Labour’s first conference from government in 14 years might not be taking place against an ideal backdrop, with the Prime Minister and other ministers under scrutiny for accepting designer clobber and other goodies from party donors, but there is an unlikely glimmer of hope in the form of Anas Sarwar. Unlikely, that is, because Sarwar is leader of Scottish Labour and for almost a decade that great clunking juggernaut of electoral inevitability had sputtered to a halt and begun to rust. Reduced to just one seat north of the border and in a distant third place at Holyrood, the Scottish party had become an ominous lesson in how thoroughly Labour could be sidelined by a populist rival. There were times when serious Labour people wondered if the party would ever see majority government again.
That’s all changing now. After almost two decades of thundering victories at the ballot box and iron political discipline, the SNP is finally faltering. A spate of leadership changes, internal schisms over gender identity ideology, the failure to deliver another independence referendum, and the party’s lacklustre record running Scotland’s devolved public services conspired to render the SNP something it hasn’t been for a very long time: beatable. In July, that’s exactly what Labour did, winning a majority of Scottish constituencies and reducing the SNP to just nine seats — a loss of 39. Much of that is down to Sarwar, who took over the Scottish leadership in 2021.
As I pointed out back then, his strength was that he understood health to be a greater vulnerability for the SNP than education. Yes, the nationalists had a sin to answer for over plummeting outcomes in Scottish schools, but an even bigger scandal was the mismanagement of health, from chronically missed targets and downgraded services to staff shortages and a culture of cover-ups. Once leader, Sarwar set to work hammering Nicola Sturgeon and her successor Humza Yousaf, both former Scottish health secretaries, on their failures in the job. He has kept up the momentum against the latest SNP leader John Swinney, who as a long-term Holyrood finance minister was responsible for the allocation of the Scottish government’s budget.
Sarwar can’t take all the credit for cutting the nationalists down to size. The SNP has done more than its fair share of the sawing itself. And as Sarwar’s conference speech signalled, he intends to put the SNP through a repeat of 4 July in two years’ time when Scots go to the polls for the devolved elections. He told delegates:
The story of Labour’s revival is only half-written. For lots of you there was only one incompetent government to get rid of. But in Scotland we were stuck with two. So at the general election, we got rid of one incompetent government. And at 2026 we finish the job and get rid of the other one.
This is solid framing. It tells Scottish voters that booting out the Tories was only the butterfly stitch; if they want the wound to heal, they have to remove the SNP too. Sarwar is making the next Holyrood poll an unfinished business election. If your child’s education has suffered, if your mum’s still waiting on that hip operation, if you’re fed up paying higher taxes for worse services, the 2026 election is your opportunity to make the SNP pay the price. Things can and will get better but only if you turn out to finish the job.
Sarwar’s remarks spoke to the sense of frustration many Scots feel at the gap between the SNP’s rhetoric and its record of delivery. He told members in Liverpool: ‘Scotland is tired of being held back.’ This is more sound framing. The SNP peeled away so many traditional Labour voters by presenting itself as the authentic voice of left-of-centre politics in Scotland. It was, it sometimes seemed close to saying, the real Labour party. Yet the experience of SNP government has done little to measurably advance Scotland. Rather than a fresh way forward, breaking from a tired Scottish Labour that had forgotten its own values, two decades of nationalism have left Scotland stuck in a constitutional cul-de-sac. Time, resources and opportunities have been squandered. The SNP era has been a lost generation for Scotland.
Sarwar still has a job of work to do. His party needs to establish then maintain a lead over the SNP in Holyrood polling. It needs to put together a simple, memorable and above all plausible offer to SNP voters and other undecideds that will convince them to give Labour another chance. It needs to do this with no new money or obvious sources of savings. And he has to navigate his party and the country out of that cul-de-sac. Sarwar doesn’t have to get independence voters to love him. He just has to get them to decide that, secession being off the table and the SNP tired and directionless, they might as well give him a go. In this context, Starmer’s brief honeymoon might be a teachable moment from which Sarwar can learn. Don’t over-promise. Get your house in order. The rules and the public’s expectations are not the same thing.
Above all, understand that Scottish electors are in a cynical mood and with good reason. The SNP has let them down badly. There’s no point in Labour promising hope and change unless it has a plan to deliver them.
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