Sarwar looks isolated after rounding on Starmer to save Scottish Labour’s election campaign

Anas Sarwar professed his love for Keir Starmer, then suggested he was a danger to Scotland and dreadful at his job.

“I have a genuine friendship” with the PM, Sarwar said, and it caused him “personal hurt and pain” to knife him in the front, but really, the 2024 general election winner had to go. “They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.

“Have there been good things? Of course, there have been many of them, but no one knows them and no one can hear them because they're being drowned out – that's why it cannot continue.”

Five days before Valentine’s Day, it was less a message of undying affection and more a case of, ‘it’s not me, it’s you’.

If Sarwar expected to keep his share of the friend group, he may have another think coming. Because tonight cabinet ministers have rallied round the embattled PM, including those who are figureheads within Scottish Labour.

Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander has distanced himself from Sarwar and said Starmer has his support. Media minister Ian Murray has said he was “deeply disappointed” and “Anas is wrong here”.

His own MSPs group is largely silent. So are the Scottish Labour MPs. Monica Lennon – who so nearly became Scottish Labour leader herself last time round – and Brian Leishman have stuck their necks out and backed Sarwar.

But after a press conference in which he was joined by a scattering of key figures – depute leader Jackie Baillie, long-term ally Neil Bibby, Hamilton hero Davy Russell – Sarwar tonight appears an isolated man.

And the question becomes not only one of whether the prime minister can hang on, and for how long, but of whether Sarwar will have to go first.

Speaking privately, senior Scottish Labour insiders say they were not consulted prior to Sarwar’s statement, which came after the party refused a number of media requests to speak about the Mandelson scandal which has threatened Starmer’s premiership. A quick canvas of Scottish ministers finds all say they were in the dark.

In hushed conversations, some party sources questioned who the Glasgow MSP had been talking to before calling the media to Glasgow’s Trades House for a short and intense press conference, and exactly what their agenda is.

No such hushed tones for Starmer’s hauners, with everyone from Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting to Catherine Smith, the Advocate General for Scotland and daughter of former Labour Party leader John Smith, announcing themselves as #TeamKeir.

“The public want and deserve a government that is focused on improving the lives of working people,” Smith said. “Under Keir Starmer, that is exactly what we’re doing.”

Michael Shanks and peer George Foulkes reposted Ed Miliband, who said: “Keir has earned the right to deliver the change he has promised and do what he cares about – which is to serve the country. This is not the time for the government to turn inwards on itself. We must focus on delivering the change we promised the country.”

“The country is rightly impatient for change and for government that serves their interests above all else. Our job is simple: stay focused, get on with the hard work of delivering instead of looking inwardly at ourselves and remember the people who we serve,” said Shanks, driving the message home.

Douglas Alexander – co-chair of Scottish Labour’s Holyrood election drive – said Sarwar had made “his own decision”, adding: “The prime minister has recognised not just that lessons have to be learned but also that we change how we do government. He is right about that and has my support.

“Like all Labour MPs we want the Labour government to be the government that the people of this country hoped for when they rejected the Tories. That is where all of my energies are and will remain focussed.”

Your pals will tell you, when dumped, that you are better off without them – that they only held you back. Polling tells us that Scottish Labour is indeed trailing in the voting stakes and highly unlikely to be in a position to form a government in May.

Sarwar may have calculated that today’s hail Mary would be enough to turn that around. But he may have miscalculated and in trying to push Starmer out only succeeded in worsening his own standing.

There are weeks to go until the election. But Labour’s campaign has been shaped in Sarwar’s image, with a magazine-style leaflet telling his family’s story shared through thousands of letterboxes.

Back at the general election, the pair were united in triumph, with Labour’s Scottish successes seen as a strong indication of further wins to come, and the wresting of the keys to Bute House from SNP hands. After a clutch of policy disputes, Sarwar has stepped further and further away from Starmer since then, even suggesting the best thing the PM could do for Scottish Labour’s electoral hopes is to sit this campaign out. The love affair of 2024 seems to have fizzled out. What will voters make of it all? 

With the party's one-day spring conference just days away, it must articulate a sense of unity, and quickly.