Anas Sarwar has warned the Prime Minister that he will scupper Labour’s chances of defeating the SNP at Holyrood unless the UK Government can change the mood north of the border.
The Scottish Labour leader said that his party must use its annual conference in Liverpool, which started on Sunday, to “project that change has begun” with a more upbeat message.
In an interview with The Times, he praised Sir Keir Starmer for avoiding the temptation “to paper over cracks and to pretend everything is rosy in the world” while instead focusing on “fixing the foundations” and “getting the fundamentals right”.
However, with the 2026 Holyrood election just 19 months away, Mr Sarwar said that Labour needed to show that meaningful change was not just a “slow painful process” but one felt “in the here and now”. It was also about creating meaningful change and “building something better and stronger”.
The prime minister’s popularity ratings have plummeted recently after he spent his first weeks in Downing Street projecting a downbeat message about the state of the country and its finances.
This has included unpopular policy decisions including scrapping the universal winter fuel payment for older people. The impact has spread north of the border with Labour’s lead over the SNP vanishing in polls.
Click here to read the full interview with Anas Sarwar.