Sarwar suffers blow as union backs his rival

SCOTTISH Labour leadership candidate Anas Sarwar suffered more humiliation yesterday as the main shopworkers union backed his rival following the controversy over his family’s business.

The Glasgow MSP’s campaign has been dogged by criticism of the cash-and-carry firm’s refusal to recognise trade unions or pay the living wage.

Usdaw said it would support Richard Leonard, who has pledged to drag Labour to the Left. Mr Leonard said: ‘I’m delighted to win the support of Usdaw, a union I have worked closely with in Scotland for 25 years.’

Unite and rail unions Aslef and the TSSA are also backing Mr Leonard.

Mr Sarwar has shares in his family firm, United (Wholesale) Scotland, worth £4. million. He suffered further embarrassment when he was mocked by Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions.

After acting Scottish Labour leader Alex Rowley said the SNP ‘sides with the millionaires rather than with the millions’, Miss Sturgeon responded: ‘It was really unfair of Alex Rowley to personalise the debate by bringing Anas Sarwar into it.’

FRIENDS, comrades, snivelling Blairite sellouts. Alex Rowley might not have come to bury Anas Sarwar but he may as well have.

Whatever possessed Labour’s interim leader to launch into a jeremiad against millionaires, his well-coined would-be successor wound up with a dagger in his back.

Enter stage Left at First Minister’s Questions Mr Rowley, with an apparent broadside against Nicola Sturgeon’s record on child poverty. But was there skulduggery afoot? Was the Nationalist empress perhaps not his real target?

Rowley suddenly shifted his droning vocals to the Scottish Government’s planned cut to air passenger duty. Before anyone could register the switch, the unsuspecting Mr Sarwar had a shiv in him. ‘Every single time the SNP has a tax decision to make it sides with the millionaires rather than the millions.’

Oops! Had Mr Rowley really forgotten that Mr Sarwar has been pilloried since the start of his leadership campaign because he is a millionaire – and his family firm has been accused of failing to pay staff the living wage?

For a dizzying moment, seconds but it felt longer, the debating chamber froze, heckles silent, breaths held.

And then Miss Sturgeon lunged, brought to her feet by instinct and the rumble thunder-bang of rising laughter as MSPs grasped what Mr Rowley had done.

It may have been an innocent slipup; Mr Rowley is not a seasoned parliamentary performer. It may have been something else. He has the wit of a minor 1970s union bruiser but he also has the cunning.

‘I really thought it was unfair of Alex Rowley to personalise this debate by bringing Anas Sarwar into it,’ mewed the First Minister, grinning like the cat who hadn’t so much got the cream as been handed the keys to the dairy.

For those happy few unversed in the tribulations of Scottish Labour, the party is undergoing a leadership contest pitting Mr Sarwar, hitherto a critic of Jeremy Corbyn, against loyal Left-winger Richard Leonard, an MSP for Central Scotland.

Miss Sturgeon has made much of Mr Sarwar being very wealthy and the issue of low wages.

When her would-be opposite number bragged that he had parked his tanks on her lawn, she riposted: ‘If he could mow it occasionally, it’d save Peter Murrell [her husband] a job. I’ll even pay him the real living wage.’

She may be a hidebound separatist hellbent on breaking up our country but the woman knows how to turn a line.

‘We will try to refrain from personal attacks in the chamber; it is only fair,’ Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh chided. He always sounds like a kindly old headmaster who has done away with the cane but can’t work out why the children are swinging from the light shades.

Anas Sarwar’s candidacy is now surely slain. ‘Ambition should be made of sterner stuff’, I suppose, and his firm’s employment practices are fair game if he’s going to preach the virtues of socialism.

There will be a few cynical souls who raise an eyebrow at Alex Rowley championing fairness in politics.

His daughter Danielle, who just so happens to be running Richard Leonard’s leadership campaign, became a Labour MP in June at the fortuitous age of 27. But Alex Rowley says Anas Sarwar is a millionaire and Alex Rowley is an honourable man.

Mind you, if Mr Sarwar thinks he has problems, he should consider the plight of Nationalist backbencher John Mason. Minutes before FMQs, he brought a grievous scandal to the attention of MSPs.

‘Last week,’ he intoned with all the gravity of Walter Cronkite reporting the Kennedy assassination, ‘I bought an article of clothing – a jersey – on the Royal Mile and was not charged for the bag. That has happened to me several times when I have been shopping. Does the minister have any concern that there is a bit of non-adherence to the legislation?’

SNP minister Paul Wheelhouse strove to keep a straight face: ‘I wish Mr Mason luck with his new jersey. I hope that it is an attractive one.’

Social media wags were less forgiving. As one noted acidly: ‘He’s the first Scotsman in history to whinge about saving five pence.’