Only Scottish Labour offers the politics of empathy, hope, and unity
What has Falkirk ever done to deserve the ire of celebrity chefturned game show host Gordon Ramsay, asks Aidan Smith
Becoming leader of a political party less than ten weeks before an election is a somewhat unusual state of affairs.
Since being elected on Saturday, it has been a whirlwind of media requests, strategy meetings and endless phone calls.
There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that the public doesn’t see, and it isn’t possible without a team around you.
I was incredibly fortunate during the leadership campaign to have the support of so many activists and volunteers, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them all.
I am humbled by the trust the party has placed in me. But I know that, as a party, we have a lot of work to do to win back the trust of the Scottish people.
I have been brutally honest with our members and with the country – you haven’t had the party you deserve.
With rising injustice, inequality and division, I’m sorry we haven’t been good enough.
Last night, I took that same message to a meeting of all Labour MPS.
A lot has been said and written about the so-called ‘red wall’ in north England which crumbled in the catastrophic General Election result in 2019. But the first red wall to fall was in Scotland, in 2015.
I lost my own seat in that election, so I have first-hand experience of that painful moment in our party’s history.
Following the election of Keir Starmer as our UK leader last year, our party is regaining the trust of the British people.
And nowhere is that more important than Scotland.
The path to a Labour government across the UK runs through Scotland, and I made that clear to MPS last night.
And the responsibility of rebuilding our movement in Scotland falls to me.
So never again will we have the spectacle of a senior UK frontbencher coming to Scotland and changing our policy position at an Edinburgh Fringe show.
Decisions about Scottish policy will be made by the team here in Scotland.
Yesterday, I appointed my campaign Cabinet that will set out our clear vision.
We are less than ten weeks away from a Holyrood election, and the Scottish Parliament is due to go into recess at the end of this month. We don’t have much time to get our message to voters.
But there is huge talent in our movement and that’s why I have appointed a team that looks to the future, including both MSPS and candidates.
My colleague Monica Lennon, who I enjoyed debating with during the positive leadership campaign which concluded at the weekend, will take on the key role of our economy and fair work spokesperson.
Rebuilding the economy and protecting
and creating jobs will be at the heart of our election campaign, with policies designed to get Scotland back to work.
Together, we will work hard to rebuild our party so that we have the opportunity to rebuild Scotland.
We must capture the spirit of Keir Hardie who founded our movement, of Donald Dewar who turned the dream of devolution into a reality, and Gordon Brown who led our nation’s fight against the scandal of child poverty.
I believe we can do that again, and the hard graft starts now.
As I start my first week in the job, I don’t underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead, and I will be honest about that.
We are behind in the polls. Changing leader does not fix things overnight.
This is a long-term project, which starts by making Scottish Labour relevant to people in Scotland once again.
Then we must show we are an effective, credible opposition and we can use that platform to build on, so that we become an effective, credible alternative government.
Scottish Labour will be a home for anyone who believes we should work together as a nation to recover from Covid.
For too long, politicians have presented binary choices – yes/ no; leave/remain.
But our country has been through a collective trauma over the past year. And by staying apart, we have come together like never before.
So I made it clear throughout the leadership campaign that we can’t come through this and go back to the old arguments.
We can’t return to fighting each other while our NHS loses out on funding, our children miss out on a world-class education, and our towns and cities watch on as jobs move overseas. Instead, we’ve got to create a better future for Scotland.
So unlike the SNP and Tories, Scottish Labour won’t focus on division; we will make the case for a ‘Covid Recovery Parliament’.
We won’t engage in the Conservatives’ playground politics while people are losing their lives and livelihoods.
Instead, we will put forward an NHS restart plan so that we never again have to choose between treating a virus or treating cancer.
We will set out a catch-up plan for our children because we won’t let a generation of young people go forgotten.
And we will set out a real vision for jobs – for now, and for the future. We will offer the politics of empathy, of hope, and of unity.
You don’t see enough of that in Scotland, and if the Labour Party is not going to deliver that, then I don’t know who else is.
So if you’re worried about your child’s education or mental health, a cancelled operation or cancer diagnosis, or the planet we’re leaving for our children and our grandchildren, we’re on your side.
The task ahead of us is tough, but I believe that by working together there is nothing we cannot achieve.
The Scottish Labour Party I lead will focus on what unites our country – not what divides it.
Anas Sarwar is Scottish Labour leader and an MSP for Glasgow
The Scottish people have not had the Labour Party they deserve for too long,
writes Anas Sarwar
Idon’t give a f*** about the past” is the angry growl coming out of Falkirk this week and you might be thinking, oh no, what’s Gordon Ramsay ranting about now?
