Scottish Labour Party faces ‘fight for survival’, leadership contender says

‘I’m not naive about where we currently sit in the opinion polls,’ says Anas Sarwar

‘We’ve got to take a party that is currently on its knees, get it back up on its feet and get it fit for purpose,’ says Anas Sarwar (Getty)

Scottish Labour is facing a fight for “survival” and its resurgence is critical for Sir Keir Starmer’s chances of forming a majority government in 2024, a candidate in the party’s leadership contest has warned.

Fighting to replace Richard Leonard, who quit as Labour leader in Scotland earlier this month, Anas Sarwar told The Independent he was not “naive” about the party’s prospects following a spate of disastrous election results in recent years.

Dismissing calls from the Scottish National Party (SNP) for a second independence referendum, the 37-year-old MSP also insisted the task of the Scottish government over the next five years should be concentrated solely on recovering from the pandemic.

If Mr Sarwar defeats the only other candidate in next month’s contest, Monica Lennon, he will be the fifth person to lead the Scottish Labour Party in just five years and will face his first key electoral test just nine weeks later at the Holyrood elections.

Aware of the sheer scale of the challenge, with recent polls pointing to a decisive victory for the SNP and the Conservatives under Douglas Ross in second place, he also described the role he is asking Labour members to elect him to as the “hardest job in British politics”.

“I’m not naive about where we currently sit in the opinion polls,” he said. “We’re a distant third and we’ve come through our worst every European election result in our history, we’ve come through our worst ever general election result in modern times and we’ve got to take a party that is currently on its knees, get it back up on its feet and get it fit for purpose.

“I’m not naive in thinking you can change one person and automatically it’s going to be the silver bullet and the Labour Party is going to get back on track again in Scotland. I don’t believe that, I realise it’s a job that’s going to take rebuilding, and it’s going to take years.”

Mr Sarwar is no stranger to the party’s misfortune in Scotland. At the 2015 general election Labour lost 40 MPs north of the border in an SNP landslide and he was ejected from his Glasgow Central seat in the Commons – previously occupied by his father and the first-ever Muslim MP Mohammad Sarwar.

Asked whether Scottish Labour was facing an existential threat, he replied: “I think there is no doubt we are fighting for our survival. The strange thing within that is that we’re fighting for our survival at a time the Scottish Labour Party is needed most. 

“We’ve got deep divisions in our society, we’ve got deep inequality in our society, we’ve got deep injustice in our society. Our country looks like it’s pulling itself apart and the only party I think in Scotland that can credibly try and bring our country back together, to reunite our people and to focus on rebuilding Scotland, is the Scottish Labour Party.

“If we look at ourselves in the eye in the Labour Party, we’ve got to be honest and say for our members and for the Scottish people, we haven’t given them the Labour Party they deserve and need and in recent times. I realise that’s a big job, but I want to give people the Labour Party they need and deserve.”

Mr Sarwar added he did not want the Scottish Labour Party to be the “drag on the ticket” at the next general election, which is currently scheduled for 2024. For Sir Keir to form a majority government he must win more than 120 parliamentary seats — a scale of victory not experienced by the Labour Party since 1997 – and Mr Sarwar suggested this won’t be possible without a resurgent party north of the border.

“I don’t think there is a route to a UK Labour government without a resurgent Scottish Labour Party,” he added. “I think we can win the next general election, I think we can have a majority Labour government, I think we can have a Labour prime minister, but that requires the Labour Party in Scotland to be up on its feet, fit for purpose and an electable force again.

“That’s a big, big job in the next four months in the lead-up to the election campaign, but it’s also a massive job in the next few years. I don’t want the Scottish Labour Party to be the drag on the ticket. I don’t want us to be the ones that stop us having a Labour government.

“I want us to be a key part of us having a Labour government. There’s always been Scottish Labour giants as part of any Labour government, I want there to be Scottish Labour giants as part of the UK Labour government led by Keir Starmer.”

Mr Sarwar, who is expected to lay out his policy platform in the coming weeks, dismissed calls for a second independence referendum, suggesting he did not accept the “fatalism” of commentators that an SNP majority and a second vote is “inevitable”.

“We’re not spectators, we’re participants,” he said. “That’s why I don’t think we should dance to the SNP tune instead we should try and influence what happens in May and not commentate on what might happen after May.

“It would be a big mistake to go from the trauma of Covid straight into a divisive independence referendum campaign. I don’t think that’s in the national interest – it might be in the nationalist interest, but it’s not in the national interest.”

He added: “What you’re voting for in the next election is not what you want for life, it’s for what you want for the next five years. Five years and then, if your priorities change for the five years that follow, you can vote for new priorities.

“Whatever your view on independence, whether you are Yes or No, let’s accept that we need a period of healing in our country, and we need to reunite our people and we need to rebuild Scotland so we can focus on the economy and how we get the economy working for everyone.

“How we protect and create new jobs, how we need to fight against the climate emergency, how we have an education system that is a global beacon once again, and how we build an NHS that never again has to choose between treating a virus or treating cancer. That should be our national mission for the next five years through a Covid-recovery parliament.”

Last week, the SNP revealed an 11-point “roadmap” to a second ballot, stressing that a “legal referendum” would be held once the pandemic recedes if May’s Holyrood election results in a decisive victory for the party. The document stated that the Scottish government would request a Section 30 order from the UK government under the 1998 Scotland Act, claiming there would be “no moral or democratic justification for denying that request”.

Pressed on whether it would be right for the prime minister to block a referendum, as he has indicated, Mr Sarwar added: “What you’re asking me to do is commentate on a hypothetical when not a single vote has been cast.

“I want to influence people and I think what too many of us forget in politics is where has the politics of persuasion gone? We want to persuade the Scottish people about what we think and why we think it, and we’ve got to do that with honesty and humility.

“I don’t think it is the right thing for us to go from Covid to a referendum. My honest view is that it would only create greater division in our society, and my honest view is that we should instead focus … on how we rebuild after Covid.”