Sarwar's big gamble is likely too little, too late

In appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in late 2024, Keir Starmer set in train a series of events which will ultimately end his premiership. It may well be next week’s Gorton and Denton by-election that ultimately does for the embattled PM, or a poor showing for Labour in May’s Scottish and Welsh elections, but it’s the ongoing fallout from Mandelson’s links to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein which marked his card, a misjudgement that makes it all but inevitable he’ll go before the next general election.

But while that misjudgement is all too apparent now, the decision to appoint Mandelson was not universally condemned at the time. There were, of course, those who spoke up on behalf of Epstein’s victims, but there were others who congratulated Starmer on his decision, notably former Tory minister Michael Gove who said Mandelson had the right “skillset” to navigate the Trump presidency. And that’s the point, because the one thing Starmer can’t say publicly is that Mandelson, a man nicknamed the Prince of Darkness after all, was given the job exactly because of his murkiness – not despite it.

Another figure complicit in the misjudgement is Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. In a tweet which has aged like milk, Sarwar posted a picture of himself and “old friend” Mandelson in April last year. It’s a social media post which will haunt him as Labour fights not to be pushed into third behind Reform UK at the upcoming Holyrood election. 

Earlier this month, Sarwar took his biggest gamble yet as Labour leader in Scotland, calling for Starmer to go in order to put some clear blue water between himself and the unpopular prime minister.  “This isn’t easy and it’s not without pain, as I have a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer. But my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country – Scotland,” Sarwar told a hastily arranged press conference in Glasgow. 

If the Scottish Labour leader’s intervention was expected to mark the start of a coup, then it never happened, with a succession of statements from Cabinet ministers pledging their allegiance to Starmer (at least for the time being). But if Sarwar was left looking isolated, and some said he was, then that was sort of the point. Ever since former leader Johann Lamont hit out at her party’s diktat from London, memorably describing its Holyrood operation as a “branch office”, Scottish Labour has struggled to shake off the accusation that it has little political independence from Westminster. It may have taken Sarwar trashing his relationship with Starmer to do it, but the party has finally nullified the SNP’s attack line that it does not speak up for Scotland.

And what of the SNP? The party has so far avoided the shockwaves being felt by the Epstein scandal despite some half-hearted attempts by the Scottish Tories to raise questions about First Minister John Swinney’s decision to stay at Mandelson’s official residence during a trip to Washington DC to meet with President Donald Trump. Swinney recently announced an “audit” of his government’s dealings with Mandelson and that may include looking at the links to Gregor Irwin, a senior civil servant who spent nine years with the disgraced peer’s Global Counsel. Irwin’s contact with Mandelson is said to have been “solely in a professional capacity” but nevertheless companies including Tesco and Barclays have ended their relationship with the lobbying firm, which is mentioned hundreds of times in the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice. 

There’s also the matter of the embezzlement case against the party’s former chief executive Peter Murrell. Details of the indictment against Murrell, the estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, show he is accused of stealing £459,000 from the party over a 12-year period and using the money to buy a motorhome, a Jaguar, and to fund purchases at retailers ranging from Harrods to Argos. Helpfully for Scotland’s party of government, a preliminary hearing, which had been scheduled for last week, has now been postponed until after the election. 

Sarwar’s gamble is an attempt to move the spotlight back onto the SNP’s record in government over these past 19 years – not just on Swinney’s record, but that of his predecessors who have presided over a slow unravelling of Scotland’s public services and broken their promises on health and education. If it’s a brave gambit, then it’s still likely come too late to save Labour’s chances at the ballot box on 7 May. It is the failures and broken promises of another government – that of Labour at Westminster – that have undone him. 

Bizarrely for an election which is about devolved issues – how Scotland’s NHS is run, our schools, our social care, our justice system – many voters will go to the polls thinking about the performance of the Labour government over the past two years – the constant U-turns, the failure to get to grips with the cost of living, the scandal surrounding Mandelson – and they will opt for what they consider the least-worst option. Sadly for Scotland, that’s likely to mean more of the same for the next five years.