ANAS Sarwar has revealed he questioned if Labour could ever win again in Scotland – as he edges closer to ousting the SNP as top dogs at the General Election.
The Scottish Labour leader has told of his party’s turnaround from a near wipeout in 2015 – when he was ditched as Glasgow Central MP – to being poised to dislodge the Nats in a host of seats on Thursday.
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And in a personal interview reflecting on a decade in the doldrums, he told of years of feeling “scunnered”, and how the General Election was the first step to “change” Scotland – with his sights already on the 2026 Scottish election and grabbing the levers of power at Holyrood too.
The party boss spoke to the Scottish Sun on the campaign trail at Loch Lomond on Sunday after three promising opinion polls over the weekend suggested Labour are now around five points ahead of the SNP in Scotland, as well as their whopping 20-point lead over the Tories at a UK level.
It could mean Labour grabs 30 or more MPs when the results roll in overnight on Thursday into Friday, with the SNP reduced to between 16 and 20, and the Tories potentially being reduced to one.
Labour’s current 36 per cent vote share compared to 18.6 per cent at the 2019 election, and the SNP’s 31 per cent is 14 points down on their 45.0 per cent showing nearly five years ago.
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The latest polls signal levels of undecided voters have shrunk dramatically from the start of the campaign, or the weeks before the election was called.
Don’t-knows had accounted for around one in five Scots with some pollsters, but are now between six and nine per cent, or between one in ten and one in 20.
But sitting down with the Scottish Sun on the Scottish Labour battlebus, Mr Sarwar told how he questioned whether the party would ever be able to rise again amid a decade of Nats dominance at Holyrood, and Tory rule at Westminster – when Labour were left floundering.
He said people had regularly told him in recent years that they were “frustrated” with politics and he often responded that politicians like him are “scunnered” too.
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Mr Sarwar said: “There are moments over the last 14 years I’ve felt really scunnered with politics, felt really disengaged from it, felt really frustrated and there’s times when you felt change wasn’t possible and things were only going one way.
“I think what makes this election campaign really difficult, and I’ve personally worked really hard to try and change, is making our politics for something again.”
Labour was blasted as being “unelectable” during the days of Jeremy Corbyn as leader down south and Richard Leonard as boss in Scotland.
And Mr Sarwar told how for some time, doubts crept in about whether Labour could ever recover.
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He said: “I never joined the Labour Party or campaigned for the Labour Party or sought to become a Labour Party representative because I thought our job was to be in opposition – to say the right things but go to sleep at night knowing that you weren’t actually changing anybody’s life.
“For me, Labour’s always got to be a party of government, or aspires to be in government.
“And of course, there was a period, a long period and there will be lots of people that feel this way across the country, where people thought that the Tories would always win, people thought Labour couldn’t win again, and therefore lots of people either chose to move away from politics if they were in the Labour Party, or if they were voters chose to vote for somebody else.
“There were moments where you probably thought, ‘will we ever win again? Will we ever get rid of the Tories?’
“But what kept me in and what kept me going is that I knew one day the opportunity would come, I knew one day we would have a chance to win and I knew one day we’d have a chance to change the country.”
Mr Sarwar first entered the political frontline in 2010 when he succeeded his father, Mohammad Sarwar, as the MP for Glasgow Central.
But he lost his seat to the SNP’s Alison Thewliss as the Nats swept Scotland in a landslide victory which left Labour with just one MP here – Ian Murray in Edinburgh South.
After being elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2016, Mr Sarwar ran to become leader in 2017 after the resignation of Kezia Dugdale – but he lost out to hard-left Mr Leonard.
He said the losses in 2015 and 2017 were “the two most difficult moments in my life professionally”.
But he said the experiences and reflecting on the losses forced him to “break out” of his own “political bubble” and “made me a better politician, have made me a better human being”.
Mr Sarwar said when given the opportunity to stand again to become Labour leader in 2021 to replace Mr Leonard, he decided to “do my best to change” Scottish Labour rather than walk away from the challenge.
He said: “I wasn’t willing to take that risk and gamble because it’s far too important for our country and that’s why I stayed, that’s why I fought, that’s why I went for the leadership.”
Mr Sarwar said he was focused on the General Election but said the “ultimate time” for his party to deliver “maximum change” would be if he can win power at Holyrood in 2026.
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He added: “I want us to have a Labour government here in Scotland as well so we can fix our NHS, we can get our education to be the best in the world again, we can reform our criminal justice system, we can give opportunities to young people, and we can grow our economy and sell the best of brand Scotland.
“All of that genuinely excites me, enthuses me and keeps me going every day.”
