Anas Sarwar: Labour will 'earn the right to form a government' in 2026

This time last year Anas Sarwar bounced onto the stage at party conference in Glasgow to the backing track of Sia’s Unstoppable. The pop pick reflected the high-energy mood in the room. Michael Shanks had decisively defeated the SNP in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election just four months earlier and with Labour predicted to win the forthcoming general election and then some, the party faithful, having stuck by it through its many, often self-inflicted, trials and tribulations, were understandably enjoying the moment. Victory seemed assured. And it was.

Sarwar beamed as he looked down at the delegates crowded into the SEC for what was to be the last gathering before the election and crowed: “Scottish politics has changed; Scottish Labour is back on the pitch and winning.”

Seven months on, that upbeat backing track begins to feel like something of an own goal. For despite Keir Starmer now secured in No 10, supported by a massive majority of Labour MPs in the House of Commons and with 37 Scottish MPs sitting at Westminster, Sarwar appears stopped in his tracks and in danger of going into reverse. And, typically for Labour, by his own party. Since July, following a series of policy and political missteps, Labour has plummeted in the polls, Starmer’s personal popularity is at an all-time low – Trump is now more popular in Scotland than the PM – and Sarwar is no longer seen as the shoo-in for first minister. Far from jigging along to Unstoppable, his musical choice at this conference could easily be more of a plea from the heart with a rock anthem like Don’t Stop Believin’.

He laughs at the suggestion. “It was one of our team that chose the conference song last year and the year before, and I’m sure the same member of the team that’s got that same level of creativity will choose something equally fitting.

“Look, we’ll have a good conference song this year, but our theme of conference is around how we deliver that new direction for Scotland, and we’re going to start demonstrating at conference that we’re serious about not just beating the SNP, not just winning the election, but we’re serious about changing Scotland. And we’re going to set out in more detail what that means in practice, what it means for our health service, what it means for our skills system, what it means for local democracy, what it means for safety and security in our communities, and what it means for Scotland’s businesses.”

So far, so upbeat, but surely even the Pollyanna in Sarwar recognises the only thing that is stopping him on the journey to victory in 2026 is his own party down south? “Look, when we were this far out from the last general election, we were 14 points behind the SNP, and we went on to beat the SNP by five points in the general election campaign. When I took on this job we were 33 points behind the SNP. We were up against a political party that had around 50 per cent in the polls. So, are there challenges? Of course. Have we got work to do? Yes. Is there lots of hard work ahead? Yes. But even my biggest critic would accept that I’m not someone that’s afraid of hard work. And we’re going to earn people’s trust, earn their support, and earn the right to form a government here in Scotland in 2026.”

I suggest that his optimism is endearing but this time last year he was being predicted as the next first minister and right now polls would suggest he could struggle to beat Reform.

“What I find really funny about it all of this is that we went from a situation where we were miles behind. People were talking about Scottish Labour’s survival. And we won 37 Scottish Labour MPs. We helped deliver a UK Labour government that got rid of a Tory government. And the SNP went from thinking the entire map of Scotland should be SNP yellow to just retaining a small rump of MPs – and yet they’re walking about as if they own the place. So, I know they like to do over-optimistic and try and sell something that’s not true but I’m going to do the hard work and earn people’s trust.

“I have been the first to admit, as a former dentist, that there have been teething problems in the early days of this Labour government. I accept that. But you’ve got to look at the frame in which they came into government. I think over time you’ve seen incoming UK Labour governments, or incoming governments of any colour, where either the economy has been flatlining or the public services have been broken or our public finances have been broken. Well, we have come in with all three at the same time, so they have had to take emergency measures to stabilise the public finances, to decisively end the era of austerity, and that then also meant having to make difficult choices around tax and spend, but they have stabilised those foundations. What we now need to see is that genuine partnership with business to deliver that economic growth. What we’ve got to see is a real commitment to make sure there’s investment coming in every part of the country, and as part of what they’ve already delivered is £5.2bn of additional money for the Scottish Government. My frustration is that that could have been game-changing money for the people of Scotland but instead that opportunity is going to be squandered, and the only chance Scotland now has to get a new direction is by electing a Scottish Labour government in May 2026.

“I wanted us to decisively end the era of austerity. We’ve done that. But ultimately, I want good outcomes for the people of Scotland and £5.2bn should be delivering good outcomes for the people of Scotland. The problem we’ve got here is that the SNP government we have is going to squander that money, because they’re not good with public money. They’re not good at treating it as every valued penny. They are managerial heavy. They’re bureaucracy and management heavy. They’re not outcomes focused; they’re inputs focused. And they’re utterly incompetent, and they’re out of ideas. And so the sooner we can get them out of office and have a new direction in our country, the better.”

