Anas Sarwar has accused SNP leadership candidates of having no mandate to govern Scotland and challenged the winner to hold a Holyrood election.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mail, the Labour leader warned of a “chaotic and divided administration with the wheels coming off” in the face of a deepening cost-of-living and NHS crisis. He dismissed Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and former community safety minister Ash Regan as “woeful” replacements for Nicola Sturgeon as first minister and insisted: “I’ll take any of them.”
He said: “I remember the SNP rightly questioning the Conservative Party’s mandate when there appeared to be a revolving door at Downing Street. Now we have a revolving door at Bute House and I question the mandate and authority of whoever becomes the next SNP leader. The candidates are desperately trying to distance themselves from the record of the outgoing leadership while trashing commitments made.
