Scottish Labour spies opportunity in SNP turmoil

Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scotland’s Labour party, has accused members of the Scottish National party of trying to “cover up their failings in office” as he seeks to boost support ahead of a possible by-election in coming weeks.

In a speech in Glasgow South West, a key target that Labour lost by just 60 votes in 2017, Sarwar accused the SNP of having an “obsession” with independence and presiding over “utter chaos” after the sudden resignation in February of first minister and party leader Nicola Sturgeon.

Since Sturgeon’s departure, police investigating the party’s finances have arrested her husband and ex-party boss Peter Murrell, erected a large tent in the couple’s front garden and taken evidence bags away from the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh.

Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s replacement, has also had to acknowledge that the SNP’s auditors quit more than six months ago and the party is yet to appoint a replacement.

Murrell resigned last month after the SNP admitted it had 30,000 fewer members than it had previously claimed. In the police probe into party finances, he was held in custody for more than 11 hours before being released without charge pending further investigation.

Sarwar is hoping to take advantage of the turmoil ahead of a possible by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West after the parliamentary standards committee recommended the 30-day suspension of the seat’s SNP MP, Margaret Ferrier for breaching Covid lockdown rules.

“Quite clearly there is the potential for a recall petition [and] a realistic hope of there being a by-election,” Sarwar said on Monday.

Labour was left with just a single MP in Scotland after the SNP seized six of its seats in the 2019 general election and needs to regain substantial ground there if it is to win a majority in Westminster at the next general election.

Since Sturgeon resigned, the SNP’s lead over Labour has nearly halved to seven percentage points and Labour’s leadership believes that its current poll rating of around 30 per cent would deliver about a dozen Westminster seats in Scotland.

Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde university, said Labour was enjoying a bounce in opinion polls because of the SNP’s difficulties. “We’re at the point where the Labour party could actually begin to think about picking up significant numbers of seats,” he said.

He added that current polling suggested that Labour could gain as many as 15 seats in Westminster in a general election, which would have a “significant” impact on its ability to secure an overall majority in the Commons.

As Yousaf tried to move on from the controversy surrounding his party, he was poised on Tuesday to postpone the introduction of a contentious bottle deposit return scheme (DRS).

Many Scottish food and drinks companies have warned that as currently designed, the system, which aims to encourage recycling, would be unworkable and too expensive.

The Scottish government said: “Industry has made welcome progress in preparing for the scheme and we recognise that challenges remain. We are listening to businesses and are working hard to identify further options to support them, especially small producers. We will update parliament in due course.”

Yousaf’s political opponents, meanwhile, called for Sturgeon to be suspended from the SNP after a leaked video clip from two years ago showed the former first minister playing down concerns about the party’s financial situation raised during a virtual internal meeting.

“Just be very careful, all of us, about suggestions there are problems with the party’s finances,” she said in the footage published by the Sunday Mail. “We depend on donors . . . There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances.”

Police have since launched an investigation into the SNP, relating to claims from donors that it spent hundreds of thousands of pounds earmarked for a future independence referendum on other things.

Craig Hoy, chair of the Scottish Conservatives, said the clip was “damning”. “This is a serious enough issue for Nicola Sturgeon to be suspended whilst these issues are fully investigated,” he told the BBC.

But Ian Blackford, an SNP MP, said “there was nothing in any way untoward” about Sturgeon’s remarks and that the party was “solvent”. “We’re able to meet our liabilities,” he said.