It’s not just in Westminster that Labour people are smarting at the party’s sub-optimal opening months in government – there is concern and disappointment in Scotland, too. Having delivered 37 MPs in July (up from just one at the previous general election), Anas Sarwar and his team were and are expecting the favour to be returned by Keir Starmer.
With the 2026 Scottish election now at the forefront of their minds, they were promised a popular UK government would help them cross the line in first place, finally removing the SNP from office. That was the quid pro quo for all the hard work of the past few years.
There are no smiles on shadow cabinet faces at the moment. “It’s all been a bit baffling,” says one member. “We were told it was all in hand, that they’d hit the ground running. And now this.” This, of course, being “freebiegate” and rows over adviser pay, and an unpopular decision to cut winter fuel payments, and the departure of No 10 chief of staff Sue Gray, and Starmer’s personal poll ratings cratering. It has been messy, underwhelming and not at all needed. “It’s early days and there’s obviously time to get things right, but they’d better get on with it,” another senior Scottish Labour figure told me.
Whatever happens, there will be no cruise to victory for Scottish Labour. Despite a dismal few years for the SNP, the parties remain neck and neck in the polls. The Nats still able to rely on a hardcore of voters who value independence above all else. The Scottish electorate is sophisticated, and thinks differently about elections to Westminster than it does about those for Holyrood. And the Scottish Parliament’s partly proportional voting system ensures that even if Labour wins a swathe of new seats, SNP numbers are likely to be buoyed by the list system.
At present it appears as if the next Scottish Parliament will be a complex proposition. Pollsters currently believe that Reform could win as many as 10 seats, and that Alex Salmond’s Alba could take several too. All this will make it harder for a minority Labour government to put together a sustainable coalition – it certainly won’t want to make any deals with Nigel Farage.
With his Scottish colleagues aggrieved, Starmer travelled north of the border yesterday evening to bolster the mood. The Prime Minister attended an event at the Royal Bank of Scotland HQ with senior Labour figures and top businesspeople, and spent the evening working the room and smoothing ruffled feathers. Sarwar has spent many hours wooing business and promising a Scottish Labour government will focus relentlessly on growth and wealth creation. But those same people are worried about the early direction of Labour at Westminster, particularly the planned tax rises in the Budget and the expansion of workers’ rights.
Earlier today, the PM chaired the first meeting of the new Council of the Nations and Regions, which was attended by the leaders of the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as England’s metro mayors. A major part of Labour’s proposition is that Westminster and Holyrood will work more smoothly together than has been the case over the past decade, particularly if the party is in power on both sides of the border.
It’s undoubtedly true that Starmer takes Scotland more seriously than any PM since Gordon Brown. Senior Labour people are delighted to once again have a substantial presence in a nation that historically was the party’s heartland. Another sign of this was a speech by Peter Mandelson in Edinburgh yesterday evening for Reform Scotland, the think tank of which I am director.
This was our annual lecture, and Mandelson delivered a serious, heavyweight economic message that was targeted at Starmer and Reeves ahead of the Budget. It was the kind of speech that would usually be given in London – certainly at the height of the SNP’s hegemony, Edinburgh wouldn’t have been considered.
But Mandelson was in bullish form, confidently predicting that voters are done with the SNP and will elect Sarwar as first minister in 2026. As I say, it might not be as straightforward as that, but party grandees remain confident.
It was clear that this architect of New Labour, also a former first secretary of state and European commissioner, is frustrated by the performance of the government so far. He told the audience that “the planning that should have been done, which people thought was being done, was not done as thoroughly as it should have been. Insofar as it was done, it remained in somebody’s head without being properly communicated to everyone else.” The name Sue Gray was not used, but it didn’t have to be.
Given the success of New Labour’s first 100 days (although it’s worth remembering that period also included a row over benefit cuts for single mothers and the Bernie Ecclestone scandal), there was a template there to be followed. That’s what really baffles Anas Sarwar and his team, as much as it does people like Mandelson.
Starmer has asked for patience as he attempts to put Britain right. But in today’s frenetic media and social media climate, and among a modern, polarised electorate that displays little tribal loyalty to any one party, patience is a hard virtue to find. Scottish Labour, in particular, cannot afford to wait much longer for the green shoots of achievement to start showing through.
[See also: What Scotland can learn from Andy Burnham]
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