Anas Sarwar: 'I don't believe in rest days'

In a few minutes’ time, Anas Sarwar will stride across the Garden Lobby of the Scottish Parliament with his newest MSP, Hamilton by-election victor Davy Russell.

The pair will stand suited before the Labour bloc and in front of the lobby pack, and Russell – who has ended continuing SNP success in the seat to become its first-ever Labour MSP – will describe his win as a “springboard” to take the party into government next year. “Next year we are going to remove the SNP from office, and we are going to elect a Scottish Labour government,” Sarwar will say.

For now, in his first-floor office, Sarwar’s confidence is palpable. But that shouldn’t be mistaken for complacency. “I’m in continuing campaign mode,” he tells Holyrood. “I don’t believe in rest days.” He corrects himself – he’s doesn’t mean it in a Kemi Badenoch, lunch-is-for-wimps, type of way, he explains, saying he “definitely” takes time off for lunch and has a day off. What he means, he emphasises, is that Labour is “in full election mode because we are hungry to win and we are hungry to change the government next year, and to form a government next year”.

“We’ve learned fantastic lessons from the by-election,” he goes on. “I think we are in the strongest shape this far out of a Scottish Parliament election [than we have been at] any stage in our history.”

Reams have been written about the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, much of it suggesting that the best Scottish Labour could hope for was second place. How wrong that turned out to be. But the winning margin was a slim 602 votes, with Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform UK behind by 1,471 votes.

And so Sarwar, who is now seen to have rebuilt a sense of momentum, aims to keep up the pace of what was a gruelling campaign. 

I think he underestimates the Scottish people

The result came in on the early hours of 6 June, which coincided with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Instead of spending the day with family, Sarwar headed to the BBC Scotland studio after “about two hours’ sleep” and then went back to Hamilton to meet more of the media. He eventually made it back before the end of a family lunch in the late afternoon – but not before he’d sent a special message to Farage.

The Reform campaign had weaponised Sarwar’s Pakistani heritage in its unsuccessful bid to take the seat. A video took an excerpt from a speech about increasing diversity in politics, allowing more access to those of South Asian origin, and presented it with the erroneous claim that Sarwar had committed to prioritising this group over all others. Under scrutiny about the ad, which was seen by Facebook users around one million times, Farage accused Sarwar – a member of the Scottish Parliament’s cross-party group on challenging racial and religious prejudice – of having “introduced sectarianism into Scottish politics”.

And so, when he was asked on that Friday morning what his message was for Farage, in an interview with GB News, Sarwar fired back: “Good morning Nigel, Eid mubarak, and I hope you enjoyed the result last night.” 

“I couldn’t resist, given some of the prejudice that was clearly on display in terms of the Reform campaign,” Sarwar says. “The interesting thing about the campaign was I found it energising rather than demoralising. It motivated me to want to work harder and even made me hungrier.”

Reform UK has denied that its ad was racist. Sarwar disagrees. But he won’t say whether he thinks Farage is racist too. “All I can comment on is the advert and the tone of the advert, which clearly was racist and clearly prejudiced,” he says, describing it as “very deliberate misinformation in order to play on people’s fears and sense of helplessness”. “I can only make comment on what was a disgraceful campaign,” Sarwar repeats. But on Farage, he says, “I think he underestimates the Scottish people and human decency across the board”.

Still, that’s not to say the experience hasn’t led to some concerns for this father-of-three, who grew up watching his dad Mohammad, the former Labour MP and governor of Punjab, on the receiving end of such attacks. “You worry about your kids a little bit. 

I'm really proud of the broad mix of people we are selecting

“My eldest is particularly aware, he’s going to be turning 17 – he noticed. We just try and shrug it off. Having been brought up in a political household where my old man experienced similar stuff, from personal experience you kind of create a new normal for yourself. That’s the one bit that worries me, my kids having to create that alternate normal in their heads which is actually not normal.

“We have to be very, very careful about making sure we don’t have the wrong diagnosis when it comes to the challenge of Reform,” he says, arguing that disaffection with public services and politics in general is a major factor. “We have to be very careful we don’t make it sound like that in criticising Nigel Farage or criticising Reform UK it makes it sound like we’re saying something about the people who might be tempted to vote for them, or did vote for them.”

“A lot” of the “significant” Tory vote in the constituency “went en masse to Reform”, says Sarwar, while others voting for that party’s candidate Ross Lambie decided to “push the most destructive button to demonstrate their frustration about” about a Scottish Government and an economy which “isn’t working for them”. Others still “fell for the misinformation” of an SNP campaign which claimed that it was a straight fight between it and Reform – a claim Sarwar says “was a deliberate attempt to push certain people into the arms of Reform”, to “damage Labour” and to “sneak in through the middle”.

