ANAS Sarwar has been branded a “desperate leader of a desperate party” ahead of his speech to Labour conference on Monday.
The Scottish Labour leader is due to tell his party’s conference that Scotland is being “held back” by the SNP government.
He will say that it is “time up for the SNP,” which he says offer nothing but “internal division and outward incompetence”.
Labour’s first party conference as a new government has been so far overshadowed by a row around donations as Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves (below) and Angela Rayner gave in to pressure to stop accepting clothes as free gifts.
Speaking to the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme, SNP MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens Dave Doogan was asked about Sarwar’s claim the SNP are “holding Scotland back”.
“I’d say that’s a desperate line applied by a desperate leader of a desperate party in Scotland,” the MP said.
He then went on to discuss Labour’s cuts to universal Winter Fuel payments in England and Wales – a move which the Scottish Government said it had no choice but to replicate.
“You say that the Scottish Government is introducing its own cut to the Winter Fuel Payment but of course as voters in Scotland realise, the UK Budget is not effected by the Scottish Budget,” he said.
Host Lucy White told Doogan the Scottish Government had still made a “political” decision to which the MP hit back, saying it was a “fiscal” one.
“It’s kind of a moot decision if the money’s not there which it’s not because Angela Rayner removed it from the Scottish Budget when she took the Winter Fuel Payment off pensioners in the rest of the United Kingdom.
“The Scottish Government can’t magic money. It has to come in a budget grant from the United Kingdom.”
When it was put to Doogan that the Scottish Government has gone its own way before, he said it had tried to “mitigate” the impact of Westminster’s decisions for 17 years but that this “has its limits”.
He added: “If we want to invest £160 million, it should have been coming as a consequence of people across the rest of the UK getting their Winter Fuel Payment.
“Where is that money going to come from? Anas Sarwar [above] can’t tell us. But he’s very happy to point out that it could come from somewhere but he won’t say where.
“So Anas Sarwar is trying to shore up Labour’s credibility in Scotland but of course people in Scotland aren’t daft and they realise that he is the principal defender here of the indefensible at Westminster.
“That’s the story of the UK as old as time and voters in Scotland were probably giving Unionist ambition one last throw of the dice in 2024 at that Westminster election but they see now Westminster never changes and the only way to get proper administration in Scotland is with the full powers of independence.”
Sarwar is expected to say: “It is clear that Scotland is crying out for change after years of SNP and Tory failure.
“We might have got rid of one incompetent government at the general election, but in Scotland another incompetent government remains in power.
“Scotland is a country of enormous potential and is brimming with talent.
“But we are still held back by an SNP government that is failing Scots on a daily basis and that has nothing but decline and division to offer the people.”
