are going, along with the former DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who’s accused of sex offences.

Why are so many Tory MPs going? Is it because they read the opinion polls and believe their party’s time is up and they don’t fancy the hard slog and often unrewarding grind of opposition?

There’s a famous quote attributed to James Callaghan, during the 1979 general election campaign, shortly before Labour was swept from power by Margaret Thatcher.

“You know there are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics,” avuncular “Sunny Jim” observed shrewdly to his close aide Bernard Donoughue.

“It then doesn’t matter what you say or do. There’s a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change – and it is for Mrs Thatcher.”

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In 2024, Tory ministers and loyalist backbenchers won’t admit publicly that there’s a sea change for Labour and Sir Keir Starmer. But privately, many believe defeat is inevitable.

And that’s almost certainly why so many Conservative MPs are quitting.