Why Anas Sarwar's attack on Keir Starmer was delusional and hypocritical
Both Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar have made bad errors of misjudgment about Peter Mandelson
Keir Starmer should not be Prime Minister. This opinion is not new, for it has been held by many people for a long time.
Many warned before the general election that it would be a mistake. Many more joined the growing calls for him to go when the first Budget broke the promises about protecting pensioners and not cutting taxes for working people. Starmer approved that Budget – way back in October 2024.
Every month since then – 15 in all – more and more people have been joining the number of those who thought Starmer should not be Prime Minister. With every flip-flop on policy, every U-turn on pledges, more voters began to say he should not be Prime Minister.
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£35bn Chagos Island farce
My own particular incomprehension of Starmer’s bizarre approach to politics came with his pledge to hand over the Chagos Islands, a sovereign British archipelago that forms the British Indian Ocean Territories, to the far larger island of Mauritius – and pay those friends of China and Russia £35 billion for the privilege.
Putting our national defence and security interests at risk on the flimsy basis of an advisory judgment of a court that carries no authority on the island’s sovereignty showed Starmer at his most technocratically detached from Britain’s priorities.
It ignored the fact that the court’s ruling did not apply to the Commonwealth. Even more absurdly, it was against the wishes of the Chagossians who had previously been moved by the UK Government to live in Britain and have protested they do not wish to be part of Mauritius.
Starmer must own Mandelson mistake
Yet Starmer would listen to no one – like he has not on so many issues, until he is forced into a U-turn. Starmer’s popularity ratings became the worst-ever recorded for a Prime Minister – and that was before the latest revelations about the closeness of Peter Mandelson’s relationship to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It was not enough that Starmer should sack Mandelson from his position of British Ambassador to the US last year – it was after all as Prime Minister that Starmer appointed him in the first place. It does not matter who advised Starmer that the persuasive Mandelson might make a “good fit” for dealing with Donald Trump – although they too should not hold any office in Downing Street.
Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, fell on his sword for recommending his old friend Mandelson but also claimed it was not he that was responsible for the vetting process. The reality is the buck stops with the person making the decision – advisors advise, but ministers decide.
Taking up the role of Brutus, Anas Sarwar chose to plunge the knife into Starmer’s back on the grounds that the row over Mandelson’s original appointment (when many people were pointing to the peer’s known friendship with Epstein) was getting in the way of Labour defeating the SNP. What a bizarre, disconnected, deluded and hypocritical statement it was.
Labour’s broken promises
Excuse me Mr Sarwar, the reason people have been deserting Labour is because of the sense of betrayal resulting from Starmer’s promises being abandoned, the repeated policy reversals, all the let-downs, fibs, white lies and deceptions that, put together, have shaped the narrative of Starmer’s time in Downing Street.
The PM’s misjudgment over Mandelson’s appointment – which was ultimately his and his alone – was just one of many examples that have turned people against Labour in Scotland.
Sarwar’s betrayal of his boss is disconnected from reality because it does not recognise the rot in Labour goes far deeper than Starmer. It is deluded because Sarwar thinks that by creating distance from Starmer and being one of the first to do so, he will save Scottish Labour from its fate, when the greater likelihood is that the public will see it for what it is, a last-ditch attempt to create some trust and credibility with the Scottish people that it does not deserve to have.
‘My old friend’
It is hypocritical in the extreme for Sarwar to have called for Starmer to go – on the grounds of his misjudgment in appointing Mandelson – when, on April 5 last year, Sarwar himself posted on his social media X account, “It was great to catch up with my old friend and the UK’s (relatively!) new Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson @UKinUSA.”
In calling Mandelson “my old friend”, Sarwar was clearly supporting the appointment and added a photo of them both smiling and shaking hands.
What about that misjudgment, Mr Sarwar? When will we be hearing the calls for Sarwar to resign on the basis of his misjudged old friendship with Mandelson?
Likewise, it was Gordon Brown who elevated Mandelson in 2008 to become a Lord so he might serve as Business Secretary – a position he held until Labour’s defeat in 2010. Labour cannot duck this scandal.
The debacle and scandal over Epstein’s old friendships with Labour party figures still has more to run. There are more e-mails to be read, more scandals to emerge – with a likely source being messages between Mandelson, Starmer and others while the former was British Ambassador. These run the risk of damaging the working relationship with the United States and President Donald Trump in particular.
The public can see it has been lied to many times by the Labour leadership which appointed Mandelson despite repeated warnings and then defended him during his tenure. Starmer and Sarwar are joined at the hip, and neither can wash their hands of their associations with “old friends”.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org
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