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ANAS Sarwar is so desperate to win the keys to Bute House that he’s going to attempt an impossible magic trick during the Holyrood 2026 election – pretending Keir Starmer doesn’t exist.
After refusing to say he had full confidence in the Prime Minister last week, Sarwar insisted that he “absolutely” has confidence in Starmer to lead the UK Government.
But apparently, that doesn’t stretch to bringing in the PM’s charismatic skills to the Scottish Parliament election campaign.
Sarwar told journalists that Starmer would “play his part in the election campaign in Scotland”.
But he added: “The Scottish election is going to be led by me – I’m the candidate for first minister, not Keir Starmer.”
Earlier in the week, Sarwar dodged repeated questions from journalists asking whether he had confidence in Starmer, amid rumours that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham was considering launching a leadership bid.
And, the Sunday Times reported that Scottish Labour insiders are now urging Sarwar to publicly break from diligently following Starmer or risk sinking his own career.
“I think there is an acceptance, now, that it has to happen,” a senior Sarwar ally told the newspaper.
"Early on, there was talk that Anas could take on an issue, No 10 would concede, and it would give him a political win. For whatever reason, that never happened.”
It’s no wonder that Sarwar wants to put as much distance between himself and Starmer as he can ahead of the Holyrood election.
One, Starmer is the least popular Prime Minister on record at -66.
Yes – worse than Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Boris Johnson, to name just a few.
And with that in mind, Sarwar will be even more anxious that his dreams of becoming first minister are at risk with a Norstat poll putting Scottish Labour in third place at the Holyrood election, behind the SNP and Reform.
The survey put the SNP on 34%, Reform on 20%, and Labour at just 17% on the constituency list. On the regional list, 29% of voters are planning to vote SNP, with Reform and Labour tied on 18%.
The antidote, apparently, is to try and pretend that Starmer, and a Westminster Labour Government, are not the reasons for the cost of living crisis or any of the other myriad of problems facing Scots – but turn it on the SNP.
We had an inkling of this from Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander’s conference speech on Sunday, where he said: “The simple truth is this, no government, however determined, could undo all the damage of 14 years in just 14 months.”
Alexander added that the party must convince Scots it is “good enough” to be in power at Holyrood.
The problem for Sarwar and Alexander is that voters are not stupid.
If Labour had truly wanted to bring in the “change” they repeatedly promised, they absolutely could have.
With the Norstat poll finding that Scots would vote to leave the Union should an independence referendum be held tomorrow, it is ludicrous for Scottish Labour to pretend that Westminster’s decisions have no influence.
Starmer and his ministers set the direction on reserved issues such as immigration – we can see how that’s going – and they hold the purse strings.
While the Scottish Government does have its own tax powers, we are nowhere near fiscal autonomy north of the Border, and at the behest of Westminster spending decisions.
And, Scottish ministers have to spend quite a lot of resources mitigating Westminster decisions, like the two-child benefit cap and the winter fuel payment, before Labour U-turned on it at least.
But with Scottish Labour heading for a disastrous result next year – Sarwar is going to have to prove himself an exceptional magician if he wants to pull that one off.
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