Anas Sarwar calls Reform leader a liar over claims Labour wanted deal to oust SNP

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has insisted claims from Reform UK that he tried to strike a deal with them to “remove the SNP” are “absolute nonsense” and a “desperate lie”.

Sarwar hit out after Lord Malcolm Offord after the leader of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in Scotland claimed Labour wanted to work with them to oust the SNP from power.

Responding to claims that a Reform candidate wanted to deport Sarwar’s children, Lord Offord said the Scottish Labour leader’s remarks did “not square with you coming up to me at the start of this campaign, bouncing up to me in Paisley Town Hall and saying we need to work together, Reform and Labour, to remove the SNP”.

The Scottish Labour leader called Lord Offord a liar and said that on the day in question Sarwar went on national television and called the Reform leader a “pathetic, poisonous, odious little man”.

The clash came as Lord Offord came under fire over his party’s billboard adverts, which showed a small boat with asylum seekers under the slogan “Scotland is at breaking point”.

First Minister and SNP leader John Swinney said the poster had “incited tension and division”.

Lord Offord said: “The idea of that billboard was to say illegal asylum seekers, they come into England, but they come to Scotland, they come to Glasgow.”

He added: “What Reform is doing is honestly reflecting the views of local Scottish people, especially in our working class communities who feel they are being pushed to the back of the queue.”