“There are those people who will be ideologically aligned with Reform that we will never persuade. There will be those people who think the Conservative Party is finished and view Reform as the replacement, the Tories in disguise,” Sarwar says. “There is probably a larger chunk of people who are so scunnered and the best way of pulling those people away from the divisive rhetoric of Reform or poisonous politics of Nigel Farage is confronting the underlying issues that make people want to consider that destructive option.”

Does that include people like Jamie McGuire? The Renfrewshire Council member was elected on a Labour ticket in 2022, but was unveiled as Reform’s newest signing as the Hamilton contest reached its fevered final days. Sarwar plays down the defection. “I imagine he’s feeling pretty silly right now,” the MSP says. “Given that in the two weeks running up to that, much of the focus in the media was on the racist ad… I think it says more about the individual than it does about us.”

There are months to go in Scottish Labour’s selection process for 2026, but around 20 candidates are in place so far. Can the party find a Davy Russell for each of the others? A former head of operational services at Glasgow City Council, Russell, who was largely kept away from the media before the vote, has also been a deputy lord lieutenant of Lanarkshire and is embedded in local networks from the bowling clubs to the pub circuit. 

We are in a really sound financial position

Sarwar laughs when asked if that can be duplicated around the country. “In any parliamentary group of any party that aspires to be in government, you have to get a good mix in terms of candidates,” he says. “That’s a good mix of people that come from different sectors and different backgrounds, and also people that are ingrained in their communities and also come from a certain point of view and expertise that can help you shape your future.” 

Those in Labour’s number so far include headteacher Stuart Clark, whose Mearns Castle High School is amongst the country’s most successful state secondaries. He’ll be on the roster with a doctor, trade unionists and others. “I’m really proud of the broad mix of people we are selecting that will help us be a parliamentary group I think is reflective of Scotland, and I hope a Scottish Government that is reflective of Scotland as well,” Sarwar comments.

That pool will be drawn from a membership that has fallen in recent years. Scottish Labour does not routinely publish its membership numbers, and the UK Labour Party recently decreed that it would stop providing bimonthly updates to its national executive committee following reports of a further decrease earlier this year. In February it was reported that the party had lost more than one in 10 members since the general election. “The measure of success for me is how many votes we get, not how many members we have,” Sarwar says. “My ambition is to grow our votes.”

There has been concerted effort, however, to improve the Scottish party’s standing, not least with the business community and potential donors. “We are in a really sound financial position and I’m confident that we’ll have a well-resourced, well-run campaign,” says Sarwar of 2026. “I’m really happy and satisfied in terms of where we are as a machine.”

The local result in Lanarkshire was achieved with a turnout that was around 20 per cent lower than at the last Scottish Parliament election. The SNP’s support dropped by a painful 16.8 per cent, the Conservatives’ share fell by 11.5 per cent, and even winners Labour lost two per cent.

On the doorsteps, people complained about issues like the increase to employers’ National Insurance contributions, the treatment of Waspi women and the end to universal entitlement to winter fuel payments – all decisions taken by Keir Starmer’s Labour UK Government, and all of which have been cited as reasons for a fall in membership and the pummelling the party took in England’s recent local elections.

We will do no deals and no coalitions with the SNP or the Tories

Sarwar has repeatedly acknowledged these and other issues which cost the Starmer administration its honeymoon period. He has told the prime minister he wants to see that government go further, faster, to improve people’s fortunes and experiences, he says. But he is confident that the 2026 vote will be “a judgement on the SNP government” which is responsible for Scottish services, not the UK Government which is not.

The SNP government is “incompetent, out of steam, useless” and “led by a figure who thinks his job is to steady the ship”, Sarwar says. So it’s difficult to imagine that he and John Swinney could work together in any meaningful way. 

That’s okay, says Sarwar, “I’m not intending to come out of the election doing deals and coalitions, I’m expecting us to secure a minority Labour government” that will find “common ground” with members of other parties to drive forward legislation. “We will do no deals and no coalitions with the SNP or the Tories,” he insists. Prior comments about working with any Reform UK MSPs on potential “good ideas” they could advance were “misconstrued” by observers who read too much into them, he says, arguing that he wouldn’t turn down genuinely good ideas from anyone. 

Reform “don’t have any serious idea about what they want to do for the country”, Sarwar goes on. “All they can do is keep the SNP in power.”