Failing Labour ‘now in fight for survival’
Warning from Sarwar as he wins leadership battle
THE new leader of Scottish Labour has warned the party is ‘fighting for survival’ after failing voters.
Anas Sarwar yesterday apologised to Scots as he admitted his party must now get ‘off our knees’ in a bid to inspire a revival north of the Border.
Mr Sarwar held off rival Monica Lennon to secure 57 per cent of the vote in the race to replace former Scottish party leader Richard Leonard. Speaking after his victory on Saturday, he warned that Labour has a ‘mountain to climb’ to win back the trust of voters after plummeting to third place in the 2016 Holyrood election.
Only ten weeks out from the next Scottish parliament election, Labour remains behind the SNP and the Tories. Mr Sarwar said that he hopes to get his party back to winning ways but would not claim to be in line to be the next First Minister.
On Times Radio, he said: ‘You’ve had political leaders come on before and think they’ve got to act macho and spread their shoulders and claim that we’re on the cusp of a Labour government or a Labour First Minister.
‘I’m not going to do that, I’m going to be honest and say we’re in a really bad place.’
He added: ‘The most recent poll has us on 14 per cent. I think we’re fighting for our survival. I think we’re fighting for relevance in Scotland. I think we’re fighting to be a credible opposition.
‘I hope that having got ourselves back on the pitch and off our knees we can build the five years that follow to make ourselves not just a credible opposition, but a credible alternative so we can have a Labour government in the future.’
He told the BBC’s The Sunday Show that his party had spent more time looking ‘inward rather than outward’ in recent years.
‘We haven’t been on the pitch,’ he said. ‘Forget about doing the wrong moves on the pitch, playing the wrong passes or having one misplaced shot, we haven’t been on the pitch in recent times and that is not acceptable.
‘We looked like we were talking about the past rather than focusing on the future.
‘We haven’t been good enough and that’s why I’m going to work day and night to change that. I’m going to work day and night to get the Labour Party back on the pitch.
‘I’m going to work day and night for us to survive as a movement, be relevant to the lives of people in Scotland, be a credible opposition and one day get the Labour Party back to where it belongs – being a party of government.’
Mr Sarwar said he wanted to bring ‘hope and change’ back to Scottish politics, adding that, while the ‘Twittersphere’ may be talking about independence, the average Scot is not.
‘What people in their homes right now care about is keeping themselves safe, when they’re going to get a vaccine, their child’s education or mental health, a cancelled operation or not getting their cancer diagnosis if they missed out on a screening programme, protecting our planet for future generations... whether they’re going to get back to work after this pandemic is over,’ he said.
‘These are the big issues that people are worried about right now at home and they are the issues we as a political establishment have got to talk about.’
Mr Sarwar has made history by becoming the first Muslim to lead a political party in the UK.
He secured 57 per cent of his party’s backing, compared with the 42 per cent who voted for his rival Miss Lennon.
Mr Leonard resigned as Scottish Labour leader in January, saying that speculation around his leadership had become a ‘distraction’.
‘We are fighting for relevance’