Sarwar refuses to back Starmer as Burnham continues to hint at leadership bid
Scottish leader fails to back Prime Minister as poll shows Starmer is less popular than Donald Trump north of the Border
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has refused to back Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer yesterday as Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham continues to hint at a potential future bid for the top job.
Mr Sarwar – who has been an outspoken ally of Sir Keir since he took over as leader – refused to say if he has full confidence in him.
“He has got a really difficult job, we have made significant progress in the last year,” he said.
“If I’ve got one single biggest criticism of a UK Labour Government, it is there have been huge successes, but very few people have been told about them or know about them.”
The Scottish Labour leader cited that mortgage costs had come down in the past 12 months, while wages have increased, but he said the “average person doesn’t know” that.
Further pushed on whether he has full confidence in the Prime Minister, the Scottish Labour leader said: “I think to be even talking in those terms is frankly ridiculous.
“This is a Prime Minister who won a historic victory, removed the Tories from office, won a huge landslide, and now he has to get on with the day job.”
With an election looming in Scotland next May, Mr Sarwar added that the person who has to be removed from their job is First Minister John Swinney.
Asked if Sir Keir is the right person to be in Downing Street during that election, Mr Sarwar dodged the question, instead saying: “I think John Swinney is the worst person to be in Bute House and we need someone new in Bute House and that will come at the election in May.”
Pressed further on whether Sir Keir is the right man to be in the top job, Mr Sarwar said: “He is the Prime Minister doing a really important job and he’s got to continue to do that job to improve the country.”
Starmer less popular than Trump
The comments came as a new Ipsos poll released on Thursday showed Sir Keir to be the most unpopular leader in Scotland, with a net favourability rating of minus 47 per cent – worse than US President Donald Trump by one percentage point.
The Ipsos Scotland poll of 1,050 Scots, which took place between September 12 and 22, found the Prime Minister’s net favourability rating dropped to minus 47 per cent, a 7.5-point fall since February. The US president’s rating sat at minus 46 per cent.
A defiant Sir Keir insisted he will "lead from the front" into the next general election, as he took the fight to "cowardly" Reform UK.
He dismissed "the personal ambitions" of his potential future leadership challenger Andy Burnham , and appeared to attack the Greater Manchester Mayor's economic agenda by drawing parallels with Liz Truss.
The Labour leader branded the Conservative Party "basically dead", while urging "reasonable,tolerant, decent" voters to reject the "politics of grievance" promoted by Nigel Farage's poll-topping Reform.
Speaking to regional broadcasters before the party's annual conference in Liverpool this weekend, Sir Keir said his political project was a "10-year" endeavour and defended the government's record a year into office in a series of interviews.
He said he was "proud" of what ministers had achieved since their landslide general election victory last summer and refused to "get drawn into" reports of plots against him.
Interventions seen as pitch for leadership bid
It comes after a series of headline-grabbing interventions by Mr Burnham, including policy proposals such as a 50p top rate of income tax and a tax cut for lower earners - which have been widely seen as a pitch for a future leadership bid.
Speaking to BBC North West, Sir Keir said: "I'm not going to get drawn in to commenting on the personal ambitions of the mayor, but I do want to be really clear about our fiscal rules because economic stability is the foundation stone of this Government.
"It was three years this week ago that we had the Liz Truss experiment where she abandoned fiscal rules, in her case for tax cuts, and the result was a disaster for working people.
"The same would be true if you abandoned fiscal rules in favour of spending. And I'm not prepared to ever have that inflicted on working people again."
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He told ITV Anglia he had defied those who doubted he could change the Labour Party , "they said, you can't win an election in 2024 - I said yes we can, and we did with a landslide victory.
"Now people (who) are saying to me you can't change the country (are) getting the same answer. We can and we will."
Asked whether he was to blame for a sense among some that Labour was a sinking ship, Sir Keir told ITV Meridian: "Let me take a different view, because in the first year of a Labour Government, we've delivered five million extra NHS appointments.
"We had an ambition for two million. We've done five million.
"We just rolled out childcare. This is from nine months to four years: very good for parents and carers who can get back to work."
Mr Burnham said MPs had privately urged him to mount a challenge to Sir Keir.
The former New Labour minister and ex-MP for Leigh in the North West accused Downing Street of creating a "climate of fear" as he set out his vision for how to "turn the country around" in a string of interviews which fuelled speculation he could be seeking a return to Westminster.
He said returning to "the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change" was an unattractive prospect but he was ready to "work with anybody who wants to... put in place a plan to turn the country around".
Senior party figures urged Mr Burnham to tone down his leadership ambitions ahead of the party's conference, where the government will seek to reset following a challenging few months.
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