SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar has appealed to those who have voted against Labour in the past and who are considering voting SNP, Tory, LibDem or Green in the upcoming local elections, arguing that the party must “show them that we have changed.”
Addressing the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow on Friday, Sarwar acknowledged that the party’s recently unveiled new logo “doesn’t change the way a single person votes.”
“But changing our mindset and changing the culture of our party does,” Sarwar said.
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“It’s not enough that the Tories deserve to lose. It’s not enough that the SNP deserve to lose. We have to prove to the people of Scotland that we deserve to win.”
Referring to both May’s local elections and a future General Election, Sarwar appealed to SNP voters, arguing only Labour could remove the Tories from government.
Sarwar said: “I say directly to people who may not have voted for us in the last three General Elections – maybe you voted for the SNP to send the Tories a message.
“When the next election comes, if you want to get rid of the Tories, the only way – the only way – to do that is by voting Labour.”
However, The Herald reported on Friday that Sarwar was insistent that Scottish Labour would only put forward pro-Union candidates in the upcoming local elections.
Sarwar's message also came on the same day that the former Orange Order global leader was confirmed as a candidate for May's vote.
The Scottish Labour leader then appealed to Unionists who may have “held their nose and voted Tory”, saying: “The truth is that Boris Johnson and the Tories are a gift to the SNP. That’s what they are the biggest threat to the future of the United Kingdom.”
Sarwar pledged to tackle what he described as a “culture of defeatism” in the Labour Party, telling the conference: “Winning matters. We aren’t a debating society.”
A significant portion of Sarwar’s speech was devoted to the need to tackle prejudice in Scotland.
Describing his first political memory, Sarwar recalled finding a “strange-looking envelope” on his family’s doorstep when he was 12 years old.
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Sarwar said: “Inside was a picture mocked up of my mum, with two guns pointed to her head with the words in cut out letters that read ‘bang, bang, that's all it takes’. It was a message from a far-right group.
“That was because my father had the audacity to aspire to be Britain’s first Muslim MP and Scotland’s first ethnic minority MP.”
Arguing there is no “hierarchy of prejudice”, Sarwar continued: “We can’t leave the fight against Islamophobia to the Muslim community. We can’t leave the fight against antisemitism to the Jewish community. We can’t leave the fight against sexism to women. We can’t leave the fight against homophobia and transphobia to the LGBT-plus community. We can’t leave the fight against disability discrimination to people with disabilities. We can’t leave the fight against racism to our diverse minority communities. Conference, it must be a fight for all of us.”
Ahead of his conference address, Sarwar drew attention by claiming that he will “certainly” be the next first minister after the 2026 Holyrood election – a claim described by SNP MSP Siobhian Brown as “laughable.”
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