Speaking to The News, the MSP for Glasgow Pollok backed her successor to revive the stricken party, despite polls predicting a wipe out for Labour in May’s general election.

However, Ms Lamont says this year’s general election remains ‘utterly unpredictable’ and that her party will fight ‘very hard’ for a Labour government.

She also claims that Labour siding with the Tories during the Better Together campaign was not a mistake.

The incumbent MP said: “I think the SNP like to say that but actually on both sides of the debate was that you got people allying themselves with people that they would not normally do.

“You had both Tommy Sheridan and Brian Souter who would be poles apart, I think, politically in terms of priorities.

“On the Better Together side you had Labours, Tories, and Lib Dems and most critically lots of people who were of no political party whatsoever.

“And the polling showed that that’s what people wanted. I agreed that we should stay in a United Kingdom, it’s probably the only thing I do agree with the Tory party on and I think people made those compromises on the other side of the argument as well.” Ms Lamont stood down as the Scottish Labour Party leader in the aftermath of the September 18 referendum, and accused the Labour elite in London of treating the Scottish Labour party as nothing more than a branch.

But she says Mr Murphy is the man to take the party forwards.

She said: “I think Jim is the man who will take the party forwards in Scotland, he won decisively in our leadership contest and he is the man to give voice to that determination that Labour is the best interests of the people of Scotland as it is across the rest of the UK.

“I think he will be first minister in 2016, but as anything in politics if you presume the electorate quite rightly punishes you.

“He, like I, will fight for every single vote.” However Ms Lamont stands by her comments about the main UK party mistreating Scottish Labour.

She said: “The challenge I laid down to the UK party was that they need to understand that Scottish politics has changed.

“In the election of Jim Murphy, that has happened. Perhaps that is my legacy.”