Anas Sarwar went over the top and looked back to find his Westminster colleagues were still sitting in the trenches, doom-scrolling through X, but Andy Maciver argues that he was right to call for Keir Starmer to go.

First thing’s first: Anas Sarwar did the right thing, on Monday afternoon, when he called for Sir Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister. 

In his first six-or-so months in government, the performance (indeed, the very existence) of the Labour UK Government has taken this First Minister-in-waiting and turned him into an also-ran.

In the year since, Labour at Westminster has put Labour in Scotland in position to finish in third place behind Reform, with its worst result ever, and inevitably resulting in the resignation of Mr Sarwar.

The fortunes of Scottish Labour, like all Scottish arms of UK parties, are joined at the hip with those of the parent party at Westminster. Or, more accurately, Scottish Labour’s fortunes are at the mercy of UK Labour’s performance. And that performance has been woeful beyond what anyone could possibly have predicted.

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So, Mr Sarwar was right. As things stood, on Monday, he had zero chance of being First Minister, and faced the end of his own political career in May. He had nothing to lose.

He could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, I suppose. Had other Starmer-sceptics had the guts of Mr Sarwar, and followed him, then Sir Keir mightn’t have seen out the day. As it was, though, Mr Sarwar went over the top and looked back to find his Westminster colleagues were still sitting in the trenches, doom-scrolling through X.

The more likely outcome was the one we have; that the pretenders to the throne don’t fancy taking the job three months before a shellacking at the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections, and will instead move on the Prime Minister immediately thereafter.

So, Mr Sarwar has a mightily awkward few months coming up, internally at least. Most of his Westminster MPs have decided their bread is buttered in London, and came out strongly in support of the Prime Minister.

However, that emphatically does not mean that Mr Sarwar made a tactical or strategic error on Monday. He did not. Indeed, he made the right call both tactically for his upcoming election, and strategically for the future fortunes of his party in Scotland.

Let’s think tactically. There are four artefacts of public opinion which are so omnipresent that they demand an inarguable conclusion. 

The first is that Sir Keir is astonishingly unpopular in Scotland. He is less popular in Scotland than Mr Sarwar, of course. He is also less popular than Nigel Farage. He is less popular even than Donald Trump.

The second is that the SNP government is also unpopular, with an approval rating of only around 25 percent. The third is that the SNP retains double the popularity of any other party, at around 35 percent. And the fourth is that only around one-in-20 people think Labour ‘stands up for Scotland’, compared to six times that who think the same of the SNP.

The voters are saying - yelling, in fact - that they dislike the SNP but they’ll vote for them anyway because they absolutely despise everyone else and they, at least, think the SNP will do the right thing by Scotland.

The inarguable conclusion is that the UK Government is a ball and chain around the feet of Mr Sarwar, and attempting to create distance by any means necessary can only be good for his prospects in May. Mr Sarwar has put himself front and centre of a national issue for the purpose of ‘standing up for Scotland’; the key attribute which has kept the SNP in power for two decades and which will see them over the quarter-century mark. Many more people in Scotland will know the name Anas Sarwar today than did on Monday morning, and for the vast majority of those people it will be a positive name association.

It was always a stretch to expect it to result in a Scottish Labour victory (although that only needs something like a five per cent swing away from the SNP and towards Labour) but it may well result in a less brutal defeat.

It may give him a percent or two. It may be enough to grab a few extra marginal constituencies or that final list seat in a few regions. It may sneak him into second place ahead of Reform, and mean that he doesn’t have to endure a reduction in his seat numbers at Holyrood. It may well even save him his job. Small margins matter.

More importantly, though, Monday’s intervention was the right decision strategically, for his own future and for the future of his party in Scotland.

It is not often that the leader of the Scottish arm of a UK party does something genuinely bold, genuinely brave; something which makes not only the Scottish media but the UK media and even some of the global media stop and tune in. The only similarity I can draw on was in 2011, when Murdo Fraser announced that should he win the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives, he would immediately abolish it and start a new Scottish centre-right party. 

Mr Sarwar’s announcement on Monday was bigger than that, and the stakes were higher. Now he must follow through.

Following through means only one thing. Mr Sarwar should announce, on May 8th, that he will leave the Labour Party and start a new social democratic party; a party which supports remaining in the UK, but has no links to the Labour Party at Westminster and stands only for election to the Scottish Parliament.

Not everyone will come with him. The vast majority of his Westminster colleagues, almost by definition, will disagree. Many of his MSPs will rebel, too. For tribal Labour loyalists, this will be an emotional wrench. 

But there is no, absolutely no, coherent argument for the primary party of the unionist left to remain tethered to its sister party at Westminster. 

Yes, a unified party allows Scottish Labour to ride Westminster waves like the anti-Tory one in 2024, but to what end?. What is the point in the Scottish Labour Party if it cannot win an election in the Scottish Parliament?

Bravo Anas Sarwar. You may lose this battle, my friend, but it will be a noble defeat which can pave the way to win a war.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast

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