Labour leader Sarwar: ‘Keir knows I’m boss in Scotland’
Anas Sarwar doesn’t miss a beat when he is asked about the influence that the Labour party south of the border has in Scotland.
The Scottish Labour leader – who took over as head of the party just six weeks ago - was pictured giving relaxed, covidfriendly elbow bumps to Westminster leader Keir Starmer whenthewestminsterlabour leader came to Scotland to support Mr Sarwar’s campaign last week.
“I speak to Keir, but both he knows and the UK party more widely knows – and the party in Scotland knows - that I lead the Scottish Labour Party,” Mr Sarwar says. "I’m in charge of the Scottish Labour Party. I shape our decisions for the Scottish party, I shape our election, I shape our policies, I shape our campaigns in partnership with our members in Scotland.
"So, whilst I have conversations with him, I’m the boss.”
With the Scottish Labour
manifesto due to be launched today,mr Sarwar’s Scottish campaign has so far been firmly rooted in the idea of unity – setting his party apart from what he says is a distracting argument about independence. He has published a “national recovery plan”, which focuses heavily on Scotland uniting to prioritise postcovid recovery.
He says: “I don't think independence is inevitable, I don't think a referendum is inevitable, I think we can choose something different. And I think we can choose to focus over the next five years on our
national recovery, and how we come back to this pandemic as a stronger and better nation.”
His united relationship with Mr Starmer appears to be very different to that between Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who as well as appearing to get the Scottish leader’s name wrong at a Prime Ministers’ Questions last month, appeared not to keep Mr Ross informed of his involvement - or lack thereof – in the Scottish election campaign.
"I'm not sure if he is going to come up. I previously expected
him to come up,” Mr Ross told journalists, before later confirming that the Prime Minister would not venture north during this campaign.
It is not the only respect in which Mr Sarwar differs from Mr Ross. Early on in the campaign, he admitted he had never had a conversation with the MP, despite the Scottish Tory leader’s repeated suggestions that pro-union parties should work together to fight independence. He dismisses the idea of forming a Better Together-style coalition in the event of a second independence referendum – insisting
he wants to “do something different”. He says: “In terms of the make-up of any kind of campaign on another referendum, I don't think that's a consideration. I think we should be focusing on our national recovery, not not on campaigns around binary choices that are designed to pull our country apart rather than pull people together.”
He adds: “I think if we look at what the parliament was created for, it was designed to encourage parties to work together in the national interest, it was designed to not to have too much power for one
political party. And so, I think the ideal outcome coming through this election would be for no party to have an overall majority and for, for Labour to be in a stronger position that is pulling the government and the First Minister towards the people's priorities and not let them take their eye off the ball again."
Although he has plenty to say about the SNP’S performance in areas such as drugs deaths, poverty rates, education and policing, he is uncritical when it comes to her handling of the coronavirus crisis. He does, however, point to
widely condemned failings in the discharge of elderly people from hospitals into care homes without a negative coronavirus testasthegovernment’sbiggest mistake.
He says: "Nicola has communicated better than Boris Johnson in this pandemic. She has intended to lead from the front in this pandemic. There have been difficult decisions, and I'm not going to pretend they would have been easy decisions. But I think what happened in care homes has been the biggest mistake.”