STV NewsAnas Sarwar has said Andy Burnham’s comments about the First Minister during a Labour conference speech weren’t an attack, and added the SNP should work with him to defeat Reform.
The former Scottish Labour leader, who stood down in July to take up a place in the House of Lords, has also hailed Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s vision for the UK following his conference speech on Tuesday.
Burnham took to the stage in Liverpool to unveil plans for a national care service and announced changes to the triple pension lock.
He also revealed that John Swinney called him the last Prime Minister of the UK on the day his father died.
Following Burnham’s speech, Anas Sarwar told STV News he felt “emotional” after Burnham’s speech, and said the Prime Minister will “put his heart and soul into the job”.
‘The SNP have an opportunity to defeat Reform’
Sarwar said: “I feel as if he’s given us our heart back, and I think he’s shown a vulnerability today that I think too often too many leaders don’t like to show or don’t want to show.
“I think it shows he really cares and that he’s determined to put his heart and soul into the job, not for the sake of having the title but for the sake of actually changing our country and getting different outcomes for people.”
Referencing Burnham’s comments about Swinney, Sarwar reiterated that it wasn’t a “political attack”, but a demonstration of how strongly the Prime Minister feels about the United Kingdom.
“The comments he made about John Swinney weren’t to have a political attack, I think it was more to demonstrate how it made him feel and how he thinks as a leader.
“I think John Swinney and the SNP have an opportunity – they can either choose to work with someone like Andy Burnham to defeat the politics of Reform, or they can choose to frustrate and inadvertently help the politics of Reform.
“I think we can all see that too many parts of our country feel left behind, too many people feel neglected, and we’ve got a Prime Minister who wants to change that, and I hope we have a Scottish Government that wants to change that too.”
‘I failed in bid to become FM’
Asked if he feels he left Scottish Labour “in the lurch” by stepping down as leader to become a trade minister at Westminster, Sarwar admitted he had “failed” in his ambition to become First Minister, but had a new focus now.
He said: “I’ve got every confidence in Michael Marra and I’m sure that he will continue to take the Scottish Labour Party from strength to strength and he has my full and unequivocal support.
“I’ve got a different role now in terms of what I feel is the big challenge facing our country. Of course, my aspiration was to win an election in Scotland, and I failed in that aspiration.
“But what’s my aspiration now, what’s my ambition now? It’s to make sure Andy Burnham succeeds and to make sure this country never gets a Reform government. That’s the politics of poison and hopelessness that I want us to defeat, and Burnham is our best chance for that.”
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