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ANAS Sarwar accused the Scottish Government of being “snooty and elitist” at FMQs today following a report which detailed a 20% cut to college funding.
The swipe – which was met with fury by Swinney – seemed to come slightly out of nowhere during Sarwar’s final question to the First Minister following what had been, up until that stage, reasonable queries about an Audit Scotland report which showed further education funding had dropped by a fifth in real terms between 2021/22 and 2025/26.
He started out questioning why the SNP, in his view, appeared to think colleges and apprenticeships were of “of less value” than universities, but before long he was firing out insults suggesting members of the Scottish Government looked down on certain sections of society.
It seemed unnecessary and untrue, given the Scottish Government has brought in policies such as the Scottish Child Payment and free prescriptions heralded widely as helping those on lower incomes.
The idea of Sarwar being a spokesperson for the working class also just doesn’t wash.
Swinney made sure to let him know about that.
He started out saying it was not a “great look” for a “state school boy” such as himself to be lectured on elitism by Sarwar – alluding to the Scottish Labour leader’s education at the private Hutchesons Grammar School in Glasgow.
Sarwar went on to study at the University of Glasgow before becoming a dentist.
Watch as John Swinney tells Anas Sarwar to 'go home and think again' after the Scottish Labour leader called the SNP government 'snooty' and 'elitist' 👀 pic.twitter.com/7Fc0EGWjdK
— The National (@ScotNational) October 2, 2025
But this aside, what makes this worse is the way in which Sarwar has chosen to act when it has come to decisions which have hurt working class communities.
Top of Swinney’s list was the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery, which led to the loss of more than 400 jobs after a century of operations.
Sarwar had once stood next to Swinney and said a Keir Starmer government would “put hundreds of millions of pounds” into a scheme to “save those jobs and protect the future” of Grangemouth.
Swinney pointed out that Grangemouth “got nothing and is closed”, telling Sarwar to “go home and think again”.
Earlier this year, Scottish Labour MP Brian Leishman said he did not know what had happened to Sarwar’s promise.
Sarwar arguably doesn’t really have a leg to stand on when you also think about how he failed to speak out against disability benefit cuts enacted by the UK Labour Government.
Perhaps the Scottish Labour leader needs to consider his own choices before pointing the finger across the chamber.
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