At the last Labour conference before the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour is enjoying the limelight. With less than eight months to go until the Scottish parliament election, the party is trying to prove that – despite its rather dire polling – it can win. But in an increasingly fractured political world, Labour may have to rely on another political party to prop itself up if it is to have any hope of governing in Scotland. And given Nigel Farage’s tartan outfit is doing pretty well north of the border, a Labour-Reform pact – informal or not – could be one solution. But would Anas Sarwar do a deal with Reform?
Responding to Politico’s Andrew McDonald in Liverpool about whether he was prepared to rule out that his party would do any deal with Reform, Sarwar responded promptly: ‘Yes.’ He went on:
Nigel Farage thinks that I’m someone that’s not loyal to my country. He wants to question my identity. He probably would question whether I even put my country – Scotland – first. That’s what they did in the by- election. They said that my priority would be to prioritise Pakistan more than it would be to prioritise Scotland. I was born in Scotland. My kids are brought up in Scotland. I’m as Scottish as anybody else. I’ll always obviously be more Scottish than Nigel Farage will ever be. But I’ll tell you what, I am more representative of British values as well than Nigel Farage will ever be. And that’s why Scotland rejected him. Scotland rejected next year and I’m confident that the UK will reject him come the next general election as well.
Punchy stuff!
He went on to back Sir Keir Starmer’s allegation that Farage’s policy to scrap indefinite leave to remain was racist. Sarwar noted:
We’ve got to call things out for what they are and we’re going to be and we’ve got to be. Well, yes, I mean, talking about mass deporting people who have made their life And and their livelihoods and their homes here is utterly ridiculous. Do we need to have controls on migration? Absolutely. Do we need to limit and stop illegal migration? Absolutely. But if we’re suggesting that 432,000 of our fellow citizens who are contributing to our economy should somehow be bundled into planes and deported to other parts of the world, then that is not a serious approach and someone who just wants to divide us. And I think I call Nigel Farage yesterday a pathetic, poisonous little man. I think I’m being kind, to be honest.
Shots fired! But when quizzed on his own party policy put forward by Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary – which has been labelled a deportation policy by some – Sarwar was clear that this was, er, a different approach.
I think we’ve got to be really clear about what Nigel Farage is proposing and what a UK Labour government is trying to do to fix our immigration system. What Nigel Farage is proposing is a mass deportation scheme that is designed to break up communities, break up families and actually, he knows won’t work, but is deliberately using it as a way of, again, creating that difference and trying to pit community against community. On the other hand, what a UK Labour government is trying to do is to fix a broken immigration system.
‘Trying’ is the key word there, eh?
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