GLASGOW, Scotland — After a storming performance in Britain’s general election last year, Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar would have been forgiven for measuring the curtains in Bute House.
But hopes of finally ousting the Scottish government from its seat of power are already beginning to look forlorn — and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s getting the blame all the way over in London.
At Scottish Labour’s first conference since the general election — where they smashed the Scottish National Party to win 37 of Scotland’s 57 Westminster seats — newly empowered MPs and grizzled Scottish Labour veterans were in a fretful mood.
They were wondering how to regain the initiative ahead of elections to run Scotland’s devolved government next year. And many were pointing the finger at Starmer’s stuttering start as U.K. prime minister as a potential drag on Labour’s Scotland push.
“Keir Starmer can’t win the election for us. But he can certainly lose it,” a senior Scottish Labour figure, speaking on condition of anonymity like others quoted in this article to speak frankly, said.
After a tough start to life in No. 10 Downing Street, Starmer’s popularity has plummeted. And at the same time, so has the favorability of the Scottish Labour Party and its leader, Sarwar.
A Sunday Times poll published directly before the conference laid bare the challenge for Sarwar. It found his party on course for its worst defeat since the first devolved elections all the way back in 1999 — all in spite of a chaotic and damaging two years for the tired and scandal-hit ruling SNP.
Figures close to Sarwar insist he still has plenty of time to win back Scots and will be Scotland’s next first minister. And Starmer himself — perhaps sensing the danger for his Scottish ally — pitched up Sunday morning for a speech in Glasgow and an announcement aimed at stemming the bleeding in a key area.
The prime minister announced a new £200 million investment into the troubled Grangemouth oil refinery site in his speech — following accusations, including from his own allies in Scotland, that his government had failed to support workers set to be made redundant when the refinery closes. Sarwar too had come under fire after he promised during last year’s election that a Labour win would mean the government stepping in to save jobs.
“That is the difference a Labour government can make,” Starmer told the conference hall.
Personality politics
The move followed intense lobbying of the Treasury in London by the Scotland Office, helmed by Sarwar’s key ally in Westminster, the Scotland Secretary Ian Murray. The Scottish Labour leader’s allies saw the promise of more help from central government as a key moment for Sarwar, after a perceived lack of action from Starmer’s administration to support those facing redundancy.
But the concerns about Starmer and his drag on the Scottish party’s chances of success go further than just the oil refinery issue.
“When Anas is out on the doors people ask him for selfies and really get on with him,” one Scottish Labour MP said. “But I don’t think people would do the same for Keir.”
Others put it in harsher terms when they describe the prime minister — who is often denigrated as dull.
“Sarwar’s biggest problem was always going to be Starmer. He’s got the personality of a house brick and he has got nothing that makes you warm to him or like him,” Neil Findlay, a left-wing Labour former member of the Scottish Parliament, said.
“But more of a problem even than that are the policy choices,” he added, reeling off austerity-minded decisions to pare back pensioner benefits and keep in place Conservative-era welfare policies. “They have just been catastrophic disasters,” Findlay said.
The move to scrap the universal winter fuel allowance for the elderly — and the handling of the announcement — has been a particular concern for those across the party in Scotland. “There have definitely been some issues around the comms from government, particularly in the way No. 10 presents itself,” a Labour frontbencher at Holyrood said.
That has opened up a path, too, for another figure looking to disrupt the status quo: Nigel Farage and his right-wing, populist Reform UK movement.
Despite having little presence (or even a national leader) in Scotland, Farage’s party is currently on course to win enough seats to upset the balance of next year’s Scottish election — as well as Labour’s campaigning strategy aimed at projecting a very similar message about the need for change.
“It’s the ‘fuck you’ and the ‘fuck everyone’ vote,” one Scottish Labour aide said of Reform voters. “And lots of people feel like that right now. It’s a worry for us because the landscape becomes much more volatile with a high Reform vote.”
President Anas
To counter both Reform and the lingering focus from voters on the travails of Labour in Westminster, multiple Scottish Labour insiders at the party’s conference came to the same conclusion: that to win they must run a presidential-style campaign over the next 14 months focused on the personality of Sarwar as a contrast to his SNP rival.
It may be a difficult task, with Sarwar currently more unpopular than the veteran SNP First Minister John Swinney — who is seen to have steadied the SNP ship after a dire spell.
Even still, the SNP chief does not preside over a popular government. A February YouGov poll found that nearly six in ten Scots disapprove of its record.
“It is difficult to comprehend that we still look to be in the driving seat for next year after being in government for so long,” a former adviser to ex-SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon said — while the Labour frontbencher quoted higher up in this article said it was crucial their party “keeps reminding people just how long the SNP have been in power.”
But there have been grumbles, too, about some of Sarwar’s own decisions, including a recent U-turn of his position on simplifying the process of legally changing gender. Sarwar had sacked two MSPs from his frontbench for holding the same position years earlier.
Sarwar recently reshuffled his team of advisers, including bringing in a former adviser to the Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham — a center-left politician known for his willingness to publicly criticize Starmer.
The Scottish leader has remained publicly supportive of the prime minister — and praised his record in his Friday conference speech, though Starmer was only mentioned once in the speech itself.
“He really can’t continue to be seen as being too close to the national Labour brand, which has been completely tainted by the government down south,” a former Scottish Labour adviser said.
Scottish Labour figures accept too that the party needs to do more differentiate itself from the SNP — and to ensure it, rather than Farage, is portrayed as the disruptor to the status quo SNP government. In his conference speech, Sarwar announced plans for an Elon-Musk style department of government efficiency to cut down on wasteful spending in the Scottish government. Journalists and Labour flacks jokingly coined this initiative “McDOGE.”
“If the election is framed as a chance to make a judgment on Keir Starmer’s government — as a mid-terms sort of thing — then that is really challenging for us,” another senior figure in the party admitted. “We have to make it about what we would do differently from the SNP.”
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