Sarwar is naturally a glass-half-full kind of bloke but his optimism for 2026 may not be as misplaced as some would like to think. Sarwar and I talk on the morning that his party has won yet another council by-election, this time in Kirkintilloch. And while one can look at the lowish turnout and dismiss the win as saying very little about the country’s mood, there is a story to be told in the 16 per cent fall in the SNP vote and in the rise of Reform, which finished fourth from nowhere. And while the headline figures on recent opinion polls still have the SNP looking likely to be the biggest party at Holyrood next year, they also reveal support dropping and a pro-independence majority a struggle. This has obviously not gone unnoticed by the man who hopes to be the next first minister.

“You can look at different polls and at different numbers, but the reality is, for all the challenges and difficulties people have presented about the Labour Party, the SNP vote is actually lower now than it was. They haven’t increased their share of the vote, they’re going down in the polls, they are losing by-elections where people are actually getting a chance to vote, and what we have to do is persuade people that a different alternative is possible next year. To be frank, I think Scotland’s people have already decided that the SNP is failing Scotland, they have had enough and what we need to do is persuade them that a different future is possible if we elect a Scottish Labour government and I am elected as first minister.

“But the single biggest challenge is that we have got to break out of the hopelessness and doom loop that we currently have in our country. The reality is that it suits the SNP to have a politics of hopelessness, and it suits the likes of Reform too. Labour only wins when we’re campaigning on and delivering on the politics of hope, and that’s what I want to build on; people need some hope for the future.

“I’m not contemplating another term in opposition. I’m absolutely focused and determined to win and to be first minister.

“I think if you look back to the politics of 2007, and the politics of 2011, the SNP were viewed as a political party that was bigger than themselves. They were viewed as a vehicle, yes, that ultimately wanted to campaign and deliver independence, but they were viewed as a vehicle that wanted to bring Scotland together to innovate and to deliver positive outcomes and change, and they captured that very successfully to win the election in 2007 and to win it in a big way in 2011. But honestly, they’re not that party any more. They’ve lost their way, they’re seen as being out of touch, they’re seen as being out of ideas, and they are seen as stale.

“And the tragedy is they were able to build a phenomenal coalition of the people to win that election in 2007 and 2011 and in the early days they were able to build confidence in Scotland, but they didn’t use that confidence that people put in them, or the confidence raised in Scotland, to deliver positive outcomes, and in actual fact they squandered it. They squandered the single biggest opportunity that any political party has had in the entire history of devolution to actually do something different and get meaningful outcomes. Every institution is weaker after 18 years of the SNP, our healthcare system is weaker, our schools are falling international league tables, our skills system is not fit for purpose, our justice system has the longest backlogs possibly ever, our prison estate is falling apart, we have record levels of drug deaths, we have huge, huge challenges in our economy, where our economy is not competing with other parts of the UK the way it should, businesses don’t feel supported, and the list goes on. So, they have squandered every opportunity, and I think that’s unforgivable.

“If you think about it, in the in the peak years of the SNP, they had unbelievable power. They had unchecked power. When they had a majority they had no credible opposition, and they had all the resources of the state in Scotland and the establishment in Scotland and money to do transformational things, and they’ve utterly squandered it. And I think that is a huge betrayal of trust. And the people that I feel that most for are those that believed in them the most. They have been seriously let down.

“But what we do in the face of all of that is what’s important, and I want to build support across the country to do something different and to take Scotland in a different direction.

“I want to capture that spirit of Scotland where we demonstrate we can work together despite differences of opinion around the constitutional question, whether it be Brexit or independence. I want to capture people right across Scotland, and if you’ve got a good idea, if you want to make progress in our nation, if you want to take a different direction, regardless of what you think the final destination for Scotland is, then work with us, and let’s change our country for the better.

“What the SNP have done to our public services is heartbreaking. I started my career after university in public service. My first job was as an NHS dentist in Paisley, where I saw some of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen in my life. If you, as a young dentist, are doing full dental clearances for 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds, as every one of their teeth are coming out because of the scale of addiction issues, the levels of inequality, and with methadone literally frying those young people’s teeth, you literally see the impact that has. Imagine putting full dentures into a 17-year-old, an 18-year-old. That is inequality in the raw. That’s why I viewed being a dentist as a public service. It’s why I view being in politics as public service. It’s why I would view being first minister as a public service. And what I’m interested in is changing the direction for Scotland, making sure our best days do lie ahead, and that we hand over a stronger nation to the next generation rather than a weaker nation, which is where the SNP has taken us.”

Sarwar has led Scottish Labour for four years – the tenth leader since 1999. He has faced three of the four SNP first ministers at FMQs, one of whom he was at school with. And when I mention the concept of three degrees of separation, he reminds me that he was still at school when John Swinney was leader of the SNP first time around in the early 2000s but that his father Mohammad, the UK’s first Muslim MP, was elected to Westminster in 1997 at the same time as Swinney, having decisively beaten a young Nicola Sturgeon to take the seat of Glasgow Govan. He held that seat until 2010 [albeit it changed name in that time] before he stood down at that election following death threats and returned to Pakistan where he became the governor of Punjab before retiring to continue with his charitable works. Sarwar junior basically inherited the Westminster seat [then Glasgow Central] that his father vacated in the 2010 general election and held it until the 2015 general election when the SNP tsunami took 56 of the 59 Scottish Westminster seats, leaving one each for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. It was that defeat that changed Sarwar. He lost some of his air of entitlement and is the first to admit that he gained some humility. That was only compounded two years later when, as an MSP elected in 2016, he then lost out to Richard Leonard for the leadership of what was a much-troubled party.

