IT MUST have felt like a nightmare for Anas Sarwar last Sunday morning. The very week that the Scottish Labour Party is to meet and in effect launch its bid for power in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections, the Sunday Times published a Norstat poll that would give Scottish Labour its worst result in the forthcoming elections since the inception of the Scottish parliament in 1999.  

According to the poll, only 18 per cent of the Scottish electorate said they would vote for Labour, giving them 18 seats, four fewer than they currently have.

By contrast the SNP would win 55 seats, and the Greens 10, giving a narrow pro-independence majority of one. The good news is the Tories would lose 13 of their 31 MSPs, giving them, like Labour, 18 seats.

The awful news is that Reform would win 15 seats from a standing start.

The Morning Star has tracked the downward trajectory of the Scottish Labour Party polling since the heady days of July, when something approaching optimism about an incoming Labour government in Westminster, pushed Scottish Labour’s numbers close to double that of Sunday’s poll.

It is pretty obvious to any observer why there has been such a decline. 

Optimism about a Labour victory was misplaced — not the result, the consequences. Any hopes that Labour in power would act to redress the social inequality unleashed by the Tories’ unbridled capitalist excesses were quickly quelled as a flood of regressive measures flowed from the increasingly unpopular head of the British Labour Party, Keir Starmer.

And here is the trap that Sarwar is now caught in. He cannot do what he would need to do to get the Scottish electorate, and in particular the Scottish working class — now firmly wedded to the SNP — back on-side and that is to denounce the politics of the leader of his own party and support a progressive manifesto for change in Scotland.

The hopelessness of his position is clear in an interview he gave to the Westminster Parliament’s House Magazine. He understands that what British Labour does will determine whether Scottish Labour has any prospect of success in 2026.

He outlines four areas where, he argues, British Labour has to deliver if Scottish Labour is to prevail: it has to deliver the New Deal for Working People; it has to prioritise growth; it has to ensure we have GB Energy headquartered in Scotland; it has got to promote “brand Scotland” to the world.

Before commenting on what the electorate might be expecting as opposed to what Sarwar is offering, let us accept for a moment that Sarwar is correct that British Labour needs to succeed in these areas in order for Scottish Labour to flourish.

Sarwar is on shaky ground on all four. While it impossible for a Labour government to offer nothing to its big trade union supporters, especially when is pursuing economic growth, nevertheless there is continued concern among the trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party that the Labour leadership’s consultation with business will dilute this legislation. 

Certainly, the recent anti-regulation rhetoric of Rachel Reeves and Starmer runs counter to the original thrust of the Bill that challenged the idea that Britain should be a low-cost, deregulated economy. Consequently, this may be another millstone for Sarwar’s neck.

Growth, as the experience of the Democratic Party in the US has just demonstrated, only means increased income for workers if it is accompanied by measures to ensure redistribution of wealth. 

The usual measure of growth, gross domestic product (GDP), includes not just wages, but profit, interest and rent. 

For example, between the years of 2010 and 2015, GDP increased but average wages fell. Nor is there strong evidence that Reeves’s measures will, in any case, lead to growth and even if they do, and a strengthened union movement pushes up wages, it will take some time for that to feed through the Scottish economy.

Similarly, Sarwar looking to GB Energy as a measure of success for British and hence Scottish Labour is a bit of a mystery.   

GB Energy will not generate or supply power, instead it will facilitate investment in clean energy projects. 

Only this month its new chairman, Juergen Maier, said it was going to be a very long-term project and that delivering Labour’s promise of 1,000 new energy jobs in Scotland could take 20 years. Being located in Aberdeen while it is not generating anything very much in terms of energy or jobs is cold comfort for the Scots voter.

“Brand Scotland — our amazing food and drink creative industries, and tourism and hospitality — has an immense soft power abroad, while creating jobs at home,” Sarwar told the press. 

I am sure that his enthusiasm will be good news for companies like Diageo. It owns leading Scotch whisky brands including Johnnie Walker, J&B and Buchanan’s and has captured some 40 per cent of the global Scotch whisky market. It had a bad year in 2024, its sales fell to only £16 billion — down from £17.1bn in 2023.

Its shares are owned by a number of investors, with the top three including two Canadian asset management companies and one US bank. They will be the real beneficiaries of “brand Scotland” promotion. 

Diageo is not alone. Nearly 70 per cent of malt whisky distilleries are ultimately owned by companies outside Scotland.

Rather than helping them make more money, Labour should be demanding more in corporate taxes. At least Diageo workers are unionised; that cannot be said for many in the tourism and hospitality sectors where work is precarious. 

Brand Scotland’s success or otherwise will have little impact on the vast majority of the Scottish population and their voting intentions.

Where Starmer really could have helped Scottish Labour win is by getting rid of the two-child benefit cap, restoring the winter fuel payment, compensating the Women Against State Pension Inequality, giving the Scottish Parliament borrowing powers and saving the Grangemouth refinery. 

But Sarwar did not list these and Starmer would not, in any case, have delivered them, which no doubt explains Sarwar’s omissions and the impossibility of his position. He’s caught in a trap.

Vince Mills is joint secretary of Radical Options for Scotland and Europe (Rose).