Former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said in an interview with the Reporter has said that SNP support in Scotland "blew Labour away" in 2015's general election, when the party seized all but three of the Scottish MPs.

Mr Johnson was speaking ahead of an appearance at Dumbarton Library next Friday to discuss the third volume of his autobiography.

The appearance comes just a couple of weeks before the country goes to the polls for the general election on June 8, with Labour hoping to wrest back the West Dunbartonshire seat from the SNP's Martin Docherty, who claimed it in 2015 with a swing of almost 35 per cent.

Speaking about the 2015 election, Mr Johnson said: "Scotland is very different from England, and no one based outside of Scotland should really pontificate about the issues up here. It was a bit of a mystery to us (in 2015) and it blew us away as a party.

"There were other factors in play and things were a bit different because where the traditional Labour view says that the party lost its support in 2010 after Lehman Brothers crashed, but the main fall in support in Scotland was in 2015."

Mr Johnson is standing down as MP for Hull West and Hessle at next month's election, a seat he has held since its creation in 1997.

He had some words of advice for prospective candidates and for the party as a whole ahead of next month's poll: "From somebody with a background in a northern seat, we must not trash our record in government and always remember the good things we did for people, like setting the Sure Start programme.

"These achievements need to be cherished and I hear Labour people rubbishing previous leaders, when we should be tackling problems with housing for working people and levels of health inequality.

"The question of whether people are local never used to be much of a factor and wherever you come from, MPs are expected to be committed and passionate about tackling the important issues, and if that's the case, social class is irrelevant."

Labour holds only one seat in Scotland, with bleak projections over the party's support at the national level and in Scotland, where it threatens to lose its only seat in Edinburgh South.

Mr Johnson said: "We need to try and build a coalition across the party and connect with the voters because you need to be in power to tackle the main problems for working people. There needs to be a broad alliance of people of all backgrounds to marry the issues of social justice and economic growth to eradicate levels of poverty.