Humza Yousaf criticises UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for praising Margaret Thatcher

Sir Keir Starmer says the former prime minister ‘sought to drag Britain out of its stupor’

Margaret Thatcher looking pensive at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool in 1985. PIC: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Humza Yousaf is accusing UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of insulting the people of Scotland over his apparent praise of Margaret Thatcher.

The former Conservative prime minister, who died in 2013, presided over a privatisation agenda during her time in Downing Street in the 1980s.

Her premiership saw the decline of industries such as coal mining and steel working, and her administration has been heavily criticised by those on the left of the political spectrum ever since.

Sir Keir wrote in the Sunday Telegraph Ms Thatcher “sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”.

In the piece, which looks to woo Conservative voters ahead of next year’s general election, the Labour leader also praised former Labour prime minister Sir Tony Blair who he says “reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could seize the optimism of the late 1990s”.

First Minister Humza Yousaf is now attacking Sir Keir for the comments.

Writing on X, Mr Yousaf said: “What Thatcher did to mining and industrial communities was not ‘entrepreneurialism’, it was vandalism.

“Starmer praising Thatcher is an insult to those communities in Scotland, and across the UK, who still bear the scars of her disastrous policies.”

Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has since defended Sir Keir’s comments.

Speaking on BBC Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he said: “The point Keir was trying to make is that he has changed the Labour Party.

“On the strength of that he can now go to people and say we’ve changed and there have been prime ministers who have done this.

“Thatcher, even though I don’t support her politics, did that.

“I come from County Durham, so her politics I am not sympathetic to, but I recognise her as a formidable opponent.

“Keir is setting out a prospectus for the country that everyone can get behind.

“There are Conservatives in this country who are dismayed at the Conservative government, and we should be reaching out to them.”