Anas Sarwar has urged Keir Starmer and senior UK ministers to “stay behind their doors” in Whitehall to avoid turning the Holyrood election into a referendum on Westminster failures. The Scottish Labour leader said the prime minister’s policy missteps had left voters “angry, frustrated and impatient”, making his party clear underdogs ahead of May’s vote.
Speaking to Labour parliamentarians and activists in Edinburgh, Sarwar argued the UK government had failed to communicate its achievements – such as raising wages and tackling NHS waiting lists – while making serious errors like cutting the winter fuel payment. Scottish Labour’s leadership is privately furious at what it sees as No 10’s policy and communication failures, believing they have squandered substantial polling leads from the 2024 general election.
Recent polls show the SNP comfortably ahead in the mid-30s, with Scottish Labour slumping to the high teens, and Reform UK overtaking the party in some surveys. Sarwar acknowledged that Reform now posed the biggest electoral threat to Labour, as voters used Nigel Farage’s party as an outlet for discontent with the UK government.
Sarwar said his central challenge was to prevent SNP leader John Swinney from turning the election into a protest vote against Westminster. Instead, Labour would focus on domestic issues like NHS waiting lists, education and housing. He noted that Scottish Labour had built a £1m campaign war chest and delivered over 1m campaign magazines.
Meanwhile, Swinney struck a more optimistic tone at the SNP’s campaign launch in Glasgow, emphasising independence as “utterly central” to the campaign. He contrasted his hopeful vision with what he called a UK government “lurching further to the right”, citing Brexit, austerity and “disgraceful” language around immigration. Swinney insisted an SNP majority would justify another independence referendum, and hinted at “various tactics” if Westminster remained intransigent.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said cost of living pressures would dominate the election, as his party’s support has collapsed with several defections to Reform.
