Anas Sarwar must use speech to distance himself from both SNP and Sir Keir Starmer


After years of defeat at the hands of a seemingly invincible SNP, Scottish Labour got fully back in the game in 2024.
A remarkable general election result saw Labour win 37 of Scotland’s Westminster constituencies, while the nationalists lost 39.
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Hide AdIn the days after last July’s vote, the sense of optimism in Scottish Labour ranks was palpable. It had been a very long time since the party’s members dared dream of a future Holyrood election victory. Suddenly, the prospect that leader Anas Sarwar might be First Minister after the 2026 election didn’t seem ridiculous.
Since that summer high, the mood among MSPs has darkened. Having celebrated the election of dozens of new colleagues to the House of Commons, they then watched in despair as the UK Government made major announcements that benefitted the SNP.
The decision at Westminster to scrap the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners was a gift to First Minister John Swinney, who announced the SNP would step in to ameliorate the pain for the poorest pension-age Scots.
A politically-savvy draft Scottish budget from finance secretary Shona Robison put further pressure on Scottish Labour, whose MSPs will be asked next month to vote not only to deliver winter fuel payments to pensioners but to abolish the two-child benefit cap.
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Hide AdOn top of this, of course, came the decision by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that women affected by the failure to adequately inform them about changes to the state pension would not be compensated.
There are, I think, strong arguments that this was the right decision both financially and morally but it was politically foolish. Starmer and countless colleagues had, over years, declared their unwavering support for so-called WASPI women. The U-turn on this emotive issue gave weight to the SNP’s charge that a new government at Westminster meant more of the same in policy terms.
Labour MSPs are entitled to be angry, and many of them are. For years, after the SNP’s first Holyrood election victory in 2007, Labour MSPs suffered from the charge that their party was no different to the Conservatives. The accusation from the SNP that Labour politicians were “red Tories” gained traction.
It took a very long time for Labour to begin recovering from the battering it took from the SNP after the 2014 independence referendum. When the party came third behind the Tories in the 2016 Holyrood election, members seemed to lose heart completely.
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Hide AdAnas Sarwar, elected leader of Scottish Labour in February 2021, deserves much credit for the way in which his party has rallied in recent years.
After a particularly unhappy period under the leadership of the Richard Leonard – an ally of former UK party leader Jeremy Corbyn – Sarwar brought a fractured parliamentary group back together.
With the experienced – and ruthless – campaigner Dame Jackie Baillie as his deputy, Sarwar projected a sense of optimism that had been undetectable in Scottish Labour for more than a decade.
Affable and self-deprecating, Sarwar began to connect with voters in a way a number of his predecessors had not. It was difficult, for example, to imagine Leonard leading a dance routine to Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” in a car park as Sarwar did in a video clip that swiftly went viral.
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Hide AdOf course, the ability to dance is no indicator of the fitness to govern. If Sarwar is ever to become First Minister, we’ll need a little more information.
Polls started telling Sarwar more than two years ago that voters were ready to give him a hearing but he has continued to fail to present any distinctive alternative vision for Scotland: How would he lead? In what ways would a Labour Government at Holyrood differ from an SNP one?
A consequence of Sarwar’s failure to clearly define himself, ideologically, is that he has not been able to defend his party against the collateral damage caused by those UK government decisions.
During the general election campaign, when the inevitability of a Labour victory destroyed the SNP’s campaign claim that only a vote for them could remove the Tories from power, it suited Sarwar to be seen as Starmer’s bestie.
Now, that closeness is damaging.
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Hide AdI share the surprise of some of Sarwar’s colleagues that this state of affairs has been allowed to develop. Both he and Baillie are smart campaigners, neither of whom will have been in the slightest surprised at the backlash against some of Starmer’s decisions, yet they’ve been on the back foot for weeks now. Without strong policy ideas, Scottish Labour looks defensive and weak.
Tomorrow, Sarwar will deliver a speech on what Scottish Labour describes as “the need for a new political direction for Scotland”.
The contents of the speech are – as I write – closely guarded, even from senior colleagues, one of whom told me “If there’s nothing simple, clear and appealing then it’s going to do more harm than good. We need something that defines us”.
I’m inclined to agree with another shadow cabinet member who thinks Sarwar should focus on the state of the nation under current management. It would be a mistake, insists that MSP, for Sarwar not to make the speech about the SNP’s record.
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Hide AdYet another of the Scottish Labour leader’s allies makes the reasonable point that, more than a year out from a Holyrood election, any attractive policies announced by the party would – as has has happed in the past on issues such as tuition fees – be purloined by the nationalists and given prominence in their next manifesto.
After the swift disappearance of the shine from Sir Keir Starmer’s government, Scottish Labour looks vulnerable to a fifth successive Holyrood defeat at the hands of the nationalists.
The speech he delivers at Glasgow University tomorrow will be the most significant of Anas Sarwar’s career.
Can Scottish Labour’s leader start to repair the damage inflicted on his party by Sir Keir Starmer?
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