On Scottish Labour’s internal Doomsday Clock, it’s three minutes to midnight and the party’s few available options for preventing a terminal catastrophe are receding fast. The road to salvation can still be glimpsed, but a long and tortuous journey lies ahead. I fear they will never reach it though, if Jim Murphy is the man they choose to lead them.

In normal circumstances, the Westminster MP for East Renfrewshire would be an outstanding candidate to lead the party in Scotland. He is one of the most diligent and hard-working politicians at Westminster, earning respect from fellow MPs and civil servants for applying himself to the task of mastering some difficult briefs. One Westminster observer told me last week that any sliver of light still to be glimpsed after 10pm in the offices of Westminster would most probably be coming from Murphy’s room.

In this, he more than compensates for what some see as a lack of charisma. To borrow a football analogy, he is the gawky, unremarkable midfield water-carrier, all knees and elbows, who somehow always makes the first team ahead of other, more naturally gifted players. But while they spent too much of their free time in the bars of Westminster, Murphy was eschewing alcohol, running marathons and, indeed, playing the role of, well… gawky midfield water-carrier for the parliamentary football team.

His feat of winning the safest Conservative seat in Scotland in 1997 and then increasing his majority in subsequent Westminster elections is still recalled in reverential, if not affectionate, tones and this has helped buy him places at Labour’s top tables. He has staying power. The left of the party has always been suspicious of him though, owing to his devotion to the New Labour project and the manner in which he courts and sustains the crucial Jewish vote in his constituency. This, though, ought not to be held against him. Though small, Glasgow’s 5,000-strong Jewish community is a dynamic one that has contributed greatly to the city’s charm and success over many decades.

These, though, are not normal circumstances for the party in Scotland. At no time in its history has it endured a period as persistently bleak. The Ipsos-Mori poll commissioned by STV, which puts it at 23% and the SNP at 52% for Westminster 2015, would leave it with a mere handful of seats in Scotland and result in almost certain defeat for the UK party. Shortly after the poll findings were announced on the main STV news bulletin, Labour’s highly regarded deputy leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, was signalling his resignation at a gala fundraising dinner at one of Glasgow’s swankiest hotels. Six days previously, he had been participating in his weekly five-a-side football match on the city’s southside with his friends before he was called away by Frank McAveety, a prominent Glasgow councillor, who informed him of Johann Lamont’s decision to quit as leader. Sarwar probably started to compose his farewell speech then.

The loud jeers that greeted Murphy from protesters on his arrival at the fundraising party were more than just a remnant of his deeply divisive 100-day tour of 100 towns in support of the union. His allies will dismiss these as just another Trot rent-a-mob, but they would be foolish to do so. Murphy seemed to epitomise on this tour, in his clumsy attempts to besmirch the character of the entire yes campaign, the dinosaur jibe with which Lamont signed off from her shift. The chorus of catcalls he encountered on Thursday night is one that has been echoing all over west central Scotland and all in the direction of Labour.

It isn’t just Lamont who thinks Ed Miliband treats the party in Scotland like a “branch office”; many of its supporters in Scotland have thought this for years. In recent times, sullen resentment has given way to outright hostility fuelled by a perception – difficult to refute – that Westminster, reflecting a societal shift in England as a whole, has embraced the politics of class and xenophobia. Any optimism that the 55-45 victory for the unionists in the independence referendum would usher in a new era of cross-border harmony dissipated quicker than the time it took for the fabled “vow” to unravel. The frighteningly reactionary nature of the Conservative party conference and a renewed outbreak of anti-Europeanism, accompanied by the inexorable rise of Ukip have seen to that.

If Labour does choose an individual who has spent the last 17 years thriving in such an environment to effect a recovery in Scotland, it risks reaping a bitter harvest that could effectively finish it as a party of government. Those Labour MSPs who have been carefully groomed over the past 12 months to back Murphy were quick to acknowledge, following the referendum, that many of their supporters voted yes out of a sense of alienation from Westminster. Now they want to bring Westminster to Holyrood.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There is plenty of scope for Labour to begin to recover in Scotland. By evolving an enlightened and genuinely radical strategy to address failing schools in areas of high deprivation; by leading the fight to end wage and fuel poverty; by campaigning to deprive fee-paying schools of their charitable status; and by championing Glasgow’s bid to get a better deal from Holyrood they can begin to recover ground in their lost heartlands. Sadly, any attempts to do any or all of this may be doomed to expire on the altar of Jim Murphy’s career flight path.

I do so hope I am proved wrong in this analysis. The Labour party, acting alone, has enhanced the lives of the overwhelming majority of people who live in this country. All those social improvements that have benefited the many and not the few – the NHS, comprehensive schools, free university education, equality for women, security of employment, social security, workers’ rights, quality social housing, Clause IV – were made possible by the Labour party, my Labour party. If it is allowed to die in Scotland, then much of this, over time, will shrivel and die with it.