Wednesday, April 15, 2026

The question that Anas Sarwar now needs to answer

The Scottish Labour party and its allies, including Paul Hutcheon of the Daily Record and Professor James Mitchell (who is increasingly dropping the pretence of being anything other than a Labour propagandist), have today been doubling down on the idea - which I don't think anyone in their heart of hearts truly believes - that Malcolm Offord's claim that Anas Sarwar approached him about a post-election deal is an outright lie.  That is very hard to square with an article in the Scotsman from only two weeks ago in which a Labour source was saying that Sarwar wanted to form a government from second place with the help of Reform MSPs.

If Sarwar wants his denial to have any credibility, particularly his pious suggestion that it is somehow unimaginable that a decent man like himself would have anything to do with a monster like Offord, it will surely now be necessary for him to explicitly rule out forming a minority government with the votes of Reform MSPs.  It's no longer good enough for him to say, as he and others have done in the past, that he cannot control how Reform MSPs vote in the election for First Minister, and that it is fine for him to simply accept the result of that vote.  He must definitively rule out serving as First Minister on that basis, because irrespective of whether there is a Labour-Reform deal written down on paper, a Labour minority government arithmetically dependent on Reform votes to sustain itself will be a Labour government beholden to the politics of Reform.

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10 comments:

  1. The Quisling Daily Redcoat being the Quisling Daily Redcoat cant help itself. I am surprised they havent endorsed the English NAZI Parties Reform or Restore yet.

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  2. Always a strange one when Hutcheon moved to the daily record and his Ulster pal moved from there to Dundee .Still the pro labour Brits cannot get away from the Vow and how it was dropped immediately. Even after Brexit many of the laws and responsibilities which were to be returned to this nation are held by London. Now Sarwar got outed. Labour/reform/tories one in the same.

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  3. I have no time for either Offord or Sarwar. However, when it comes to lying, Sarwar has no competition. He has been proven to be a compulsive liar in Holyrood for years, especially over the last few months.

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    1. We could only hope so, but there IS a competitor lurking behind the curtain - and it's Sarwar's own campaign co-chair.

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  4. Aye, Clegg bites are dangerous. Still both he and Hutcheon are made for each other. They alternate on the bbc when they need a labour spokesperson, Free Press is a joke in Scotland.

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    1. In what way is the lack of a free press in Scotland amusing? I think it's a very serious and alarming matter, and certainly not a joke.

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  5. Kenny farq is a hilarious hack as well.
    Not a year ago he was bigging up Sarwar and now it's "Swinney's to lose" so that anything short of a majority will be a failure.

    Forever telling us how we're really no different to down south yet cant fathom why a party, tired as many believe them to be, still are winning after twenty years. Not curious why that may be Kenny?

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    1. Cos Farq is a Brit Nat and thinks like one based in Londonium.

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  6. The Telegraph reports major MRP poll from JL Partners.
    SNP 67 seats (including Regional contribution), Labour 19, RefUK 17, Con 10, Green 9, LibDem 7.

    No Scottish data tables on JL Partners website, but tables for England & Wales are up.
    Field work 31st March - 13th April.
    Welsh population sample 2,050 (respondents 18+), that would make Scottish sample 3,577 pro rata before top up for voters in 16 to 18 age bracket.

    Senedd seat projection by Cavendish Consulting.
    Plaid Cymru 38, RefUK 29, Lab 17, Con 8, LibDem & Green on 2 each.
    Outright majority for Plaid Cymru.

    Back to the as yet unpublished Scottish data tables. The Bar chart on the front page of The Telegraph shows SNP with 6 or 7 Regional seats, taking them over the 65 seat threshold to an outright majority. It would be interesting to see where these seats are derived from given the large number of Constituency seats. Also, the Greens do not do well on this projection (only 9 seats, a mere increase of two).

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  7. Bipedal weasel Wes Streeting’s assertion that Labour holding the vast majority of Scottish, Westminster seats voids the legitimacy of a second Independence referendum ain’t the gotcha he thinks it is. Labour in Scotland will be wiped out at the next Westminster election, to be replaced wholesale by the SNP.
    Streeting plays for time. By the time a Westminster election cannot be postponed any longer, Streeting (and the rest of the Spookocracy) will have engineered a pretext to cancel the election. A national security crisis. Probably war with the Russian Federation. Although given the state of the UK military, that will likely be a very short conflict indeed.

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