Anas Sarwar has ordered colleagues to draw up a radical plan to beef up the powers of Holyrood and local councils.
The Scottish Labour leader cited workers’ rights and laws regulating drugs as priorities for further devolution from London to Edinburgh.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Record ahead of the Labour conference in Brighton, the Glasgow MSP also warned he would be delivering “hard truths” about how the party needs to do better.
And in what will be seen as a dig at Keir Starmer, Sarwar was clearly unimpressed with the decision to push for an internal change in way the UK leader is elected:
“I don’t think it should be our focus. It is certainly not my focus. I’m going to conference to talk about the issues I care about," he said.
Sarwar has been leader for just seven months after the shock resignation of Richard Leonard.
Although he was credited with running a positive and upbeat Holyrood election campaign, Labour came third and recorded their worst result in the history of the Parliament.
The party in Scotland has struggled to find a foothold in the constitutional debate and Sarwar has asked senior colleagues to produce a plan for the next stage of devolution.
The report will be issued directly to Sarwar and feed into a UK-wide Labour review led by Gordon Brown.
He said: “We have to have a plan in Scotland, for Scotland, designed by the Scottish Labour Party.
“We need to demonstrate what we think the next stage of devolution would look like, what we would do with the powers we already have... but also what we would do with any additional powers that came either to Holyrood or down to local authorities. I’m really determined to do that work.”
On employment law, he said there should be a “floor” across the UK, but insisted MSPs should have the power to create a “race to the top” on pay, conditions, and rights.
On the drugs crisis, where Scotland has a shamefully high death rate, he said that where the law lies is “very important”.
Sarwar also had a sharp message ahead of a pivotal conference for Starmer.
He said: “We are at a really difficult time for our country. We’re coming through a pandemic that’s changed Scotland, changed the UK, changed the world.
“We’ve got huge challenges around our economy and the jobs market, and huge challenges about the cost of living crisis, and we’ve seen that this weekend around energy prices.”
Sarwar continued: “At that time of national emergency and national crisis, we need to have a Labour Party that is talking about the issues that matter to people across the country rather than talking to itself.
“I’m going to conference in Brighton to speak some hard truths about where the Labour party needs to be, where the Labour party needs to get better, and the issues that we need to be talking about.”
Starmer has been criticised for using the conference to spark an internal debate on how the UK leader is elected.
Sarwar was pointedly unenthusiastic when asked about the plans: “To be honest, I wouldn’t be talking about it. I want us to be talking about energy prices. I want us to be talking about ending child poverty. I want to be talking about how we get people back to work.”
However, he said if the Starmer plan to give MPs more of a say in leadership elections is accepted, then he would expect MSPs, councillors and members of the Welsh Assembly to be given the “same status”.
Sarwar said the task of rebuilding Scottish Labour remains a work in progress:
“In many ways we pretended that we had a functioning working political party leading into an election. Now I’ve got to do the hard work of building a political party here in Scotland.”
He added: “And likewise for the UK Labour Party. We need the UK Labour Party to be better, in order for us to do better in Scotland but also do better across the UK.”
Sarwar said of the Tories shattering the so-called “red wall” in the north of England: “The first red wall to fall was Scotland, and unless we rebuild in Scotland we ain’t getting a UK Labour Government.”
He also risked angering environmentalists by supporting nuclear power in Scotland.
GMB trade union leader Gary Smith has backed new nuclear plants in Scotland - a call Sarwar did not dismiss.
“I support a diverse energy supply, I think nuclear is a key part of that and it’s something that I think we should fundamentally explore,” he said.
During the election, Sarwar said his ambition to become First Minister was a two-election project.
He says he “absolutely” believes this will happen:
“I’m not in politics to protest. I’m not in politics to just talk about what I believe. I want to deliver what I believe and that’s up to the great people of Scotland.”
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