Keir Starmer gets bitten by his soon to be neutered Scottish poodle
Speymouth
I’m not going to lie, I never expected that in 2026 I’d have “Excitedly awaiting a press conference from Anas Sarwar” on my bingo card.
Due to the rapidly unfolding Mandelson scandal, in the space of 24 hours Keir Starmer has lost his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and his director of communications Tim Allan. Now even Anas Sarwar has emerged from under his rock and turned on Keir Starmer, which is a bit like getting bitten by your pet poodle. Sarwar has called on Starmer to stand down, saying the Mandelson affair has become an unwelcome distraction. Nepo-baby Sarwar was installed as Labour’s branch manager in Scotland by Starmer precisely because he was a tame lapdog who could be relied upon to do Starmer’s bidding, and he continued to do just that, defending the betrayals of Waspi women and Grangemouth workers, backing the abolition of the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners and the refusal to abolish the heinous two child cap on benefits, then pivoting when the inevitable U-turn came and rewriting history to claim he’d supported the abolition all along.
In the short press conference, which Sarwar predictably used to tell lies about the Scottish Government, he quickly got to the point and called on Starmer to stand down as leader of the Labour party, publicly acknowledging for the first time that Starmer is a massive electoral liability. The I’m not a nationalist I’m British Sarwar hypocritically wrapped himself in the Saltire, unconvincingly claiming to be speaking up for Scotland. Funny how he didn’t feel it was necessary to speak up for Scotland when Starmer was taking all the decisions that Sarwar now finds objectionable. It was only a few short days ago that Sarwar was calling Labour MPs “idiotic” for briefing against Starmer.
Sarwar was silent when Starmer appointed serial sleaze bag Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the US after Mandelson’s links to Epstein became public knowledge. He posed for a chummy photo with a man he called his old friend. Now he’s insisting he barely knew Mandelson. Even now Sarwar can’t bring himself to express sympathy for Epstein’s victims or acknowledge the disgraceful way in which Mandelson has behaved in public office for decades, enabled and protected by successive Labour prime ministers. Sarwar doesn’t want us to remember that he was fully in support of all of Starmer’s decisions just a day ago, he’s only speaking out now for purely opportunistic reasons as he tries desperately to limit the electoral humiliation which Labour looks set to face in Scotland in May’s Holyrood elections. Despite his claim that he’s speaking out in order to put Scotland’s interests first, it’s obvious to one and all that he’s putting the interests of the Labour party first, as the Labour party has always done.
Politically Starmer and Sarwar are conjoined twins, this is about political survival for Labour in Scotland. Sarwar wouldn’t be doing this if Labour were not facing a devastating loss in May’s elections, Labour’s internal polling in Scotland must be dire indeed. The fact Sarwar is calling for Starmer to go before that defeat rather than after it shows how bad it is likely to be. Sarwar is trying to save his own political neck by distancing himself from Starmer in order to ensure that he doesn’t carry the can for Labour’s probable heavy losses in May. But Sarwar is far too close to Starmer to try and distance himself from the unpopular Prime Minister at this late stage.
In the hours after Sarwar’s announcement, it looks as though his desperate gamble is not going to pay off. Senior Labour MPs, including almost the entire cabinet and former Scotland Secretary Ian Murray, are lining up to tell Sarwar he’s wrong. Starmer is very far from being out of the woods but’s no longer just Starmer’s jaiket that’s on a shoogly peg, if Sarwar cannot force Starmer’s resignation, his own position as Scottish branch manager is over. Sarwar has been isolated by the cabinet coming out in support of Starmer. If Starmer survives the week, Labour in Scotland will go into May’s elections fatally weakened with a discredited and wildly unpopular leader in Downing Street and a Scottish leader who has shot himself in the foot and who will be ousted in a matter of weeks. At this stage Sarwar appears to demonstrated his own lack of political judgement by acting before securing the necessary support. This speech is his Grand Old Duke of York moment only he doesn’t have ten thousand men. He probably doesn’t even have Jackie Baillie, who’s currently keeping very quiet. The Chief Political reporter for The Times posted on social media an hour after Sarwar’s press conference that no Scottish MP had come out in support of him, so far not even Brian Leishman, a fully paid up member of the awkward squad.
She reported: One senior figures says privately: “Anas is wrong. [It’s] opportunistic and with no plan.”
Another Scottish Labour source adds: “Anas does not have authority to speak on behalf of the Scottish party in this way. It’s a fucking shitshow.”
A third says: “Is this really going to help Anas’ chances of winning that much? It’s rearranging the cushions in a burning house.”
The big question now is who is out of a job first? Is it Sarwar or Starmer? Whatever way this pans out, it is a massive opportunity for the SNP and the Scottish Greens to position themselves as the only way to defeat the populist hard right Tory dregs of Reform. Either way, either Labour in Scotland or Labour at a UK level is going to be embroiled and distracted by a leadership crisis just as we approach the Holyrood elections.
Labour’s big selling point in the July 2024 Westminster general election was that a vote for Labour was a vote for change from the chaos and corruption of the Tories, Labour has dismally failed to deliver on that promise. The revolving door at 10 Downing Street is birling just as rapidly under Labour as it was under the Tories. Sarwar is right that Starmer has failed, his problem is that no one believes that he’d be any better. He’s as duplicitous and opportunistic as Starmer.
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