LIVERPOOL, England — Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar ruled out striking a deal with Reform UK after next year’s Scottish election, branding party leader Nigel Farage a “charlatan” and a “comedian.”
Speaking in the POLITICO Pub at Labour conference Monday, Sarwar said his party — currently the third largest in the Scottish parliament — would try to form a minority government following the Holyrood election in May.
Scottish Labour have been in opposition since 2007 when the Scottish National Party swept to power. Despite winning 37 of Scotland’s 57 seats at the general election last July, Sarwar’s party now languishes in the polls due to Labour’s national unpopularity.
But the Scottish Labour leader insisted Farage did not provide the answers. “He wants to question my identity,” Sarwar said. “He probably would question whether I even put my country, Scotland, first.”
During a Holyrood by-election earlier this year, Farage accused Sarwar of introducing “sectarianism” into Scottish politics and played a Reform advert featuring clips of a speech Sarwar gave marking the 75th anniversary of Pakistan’s independence in 2022.
Sarwar said he thought Reform would be found out by voters despite surging in the polls both nationally and in Scotland.
“I’ll always obviously be more Scottish than Nigel Farage will ever be. But I’ll tell you what, I am more representative of British values as well than Nigel Farage will ever be,” Sarwar said.
He added: “Scotland will reject them next year, and probably the U.K. will reject them come the next general election as well.” He added that Farage is “a charlatan. He’s a comedian, and he’ll be absolutely found out.”
But he insisted Labour needed to do better in getting its message across: “If we as Labour people aren’t going to tell our Labour story, the public aren’t going to hear it.”
In a separate interview at the POLITICO Pub, Wales’ First Minister Eluned Morgan also ruled out striking a deal with Farage in the Welsh Parliament.
Opinion polls currently show Labour is likely to be ejected in Wales after 26 years in power, with Farage’s party potentially reaping the rewards.
Morgan also rejected the focus on immigration in the forthcoming Caerphilly by-election, called after the death of incumbent Labour lawmaker Hefin David.
“They want to talk about immigration, it’s not on the ballot paper here,” she said.
Morgan said at least 50 percent of doctors and dentists in her regional constituency of Mid and West Wales had been trained overseas: “You start threatening them with deportation, you’ve got a major problem,” Morgan said. “We’ve got to recognize the massive contribution that immigration has made to this country.”
This story has been updated with comments from Eluned Morgan.
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