Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour have heard the mood music from Team Starmer and rowed back on their support for the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, despite having claimed it was “right” to vote for it just six months ago. Now, the party have decided it’s “deeply flawed”… 

According to The Times, Sarwar no longer supports the idea of self-ID – which allows anyone over 16 to change their gender without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria – and although Scottish Labour still supports it “in principle”, the SNP’s refusal to accept Labour’s amendments to safeguard women’s spaces is now a problem. Six months ago they said the same thing, yet backed it anyway. “Principles” don’t get you very far in politics…

Yesterday Sarwar offered this word salad when asked if he’d vote for the Bill again:

“I’ve been reflective about this since the passage of the GRR Bill and I’ve said it feels like everybody has lost. I don’t think our trans community feel any more protected since the passing of the GRR Bill […] I don’t think women feel any more reassured since the passing of the GRR Bill, but I still continue to believe that it’s right for us to want to remove the indignities and the humanities in the process of obtaining a [gender certificate].

“We still have work to do to make sure that we are protecting single-sex spaces based on biological sex [and] I think the government should reflect that they didn’t go far enough and accepting amendments…”

Starmer saw the winds blowing in a different direction many weeks ago, now Sarwar is playing catch-up…

Whilst the SNP have despatched sex pest Patrick Grady to help their campaigning efforts in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Scottish Labour have also turned to dirty tricks. The party has been paying to target an anti-SNP attack ad over on Facebook. Although Labour are happy to share the video with target voters, they don’t seem so keen for others to see the mudslinging…

While the party was willing to spend over £500 promoting the video to individual voters on Facebook, it is nowhere to be seen on Labour’s social media pages and is “unlisted” on Youtube – meaning you can only see it if you have the link. In the five minute video, Anas Sarwar lists the SNP’s Operation Branchform arrests, accuses the SNP of choosing “secrecy and cover-up over transparency” and says the “mired in sleaze” party tried to “hide sexual misconduct allegations”. You can always trust the Scots to take the low road…

Starmer, in what no doubt some SNP blowhard will say is an insult to the Scottish people, has refused to sample Scotland’s famous national dish*: a deep fried Mars Bar.  At a media event held at a Siemens’ factory this morning, he was offered and refused to eat a deep fried Mars Bar drizzled in caramel provided in a spread by Siemens. According to Sun reporter Chris Musson, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar astutely gave it a go, saying it was “actually quite nice … tastes like eating chocolate after pakora.” The famous fried sugary delicacy is perhaps one reason why Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe.

*You weren’t thinking Haggis for breakfast.

While Douglas Alexander makes his triumphant return as Labour’s candidate in East Lothian, Scottish Labour’s shortlist for the Glasgow South West seat has sent the far-left into yet another furious tailspin. According to the Herald, left-wing Glasgow City Councillor Matt Kerr failed the party’s vetting process… despite being the candidate in 2017 and 2019. The other main contender, Dr Zubir Ahmed, happens to be an old schoolmate of Anas Sarwar…

The vetting panel is chaired by Deputy Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie, who defeated Kerr for the deputy leadership in 2020. The four-person panel unanimously rejected Kerr, allegedly on the grounds that he’d previously refused to vote with the Labour whip on the city’s council budget. His comrades are nonetheless calling foul play, pointing out he was permitted to stand as a Labour council candidate last year, and won re-election. Turns out that doesn’t cut the mustard…

Kerr will have to sit it out this evening as the final candidate is chosen. Sarwar’s pal Dr Ahmed is the frontrunner, despite failing to get elected to Holyrood in 2021…

The dust is settling following the brutal ousting of hopeless Scottish Labour Leader Richard Leonard at the end of last week. Even as questions swirl around Leonard’s donor-engineered resignation, two leading candidates have emerged.

• Anas Sarwar (Constitution spokesman)
  • Blairite candidate. Multi-millionaire. Sends kids to private school. Runner up in the last leadership election. Despite attracting the most MSP nominations, Sarwar lost the membership vote to Richard Leonard by 9,516 to 12,469. Now the man who couldn’t beat the man who resigned for being too unpopular seeks to re-popularise his party…
  • Readers may remember Sarwar as the man who touched his microphone while pleading for others to not touch their microphones. He also once sent out an email saying “we should redistribute wealth from the many to the few”. Oops.
• Monica Lennon (Health and Sport Spokesperson)
  • Left-wing candidate. Abstained on independence referendum vote. Successfully campaigned for councils to be obligated to provide tax funded menstrual hygiene products. Close to Richard Leonard. Definitely the left of the SNP. Lennon suffers from ailurophobia, an irrational fear of cats.
  • Once said she would “like to go back to the 1960s.” No relation to John.

And there’s another name that keeps floating around…

• Gordon Brown (Former Prime Minister)
  • Dark horse. Some in Scottish Labour have been urging Brown to step up as the party’s only big beast left. He won’t. Though he has been stepping back into the fray with his new think tank “Our Scottish Future”, which has pointed out failures in the SNP’s coronavirus response. Not another Scottish Labour leader, yet perhaps he is gearing up to be a less partisan figure in the constitutional debate…

Scottish Labour has many things to learn about Scotland and its voters, however Guido reckons they should prioritise learning one fact: that Regus-serviced office walls in Glasgow aren’t soundproof, and bear this in mind next time they hold a big election strategy briefing. One co-conspirator happened to be in the room next door to Scottish Labour’s big meeting and diligently transcribed it through the wall for Guido readers…

Despite Richard Leonard’s public confidence, telling the New Statesman this morning that “I’m not contemplating loss” of seats in the 2021 election, the party’s Scottish organisers are very much accepting they are in “losses” territory for next year. Private polling has revealed the SNP and Scottish Tories are close to their “structural target ceiling of target voters” whereas Labour is “closer to their structural floor.” Labour admitting they have a floor of support north of the border is presumptive…

Guido also learns Labour privately acknowledge that 2021 losses in Scotland will make Starmer’s route to power near-impossible, requiring the party to win seats like Jacob Rees-Mogg’s North East Somerset with a Tory majority of 14,729 to find a path to No. 10. The best the Scottish party is hoping for next year is to leapfrog the Tories into a very distant 2nd place behind the SNP…

According to Labour’s pollster, part of Labour’s failure to recover in Scotland is due to voters seeing Labour and the SNP as indistinguishable on issues other than the constitution; with Scottish Labour losing “young, hardcore Remain young mothers in the central belt”. 

When it comes to the 2021 campaign, Scottish Labour will focus on three promises aligned to three main priorities of “middle Scotland” with a “line” on the constitution. Most likely along the lines of “Covid plan, Jobs plan, NHS plan”…

Looking again ahead to 2024, Guido learns Scottish Labour will float a formal federal devolution settlement for the party’s election manifesto. After the call ended, the organisers were heard joking about how their main worry is stopping the SNP stealing their ideas – Guido can’t imagine that’s a top desire of the Nats…