Cut tax, build houses and ditch aggressive net-zero drive: How Labour can recover after week of mayhem
Scottish Labour is not going to win the Holyrood election, but Anas Sarwar might as well throw the kitchen sink at the growth agenda
A new dawn for Scottish Labour, a tactical necessity or an ill-conceived, career-ending blunder? Take your pick of the punditry which followed Anas Sarwar’s abandonment of his “friend” Sir Keir Starmer.
The pollsters will have been out in force to see whether Mr Sarwar’s hastily arranged press conference to demand the Prime Minister’s resignation has made any difference to Scottish Labour’s flagging campaign, but it would be surprising if it did.
The average voter doesn’t pore over this stuff and they don’t give a hoot about First Minister’s Questions, but they pick up disharmony and the continued chaos at the heart of the UK Government, now with the messy sacking of top civil servant Sir Chris Wormald, suggesting not decisiveness but increasing desperation.
Major ‘reset’ looms
All week, the political headlines have been dominated by the Downing Street soap opera; the end of Morgan McSweeney, the Sarwar press conference, bullying accusations against Wormald’s replacement Antonia Romeo, the unsheathing of knives for Wes Streeting’s back, Angela Rayner’s apparent rebellion over tax hikes facing pubs, and so it will go on into the weekend.
It’s only a matter of time before a major “reset” speech is announced, probably with some rehashed initiative splurging yet more taxpayers’ money on something no one will notice, certainly not in time for the May showdowns here and in Wales.
Despite the mayhem, Mr Sarwar was said to be in a relaxed mood after his big move, and there is a fair amount of truth in his assessment that the election campaign was going so badly because of the Westminster meltdown that something significant needed to be done, whether it brought about the Prime Minister’s downfall or not.
The resignation call was the equivalent of sending the goalkeeper into the opposition six-yard box for the late injury time corner, and the subsequent events − notably Scotland Secretary’s Douglas Alexander’s insistence he could continue to head the Scottish election effort while loyally serving Still Here Keir – smacked of the scramble back to defence after the goal attempt turned into a counter attack.
The lamest of ducks?
Of course it could all be over in a fortnight if the Gorton and Denton by-election goes as badly for Labour as the bookies believe, with the Green candidate Hannah Spencer, a plumber and local councillor, tipped for victory after being endorsed by the Muslim Vote organisation in a constituency which is 30 per cent Muslim. From a rare absolute majority in 2024, if Labour finish third behind Reform, a distinct possibility, either the Prime Minister’s tea will be oot, or he will hobble on as the lamest of ducks only because the alternatives are untenable.
But having proved he has no influence over events in Westminster, Mr Sarwar has no choice but to get on with it. If the plan was at least to demonstrate a break from London and be free to set a distinctive policy agenda – and he only secured the repeated endorsement of the Greenock-based transport tycoons Sandy and James Easdale on the basis of presenting a new Scottish programme − he needs to deliver it and deliver it quickly to give voters the chance to notice. If it creates a genuine row, all the better, because an “after you, Claude, before you, Cecil” play fight won’t cut it.
So what’s it to be? He appears to have the backing of the majority of the Scottish party, with one figure claiming it showed guts, but hoping that an “emboldened” leader will come up with a plan to attract public attention.
Boost the economy
Whether the public is in a mood to listen is another thing, but it comes down to the brass tacks of putting money in people’s pockets and boosting the economy. He could, for example, promise to realign Scottish income tax levels with the UK, which will raise pay of ordinary workers like teachers, police officers and nurses.
On the housing crisis, he could relax onerous and expensive environmental construction regulations for affordable homes, slash the infrastructure levies on housebuilders, and promise to accelerate road and rail investment. Anything which disincentivises house building must go, and that includes the threat of rent controls.
He can call for the dumping of the new National Planning Framework for one which respects communities, but sets up investment zones with permitted development rights to cut through planning red tape.
But as argued here before, the big signal would be to disassociate himself from the aggressive Ed Miliband net-zero programme which threatens jobs in the North East, is wrecking the countryside, but above all else is costing people hundreds of pounds in inflated energy bills while boosting the big energy firms’ balance sheets.
It also has the advantage of being a clear challenge to the SNP, whose dogmatic approach to climate change is even worse than the Miliband programme with its 1970s-style blanket opposition to nuclear energy.
Throw the kitchen sink
He’s not going to win, so he might as well throw the kitchen sink at the growth agenda and dress it up with a red rosette. But one thing Mr Sarwar has already achieved, however, is to prove once and for all that the term “friend” has a different meaning for cynical politicians than the rest of us.
I once had a colleague whose friends were known as the pall bearers because you only needed six of them, but for Mr Sarwar and others like him, friends aren’t people to whom you are genuinely close, just those you can associate yourself with to advance your ends, to be dumped when inconvenient or embarrassing.
The lesson, surely, is that no one in politics has friends, only close associates, until they stand down. And then they’ll know who the real ones are.
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