No wonder 'Janus-faced' Anas Sarwar is feeling the pressure

The euphoria that accompanied the party’s landslide victory in June’s General Election, the ditching of the feeble and discredited Rwanda migrant policy, and Sir Keir Starmer’s sure-footed handling on the summer riots, all now seem like ancient history.

Irrespective of the detail of his early policy decisions - that axing the fuel subsidy helped to offset the ending of years of disruptive and financially damaging strikes in the health service and on the railways or that politicians of all parties have always accepted gifts and donations - a defining narrative has now been set.

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Just as Tony Blair’s reputation never recovered from his exempting Formula One from a ban on tobacco advertising just months after he entered Downing Street in 1997, so Sir Keir’s sheen of ethical rectitude has been irredeemably tarnished by a series of tawdry revelations.

Blair’s decision was perceived as a backhand to racing boss Bernie Ecclestone for his £1 million donation to New Labour and, similarly, the new Prime Minister is now seen as in hock to an assortment of backscratchers and palm greasers, chief among them the party’s wealthy donor, Lord Alli.

The man whose electoral success was built on successfully portraying the Conservatives as out-of-touch and in it for themselves - as operating one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else - has been undone in short order by getting someone else to buy his clothes and provide him with lavish lifestyle perks.

In cutting the winter fuel allowance, Sir Keir is characterised as a leader who favours the welfare of affluent, middle-class professionals and £80,000-a-year train drivers over vulnerable pensioners, some of whom will die this winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes.

South of the Border, there is no great sense of panic in the corridors of power. We are in the earliest days of a new government and Labour has five years to recover the initiative. Despite Sir Keir’s personal popularity suffering a significant drop in recent weeks, the Conservatives continue to look like a spent force who will be out of government for a generation.

In Scotland, however, things are markedly different. With the next Holyrood election less than two years away, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is already feeling the sweat gathering on the back of his neck.

Following a period of gains for his party, recent opinion polls show a worrying shift in support, with Scottish Labour now trailing the SNP, highlighting the volatility of the electorate north of the Border.

Party strategists recognise the growing level of public discontent over the fuel cut, particularly given Scotland’s harsher climate and higher prevalence of poorly insulated homes.

However, efforts to navigate the controversy has served only to focus attention on an inherent contradiction at the heart of Sarwar’s prospectus for government.

Until now he has been able to take a Janus-faced position, presenting the SNP as both fiscally profligate and socially conservative.

Despite criticising the nationalists’ over-spending and poor delivery, he supported policies that caused the greatest budget pressures, including public sector pay deals, council tax freezes and £5.3billion in additional social security spending, that contributed to a £1billion black hole in Scottish Government finances.

Earlier this year Sarwar suggested, pejoratively, that the SNP has moved further to the right under the leadership of John Swinney, compared with his predecessors. At the weekend, it was suggested Scottish Labour would use new Holyrood powers, due to come into force in October next year, to reinstate the winter fuel allowance for up to 770,000 pensioners.

While this single measure may be popular, it presents a dilemma for voters looking for a credible alternative to the past two decades of populist mismanagement under the SNP.

In response to questions about which of the SNP’s spending decisions he might reverse to fill the black hole, the best that Sarwar can offer for now is that he will provide more competent government to help boost economic growth, while at the same time promising tax cuts.

But he has not explained how he will grow the economy and there is no evidence that he, nor any of his ministers, has the ability or understanding to do so.

In such a vacuum, the most likely outcome is a rise in popularity of smaller parties. Already, we have seen a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK north of the Border, putting it neck-and-neck with the Tories, despite having next to no campaigning presence in the country.

There has been a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK north of the Border (Image: BBC/PA)

The peculiar voting system at Holyrood has previously elevated fringe parties to positions of influence that are out of proportion to their size or level of support in the country.

In 2002, the Scottish Socialist Party returned a bloc of six MSPs and in this parliament the Greens’ power-sharing arrangement with the SNP was at least partly culpable for the unpopularity of the current government.

The dilemma for voters is partly a result of the New Labour government in 1997 engineering an expediency to mitigate against a single party gaining an overall majority at Holyrood, specifically to avoid the prospect of the SNP bulldozing through an independence referendum.

The main difference between then and now is the comparative volatility of the electorate. In the absence of an unlikely resurgence by the Scottish Tories, it was envisaged that one of two main parties - Scottish Labour or the SNP - would always be regarded as preferable to the other.

No-one, it seems, stopped to think what might happen if both were equally unpopular -  that a failed SNP government at Holyrood co-existed with a failing Labour government at Westminster - and that a more demanding and capricious electorate was presented with a Hobson’s choice that satisfied none but a minority of diehards.

Scotland has always been a country of political hegemonies but now it seems we are entering unchartered waters. The future will depend on politicians in either parliament offering something worth voting for, or on voters lowering their expectations. Whatever way, it’s not a future that looks bright, whether it’s the red of Labour or the yellow of the SNP.

Carlos Alba is a journalist, author, and PR consultant at Carlos Alba Media. His latest novel, There’s a Problem with Dad, explores the issue of undiagnosed autism among older people.