As the Prime Minister remains in office – and Anas Sarwar sets out new policies for the coming Holyrood election – Herald writer Brian Taylor asks what has changed.  Answer?  Everything and nothing. 

Two questions.  Can Sir Keir Starmer survive as Prime Minister?  Can Anas Sarwar recover from this tumultuous week to mount a credible election campaign? 

Talk to Labour insiders, as I have done, and many still seem faintly stunned by their Scottish leader’s challenge to the PM, his act of calculated desperation. 

One summed up the situation to me by saying: “Can you imagine Jack McConnell calling on Tony Blair to resign?  Impossible.” 

I could not envisage such a scenario for a range of reasons, including the disparate stature of Blair and Starmer.  Although I suspect that Jack McConnell wishes he had picked a few more fights with Downing Street to establish his own autonomous credentials. 

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To be clear, that is not to say that Anas Sarwar is, right now, in a stronger position than he was.  This week has been grim for Labour’s prospects in May. 

Voters tend to shun divided parties.  And Labour is now palpably divided.  Tense uncertainty over the future of their UK leader has been piled upon existing disquiet over taxation, benefits and political vacillation. 

Plus, of course, Lord Mandelson’s links with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  I took part in a wireless phone-in this week – and successive callers chided us to remember the victims at the core of this political dispute. 

And now Keir Starmer faces a further challenge over Lord Doyle’s ennoblement, after his association with a former Labour councillor convicted for indecent child image offences. 

The PM’s defence?  The former communications chief apparently “did not give a full account” of his links.  Ditto, we are told, with Mandelson when he was appointed ambassador to the USA. 

Ed Davey told the PM that to be gulled twice showed a “catastrophic lack of judgement”.  Indeed, the LibDem leader seemed to be adapting Oscar Wilde.  The importance of being honest. 

This hideous mess provides, to say the very least, a continuing challenge for the PM.  Right now, he appears decidedly ill-equipped, despite cheers, bogus or otherwise, from the Parliamentary Labour Party. 

But the challenge confronting Anas Sarwar is much greater.  He faces the voters in three months.  A time difference which Scottish Labour has sought, in vain, to impress upon their UK Government comrades. 

Therein lies the Sarwar motivation.  On the doorsteps, his team were encountering decidedly disgruntled voters.  Their theme?  Starmer stinks.  We are angry, we feel let down.  And we will reject Scottish Labour as a result. 

Hence, directly, Anas Sarwar’s earlier advice to the PM to stay in Downing Street and sort out his government’s problems.  Hence the internal pleading from MSPs for a period of peace, an end to the perpetual U-turns and blunders. 

According to insiders, the message was not getting through.  One said to me: “Westminster colleagues simply did not care enough about our problems at Holyrood.”  They were thinking longer term than May. 

The calculation was that Anas Sarwar had to distance himself from the PM and the UK Government to gain any traction in Scotland.  To get a hearing at all, he needed to sideline Starmer – and get the discourse back onto Holyrood issues, back onto the battle to be First Minister. 

Again according to insiders, he sounded out Westminster colleagues.  Explained his dilemma.  The response was mixed. 

Anas Sarwar faces the voters in three months (Image: Robert Perry)

Yes, he encountered discontent with the PM.  Scarcely a surprise.  But no sense of firm action.  One senior figure told me: “I could retire now if I had a pound for every time someone told me Keir should step down.”  But nothing came of it.

Potential challengers stayed offstage.  Wes Streeting was reckoned to be “on manoeuvres” but with an eye to the future, post the immediate crisis.  Angela Rayner needed to sort out her tax position first.

In essence, nothing concrete was happening.  One or two spoke of an insurrection against the PM – but only after the expected reverses in May.  By definition, too late for Mr Sarwar. 

Scottish Labour sources are adamant that Anas Sarwar did not speak out as an agreed proxy for a Westminster coup.  He was nobody’s puppet.

Rather, he felt the need to bring the simmering cataclysm to the boil, for his own and Scotland’s interests.

Be very clear.  This is not the scenario Anas Sarwar wanted.  After all, he is now seeking to end the career of a Prime Minister he lauded to the electorate just 18 months ago.  Scarcely ideal. 

But he believes it might, just, perhaps, enable the election to revert to Holyrood issues, to the record of the SNP, instead of being a referendum on Starmer – where rivals, including Reform, would be the gainers. 

He believes, further, that he can eventually prosper if he goes head to head with John Swinney.  Such as over the economic policies he set out at the end of this week. 

Labour believes it can depict the FM as weary and lacklustre.  By contrast, Mr Swinney insists he is energised for the coming contest. 

He constructed a political syllogism this week.  Anas Sarwar had confirmed that the UK Labour government was “absolutely useless” – and thus inimical to Scotland’s interests.  Conclusion?  Scotland needed the SNP to defend those interests.  QED.

In response, Anas Sarwar will repeat that his “first loyalty” is to his country, Scotland.  With that, he attempts to shrug off the quandary which confronts every leader of a Unionist party contesting the SNP.  Which is the need to glance over their shoulder at Westminster. 

Will the PM survive?  He might well be brought down by more from the Mandelson/Doyle controversies.  Or by the Gorton by-election.   

But, if he survives those, how could he campaign in Scotland for Sarwar?  Infrequently and with a fixed grin.  “Anas, eh?  What’s he like!”

And how about the Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander?  The co-chair of Labour’s Holyrood campaign.  Yes, he backed the PM – but his support was carefully calibrated, with an emphasis upon the need for change.  Insiders insist he can and will work closely with the Holyrood team. 

As I described it on telly this week, Anas Sarwar’s initiative was the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass in American football.  Last chance, risk all.  How often do they work?  One in ten, apparently.   

Brian Taylor is a former political editor for BBC Scotland and a columnist for The Herald. He cherishes his family, the theatre - and Dundee United FC. 

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