Will he stay or go? That’s the question Labor MSPs are asking Anas Sarwar. After the Scottish party’s infighting at the last Holyrood election, expectations are that Sarwar could step down as leader around the time of the UK conference in September.
There is still no clear answer. Sarwar has said he will stay in order to “keep the party together” and continues to lead at First Minister’s Questions in his usual fiery style. But I find it hard to believe that he is in it for the long haul or that he will stay in office until the next Holyrood election. May’s vote returned just 17 MSPs to Labour, the lowest in the history of devolution, and the same as Reform. The SNP took 58 out of 129 seats in parliament. The gap is simply huge. In the Westminster by-elections for Aberdeen South and Broughty Ferry and Arbroath, Labor was barely an afterthought, coming fourth in both.
Sarwar puts on a show, but inside he must be upset with the way things have turned out. Five more years of shouting at John Swinney from the opposition benches will have limited appeal. Sarwar was, he repeatedly told us, running to be First Minister and to oust Swinney from Bute House. Polls suggesting a comfortable SNP victory were wrong and pundits and pollsters predicting such a result would have looked foolish. He gave it everything he had, but by his own metrics, the result was a humiliation, regardless of the reasons for it.
And what were those reasons? This is where it gets interesting and where there is a split in the upper echelons of the party.
Everyone admits that the deep unpopularity of Keir Starmer and his government played a, and perhaps the main, role in suppressing the Scottish Labor vote. Despite having more money to spend than the other parties, an enthusiastic and experienced ground operation and thinner social media outlets, Starmer proved an insurmountable obstacle. Activists talk about how conversations usually started on the doorstep with those who were supposed to protect the Prime Minister and his data. Only then, and not always, would voters be willing to discuss the SNP’s record in government and the wider Scottish issues at stake.
The intention was for Scottish Labor to become an “emotionally neutral” vehicle for the anti-SNP vote, but antipathy towards UK Labor outweighed anger at the Nats’ failures over their long tenure and the scandals that have hit the party in recent years. Even when the SNP’s flagship new policy to control supermarket food prices blew up on the day it was announced, it had no impact on the polls. This has led some of the party’s analysts to conclude that politics is much less important than it used to be and that “politics trumps organization.” The attempt to ensure that this was a Scottish election fought on Scottish issues largely failed.
It certainly helped the SNP that its former chief executive Peter Murrell’s appearance in court over his embezzlement of more than £400,000 from party accounts was delayed until after the election (Murrell was jailed for five years and three months this week). There has also been anger that a Scottish Government decision not to proceed with a long-promised new hospital in Lanarkshire emerged just this week.
But others in the party believe many mistakes were made by those running the campaign. A decision to target sources at specific locations which were judged to offer Sarwar a route to Bute House has been criticised. So is the party’s manifesto, which lacked surprises or eye-catching policies. The gamble that Sarwar’s apparent energy and charisma would see him favored by Swinney from the electorate was wrong. Lord Foulkes, a former Labor minister, recently wrote that “the Scottish Labor campaign hoped that the race would be based on the character of the Scottish leaders alone and so there were no really bold and compelling policy proposals in our manifesto”.
But even then, some wonder if that, or indeed anything, would have made much of a difference. The SNP has been able to rely on a crucial vote of 30 to 35 per cent which, with Reform splitting unionist support, put it on course for victory. This stubborn loyalty to the Nats, or to the independence cause, or both, points to an identity politics that will seemingly always remain unaffected by government failure or scandal.
Labor strategists are facing a new exam question – what political space can a social democratic party occupy in a political culture driven by identity politics? This is as true of the challenge posed by Reform at Westminster as it is of SNP dominance in Scotland.
This is also why Andy Burnham’s success in the Makerfield by-election is being taken as a sign of hope and a lesson. How can populist, identity politics be defeated if politics has less purchase in the choices voters make? “Values and vibrations” is the phrase used to describe how Burnham saw the Reformation. This reflects his ease in using social media and his ability to communicate a passing authenticity.
There is also the belief that Burnham’s northernness, even his accent, will send a signal to Scots that England is about more than Westminster and London, and that the more regionally focused approach promised by the potential next prime minister will challenge the “caricatures” of the UK’s SNP. Burnham’s desire to deliver a greater devolution to local communities across England could also force the SNP to confront the highly centralized approach it has taken to governing Scotland.
We will see. Meanwhile, all eyes are on Sarwar as he weighs his future. Alternate leaders are already being touted around, including first benchers Michael Marra, Paul Sweeney and Daniel Johnson. Still, one can’t help but wonder whether being in charge of the smoking ruins of Scottish Labor is a job worth having.
(Further reading: Elon Musk is the richest loser in the history of capitalism)
