In the aftermath of Anas Sarwar’s failed coup against Keir Starmer, I was reminded of the famous Beyond the Fringe sketch.
Peter Cook: The war is not going very well, you know. I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war. Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen, take a shufti, don’t come back. Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.
Jonathan Miller: Goodbye, sir – or is it – au revoir?
Peter Cook: No, Perkins.
In calling for him to step down, Sarwar said goodbye to Starmer on Monday. In return, Starmer and his Cabinet said goodbye to Sarwar. It’s hard to avoid any other conclusion, with the Holyrood election imminent. UK Labour has effectively written off its chances in Scotland – and those of the leader of its Scottish party.
It was a curious press conference. Sarwar obviously found it hard to say what he felt he had to. Until that morning, he and the PM had been more than allies: they had been friends. That relationship ended when Sarwar called Number 10 around 1.30pm to declare his intentions, after a weekend of deliberation with his closest allies. “I spoke to the Prime Minister earlier today and I think it’s safe to say he and I disagreed,” he said. Just after 2.30pm, he went on live TV and said Starmer had to go.
If you’re going over the top, it’s safest to check who’s coming with you. Very few, it turned out. Starmer may be in a weak position, having just lost Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, and Tim Allan, his director of communications, and still facing the fallout from the Mandelson scandal, but within a few hours the entire Cabinet had declared its loyalty. No one believes them, of course – they are merely coiled in watchful readiness. If there was a flaw in Sarwar’s plan, it was in the timing. Wes Streeting is busy de-Mandelsoning himself. Angela Rayner is still cleaning up her tax affairs. Andy Burnham is stuck in Manchester. They have careers and personal ambitions to consider. The fate of Scotland and Scottish Labour trails some way behind.
What a mess. What grim consequences. Jackie Baillie, Sarwar’s deputy leader and the co-chair of Scottish Labour’s election campaign, loyally sat in the front row of Sarwar’s press conference. Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary and the other co-chair, released a statement: “The Prime Minister has recognized 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.” Hardly a ringing endorsement of his boss, but he is, for the moment at least, sticking with his man.
So there is now a seismic, unhealable split between Labour at Westminster and at Holyrood, just as the party asks Scots to vote for them and eject the SNP from power. How can Starmer come to Scotland during the campaign? How could he possibly he stand alongside Sarwar? How weird will it be if the Prime Minister has to stay hidden away in London throughout? How can a campaign run by Alexander and Baillie speak with a single, unified voice? What the hell is the average voter supposed to make of it all?
The fact that Sarwar did what he did confirms the desperation in Scottish Labour ranks at what appears to be the almost inevitable outcome of the election: another SNP win. Labour has been trailing the Nats in the polls for over a year. Far from looking likely to rein in the SNP lead, Sarwar finds himself in a battle with Reform for second place. The mis-steps and deep unpopularity of the Starmer regime have been a millstone around Sarwar’s neck, and he hs grown increasingly frustrated. He repeatedly spoke about his primary loyalty being to “my country, Scotland” – to the point of parody, arguably – in an attempt to draw a clear line between the party in Holyrood and at Westminster. “We are no branch office” was the message. But that assertion will be lost in the chaotic aftermath. The call to quit was a hail mary pass that spectacularly failed to find its target. What are we supposed to think today, other than “it’s over”?
The SNP has spent the past few months telling us that the Scottish election is a chance to kick the PM out of Downing Street. Scottish Labour has pointed out, reasonably, that this is simply an attempt to avoid being held responsible for nearly 20 years of tepid, uninspired government in Edinburgh. Yet Sarwar has now effectively proved their point: he agrees that Starmer must go, and that Scots are likely to use this election to say so.
It’s clear that the PM’s days are numbered. It’s just that the timetable that suits Streeting, Rayner et al is very different to the one that works for Sarwar. Labour will stumble on at Westminster, watching the Scottish party stagger into the jaws of a devolved election it clearly no longer believes it can win. The SNP, meanwhile, can hardly believe its luck. The only leader who benefited from Monday’s events was John Swinney. Futile.
[Further reading: How Keir Starmer survives]
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Subscribe here to commentEchoes of 2007. If Blair had clung on for just two months less, the Scottish parliamentary election would have been held during Brown’s honeymoon. Given the SNP won that election by a single seat, and that final seat had an SNP majority of 48, it seems absolutely certain Labour would have won. Then what? No Salmond ministry. No SNP majority in 2011. No independence referendum. There could easily have been another two decades of Scottish Labour hegemony. But I guess that was worth throwing away for two extra months of Blair. And I’m sure it’s worth it now for a few extra months of Starmer.