When I interviewed him two years ago, we reflected on those defeats but also on an interview I had done with him back in 2011 when he was an MP and also the deputy leader of Scottish Labour.

“I actually remember when you interviewed me back in 2011 and, thinking back, I do genuinely think I was a baby then,” he says. “And I think when you are a young person coming into politics – I was selected when I was 24 or 25, elected when I was 27 – you’ve got a youthful nervousness as well as a youthful exuberance, and you look back on it and cringe a little bit.

“So, the two hardest personal moments in politics for me were obviously my two defeats: my defeat in the general election in 2015 and my defeat in the party leadership election in 2017. But looking back, despite both of those things being the two most difficult moments, political career-wise, I generally look back and think they were the two best things that ever happened to me politically, because, one, I lost that stress and pressure that comes with the expectation others have for you, and I think on the personal side, you lose that part of personal ambition.

“And then I think becoming more comfortable in my own skin, more comfortable in my own identity, being more willing to see past your own tribalism, I think is massively liberating. I honestly believe that those two defeats have made me a better person. A better politician. And probably most important of all, I think a better father as well because your priorities shift.”

Sarwar talks about his family a lot and his three boys clearly have a very different relationship with him than he did, and does, with his own father – he tells his sons that he loves them all the time and tells me he still hasn’t heard those words from his own father. In fact, despite the obvious conclusions to make, it is Sarwar’s mother, Perveen, who has been the biggest influence on both his emotions and his politics.

“The truth is that I am much more likely to have a political conversation around the day-to-day politics, for example, with my mum than I am with my dad. The great thing about my dad, and I’m sure I have said this to you before and I know it sounds terrible but I say it with affection, the great thing about my dad is that he is the centre of his own universe, so we’re more likely to talk about his politics than mine. Former journalists who were around in the early days of my dad’s political career will tell me that mum was a really, really strong force for dad, both in terms of advice and politics, and she was fundamental in terms of how she used to, you know, communicate. People often forget that my dad’s English was very poor in the early days. He hadn’t been in the country long and he had, you know, a really, really thick Pakistan accent while having been brought up in Scotland from being just four years old, my mum was brilliantly effective in supporting him. A real partnership.”

I mention that I had clocked a tweet from his father about Scottish Labour’s big victory in the general election which managed not to acknowledge his own son’s contribution as leader to that win. Did that matter to him?

Sarwar laughs, which he does a lot: “I’ll tell you something funny Mandy, I got a phone call from him on the day of the election, he was actually in Glasgow, and there was no, ‘how’s it going, son’ type small talk, no ‘what do you think will happen’ or ‘how are you feeling?’. None of that. It was just straight to the point, asking where I was going to watch the exit poll. I said that I’d be in party HQ and he asked if I would mind if he came along but he wouldn’t stay long, and I said that’s fine. And that was it.

“He hung up the phone, didn’t even say ‘bye’. He then turned up at HQ about 10 minutes before the exit poll. The exit poll comes out and, obviously, we were all very jubilant in the office. He shared in that moment. Took a photograph. Said to the rest of the team, ‘great team effort’, and left and that was it. He told other people that he thought I did really well, but he didn’t tell me. That’s just him. I think it’s a generation thing but also a Scottish thing. That generation aren’t the most outwardly affectionate. They don’t overshare. And so if they are proud of you, and I know he is, I imagine they find other ways of showing it or by telling other people rather than telling you directly. So, my dad’s no different, I think, to a whole generation of dads across the country in that sense. 

“I tell my kids I’m proud of them and happy with them all the time. But honestly, and I remember you and I going through this last time we chatted, I think so much of fatherhood actually is doing the things that you think your dad did really well and the things you think your dad did poorly, you try and compensate for, and no doubt my sons will do the same if they become fathers… and to be clear, well into the future, well into the future!”

For now, though, Sarwar has a target first-time voter to focus on at home with his 16-year-old son Adam, who will preparing to vote for the first time in May 2026.

“It’s interesting, let’s say, keeping Adam onside and obviously that adds its own drama to the campaign. He couldn’t vote in July but he says he would probably have voted Labour, so clearly some work to do there. But seriously, he says he is not a supporter of the SNP or the Tories, and he thought the person that had the best campaign was ‘the guy that did the bungee jump’ [Lib Dem leader Ed Davey] because that looked the most fun. I’ve explained that stunts like that don’t necessarily make you a serious politician, so I think we’ll be fine.”

Putting bungee jumping to one side, Sarwar knows he needs a bounce of a different kind if he is going to realise his ambitions to lead Scotland, and he is working on it.