Well, well, well. It’s not been a great start to the year for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party in Westminster and it seems the Scottish lot north of the border are having a tough time of it too.
Leader Anas Sarwar has seen his popularity fall towards the end of 2024 while his SNP rival John Swinney experienced a slight bounce at the end of 2024. Meanwhile combined poll predictions suggest that while the reds are likely to make gains in the 2026 Holyrood election, they have their work cut out if they want to become the party of government. And now questions are being raised about just how well operations are going behind the scenes – after the party’s policy team tonight sent a briefing of Scottish Labour’s lines for next week to, er, all Holyrood’s parliamentary staffers. What a start to the weekend, eh?
Screenshots of the briefing began circulating on Twitter this evening after nationalist staffers noticed the rather unexpected email appear in their inbox. The note continues a pdf attachment with lines on everything from the the NHS to Waspi women to major infrastructure projects. Some Nats have even posted details of Labour’s stance on the Scottish government’s pledge to scrap the controversial two child benefit cap – which features a rather lot of finger pointing at the SNP. The email also requests, rather ironically, that viewers ‘do not share the document more widely’. Too late for that…
One Labour insider remarked to Mr S that there is growing frustration about the organisation of the Scottish group while nationalist staff have been quick to mock the mistake online. One aide slammed it as a ‘riddy’ (translation: embarrassment) while SNP MSP Emma Roddick suggested the Nats should ‘use the lines to create bingo cards’. Perhaps not the best use of an elected representatives’ time – but judging by how public services are faring north of the border, it doesn’t seem like the Scottish government are up to a whole lot these days themselves…
For their part, Scottish Labour told Steerpike:
Given the SNP have spent the week with their fingers in their ears ignoring all the evidence that they are failing Scots, we thought some weekend reading material could help them get a little bit more in touch with reality.
Ouch.
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