A FURIOUS Anas Sarwar accused a BBC journalist of “reading off a script” when asked if his failed call for Keir Starmer to resign “solidified” the view that Scottish Labour is a branch office.
Sarwar called for Starmer to stand down as Prime Minister on Monday prompting a backlash from his allies, while the UK Labour leader has clung on to his job.
The Scottish Labour leader made the call at a hastily arranged press conference, amid the furore around Starmer’s judgment appointing Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to the US despite his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
It emerged in the latest release of the Epstein Files that Mandelson appeared to have shared highly-sensitive government information with the disgraced financier when he was a Labour minister under Gordon Brown.
Mandelson is now under criminal investigation.
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In the fallout, questions were also raised around Starmer’s judgment appointing his former spin doctor Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords. The peer campaigned for convicted sex offender Sean Morton after he had been charged in 2017.
Doyle said he would not be taking the Labour whip on Tuesday. The same evening, Scottish Labour announced that MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy had the party whip removed and that an independent investigation had been launched into her continuing relationship with Morton.
At a press conference on Friday, The National pressed Sarwar on the fact that the pair had the whip removed on the same evening, and if he had been ordered to remove the whip from Duncan-Glancy by London. In response, he accused the reporter of reading from a script and denied that there was a link between the two.
And now, Sarwar used the same jibe to attack a BBC journalist when asked about his failed gambit to remove his Westminster boss.
Journalist Gary Robertson put it to Sarwar on the BBC Sunday Show that there had been “accusations in the past that Labour in London sees Scotland as a branch office” and that the “whole episode in the past week solidifies that”.
A furious Sarwar responded: “Gary come on, you’re reading off a script from weeks ago and months ago, I wouldn’t go down that route again.”
Robertson added that UK Labour don’t see the upcoming Holyrood elections as “vital”, which is why they didn’t back Sarwar’s call for Starmer to stand down.
“I would say something different, which is, I think the Westminster bubble as a whole, and I think you can see it from what happened on Monday, I think you can see it from the days that followed, the Westminster bubble will always think, what does it mean for Westminster?
“I'm seeing something really different.”
Asked if that included Scottish Labour MPs, Sarwar continued: “I'm talking about the commentariat. I'm talking about the broader what's the ups and downs of individual politicians in Westminster.
“I care about one place, my loyalty is to one place, my priority is to one place – that's my home, Scotland.
“If you look at the disaster that we've got in our country right now, Scotland, I cannot fathom the third decade of the SNP in power. I am not willing to sacrifice our schools, our hospitals, our towns, cities, villages, and islands.
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Recent polling has shown that voters are set to return a pro-independence majority to the Scottish Parliament following the election on May 7 2026.
When it was put to Sarwar that surveys had shown that the public did not agree with him, he said the “poll that matters is on May 7”.
Asked if, Scottish Labour doesn’t win the election, it would be his fault or Starmer’s, Sarwar responded: “I'm the one that's standing for election. I'm the one that's standing to be first minister.
“I'm the one I'm asking people to put their trust in. I'll be sitting at what we'll do differently here in Scotland, and I absolutely believe that we'll persuade people in Scotland, and we'll win that election for Scotland.”
In response to the interview, SNP depute leader Keith Brown said: “Anas Sarwar now agrees with the SNP that Keir Starmer is not fit to be Prime Minister and that Westminster does not work for Scotland.
“But people across Scotland will see Anas Sarwar’s change of heart for what it is – blatant opportunism for his own self-interest from a desperate man languishing in third place in the opinion polls.
“Sarwar has failed to stand up for Scotland once during the last 19 months – letting down our pensioners, WASPI women, and workers at Grangemouth and in the North Sea. Sarwar chose to remain silent again when Welsh Labour MSs accused the Prime Minister of 'rolling back' on devolution.
"He can pretend to be standing up for Scotland now, but it is as clear as day that he is only standing up for Anas Sarwar.
“He is, of course, right about one thing – Westminster does not work for Scotland. The chaos of the last week has shown exactly why Scotland needs, and deserves, a fresh start with independence and it is only by voting for the SNP in May that this can be achieved.”
When pressed on U-turns on inheritance tax, winter fuel payments and Waspi women by the UK Labour Government, Sarwar said it was another example of where his party had taken a different position than those in Westminster.
He said that it was the “wrong decision” for UK ministers to deny compensation to Waspi women and that a “different approach” should have been taken.
When asked about his previous promise to save jobs at the Grangemouth oil refinery, Sarwar deflected and blamed the SNP, Tories, and then INEOS boss Jim Ratcliffe.
Billionaire Ratcliffe hit the headlines last week after claiming that the UK had been “colonised” by migrants. He later apologised after a furious backlash.
When it was put to Sarwar that he had said Labour would step in to save jobs at the refinery before it shut, the Scottish Labour leader replied: “I think you've seen this week, the economic vandalism as well as the literal stupidity of the acts of Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
“This is a man that has leeched off the state, who has decimated many of our industries, who's gone abroad himself to avoid paying taxes, and then wants to try and make judgments on what's right in Scotland and the rest of the UK.”