In fact, these are the first words on the comeback album from Arab Strap. As Days Get Dark is released on Friday and it’s great to have the hilarious miserablists back. I’m assuming the home town is proud of Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton for when a pop duo call one of their songs Kebabylon, what’s not to like? Yes, the fierce and filthy Strap must be viewed as a positive, and especially after Ramsay’s blast.
Last week the celebrity chef cooked up a storm on his new TV show by describing Falkirk as a “s***hole”. The town council was deeply hurt and accused Ramsay of “vilifying the poor”. Bang goes his statue, I reckon.
What had the place done to deserve such slagging? Was it not, in a 2011 poll conducted by STV, voted Scotland’s most beautiful town? Indeed it was, and that was before the Kelpies came riding to the rescue of a visitor-attraction itinerary which probably needed some new additions after we’d all maxed out on the anti-thrillride known as the Falkirk Wheel.
I jest, for I love the Wheel just like I love the Strap, but maybe you whizz past Falkirk on an Intercity train and don’t give it much thought beyond the fact it’s in Scotland’s Middle Earth, Central Scotland’s most centralist bit, quite close to the joke-name towns of Pumphertson and Skinflats and even nearer, as the UFO flies, to the alien hotspot of Bonnybridge, though sadly there have been no sightings of the luminous Gillian Anderson.
Moffat and Middleton, to be fair, are not bowdlerising Bairns. In their six studio albums prior to the new one they did not edit their lives, if these were their lives, or the shenanigans therein. When plooks appeared, real and metaphorical, they confronted them in the mirror, including at least one lyric about the actual squeezing of spots.
They’ve sung, or spoken or slurred, of Falkirk’s “fickle disco tarts” and “big f***-off tellys”. Of paedos and Pringles and Irn-bru and economy cider and of “leaving our empties kicked behind a bush”. They haven’t beaten about the bush: “The room stinks of poppers, the bog’s full of bile… The sweat was p***ing off me… I kiss the cut on your lip, a souvenir from last night.” Arab Strap’s motto might well be the line which goes: “Sometimes there’s nothing sexier than knowing that you’re doomed.”
As aficionados of rubbish telly, you wonder what Moffat and Middleton have made of Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance, the show which has caused such offence. It’s a departure for him, but a wrong turning and a car-crash: a game show which moves too slowly and features contestants who are too dense for his semi-legendary impatience, constantly bubbling like a steam pudding on high heat.
Still, no one forced him to do Bank Balance which, for having the arrogance to stretch itself over a whole hour per edition, is already being talked about as a serious contender for the worstever example of shiny-floor TV. Regarding Falkirk, then, people in epicly rubbish game shows shouldn’t throw stones.
A quick skim over Ramsay’s biog
would suggest he owes nothing to no one or indeed no town. His young life was tough as the son of a violent alcoholic father with his mum coming off worst. Because his dad was always losing jobs those years were “hopelessly itinerant”.
Criss-crossing between Scotland and England, he’d attended 17 different schools by the age of 16. But how much of that was Falkirk’s fault? Indeed, it can hardly have been a constant in his upbringing, given how often he moved around. Maybe other “s***holes” were involved.
I get that Ramsay may harbour resentment from those early years. I get that his showbiz persona has been built round him being loud, abrasive and not caring who he offends. I get that his attack on Falkirk may have been off-the-cuff. But celebs like to do this sort of thing, don’t they? By sending up or putting down their home towns, by exaggerating the modest aspirations for their inhabitants or painting them as hell on Earth, they are imploring us: “Look at me, look at how far I’ve come. It’s a wonder I’m here talking to you about my new film/ show/album. It’s a miracle of survival instinct, never giving up, belief in one’s outrageous talent and… me!”
Not every comedian was bullied at school and resorted to humour to save his skin; it only seems that they all claim this. The greatest comedians – Monty Python – dreamed up a terrific sketch where a group of self-made bores tried to outdo each other’s poverty-stricken beginnings. Eric Idle says: “When I say house, ours was just a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin.” Then Graham Chapman sucks on his pipe and says: “We got evicted from our hole in the ground.”
Chat-show host Craig Ferguson has likened his estate in Cumbernauld to a row of Nazi machinegun turrets – “but much close together, with welcome mats”. Actor Gerald Butler was another who evoked war-time imagery when recalling his short-trousered days in Paisley: nipping outside to play he was lucky not to be “wounded or killed”.
Well, glad you both lived to tell the tale – you, too, Gordon. But what I’m happiest about is the comeback of Arab Strap, who on the new record reserve their ridicule for an ageing ladykiller: “Sometimes he wonders if he could have been on the telly – he really is that good.”