Sarwar’s Big Bet: Can Breaking with Starmer Reset Scottish Labour’s Election Campaign?

Anas Sarwar’s call this week for Keir Starmer to resign has become the most discussed moment of the Scottish Parliament election campaign so far. His intervention has been variously described as bold, reckless, strategic, necessary, and everything in between.

What it unquestionably has done is put Sarwar at the centre of the political conversation and reflects the position Scottish Labour now finds itself in.

Back in October, I wrote about the challenge facing Scottish Labour: a party led in Scotland by someone whose public profile remained somewhat limited, tied to a UK leadership whose standing was fragile. That dynamic has only hardened.

Scottish Parliament election polling in recent months shows Labour slipping from the stronger position it briefly occupied after the General Election. A poll from More in Common from 4 February puts Labour at 18% on the constituency vote, down from the 30% recorded immediately after the election, underlining the dramatic fall in popularity that the party has seen since taking the reins at Westminster.

A deeper look at vote intention helps explain the urgency. YouGov’s January data suggests that only 32% of those who backed Scottish Labour in 2024 currently intend to do so again in May. The remainder are heading in different directions: 14% towards Reform UK, 13% to the SNP, and 4–6% each to the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens. A further 21% remain undecided. This fragmentation highlights a fundamental challenge: Labour is not losing voters to a single rival but to all of them, and a significant portion of people who voted for them less than two years ago are undecided about what to do come May.

The situation is compounded by the UK leadership’s standing in Scotland. Starmer’s popularity sits at 17% favourable against 74% unfavourable, a net rating of –57. For a Scottish party already struggling to gain popularity, proximity to such numbers is difficult to manage. Sarwar’s intervention can therefore be seen as an attempt to distance Scottish Labour from perceptions of a UK leadership that many voters have already turned away from.

Yet Sarwar’s own ratings cannot be ignored. Only 18% of Scots currently have a favourable view of him, compared with 52% who view him unfavourably. Among Labour’s 2024 voters, 45% say they view him negatively, compared with 31% who view him positively. The most striking figure, though, is that 29% of the public say they “don’t know”. For a party leader, who 18 months ago was being pitched as a First Minister in waiting, heading into an election, that level of uncertainty is unusually high. It creates space for perceptions to shift, but also means any intervention carries the risk of solidifying views in the wrong direction. One effect of this week’s move, good or bad, is that it is likely that more people will now feel that they have a view on him and Scottish Labour will hope this becomes separated from views on Starmer.

A further part of the thinking behind this move is a desire to redirect the campaign towards Scottish issues and the record of the Scottish Government. The same YouGov polling shows that only 25% of adults approve of the Scottish Government’s record, and among Labour’s 2024 voters the figure drops to 14%. For the UK Government, the approval figure among the same group is 17%.

In other words, voters who supported Labour less than two years ago now take a largely negative view of both governments: 72% of them disapprove of the Scottish Government’s record, compared with 68% who disapprove of the UK Government.

It means a sizeable group of voters are simultaneously unconvinced by the SNP’s performance in government and uncomfortable with the direction of the UK Labour leadership. For a party trying to attract voters back to them, that creates an opening. As we noted earlier, these voters are now spread across various parties or none and therefore may be willing to reconsider their options.

The challenge, of course, is that they are also sceptical, dissatisfied with what they see but not yet persuaded by the alternatives. Sarwar’s move can therefore be seen as an attempt to position Scottish Labour as the credible home for this unsettled group: distinct from Westminster, focused on Scottish issues, and able to draw sharper contrasts with the Scottish Government. If any part of the electorate is in play, it is this one.

Even if Sarwar succeeds in shifting the debate towards Scottish issues, Labour still faces questions about whether it is trusted to deliver. Our own polling (conducted for OEUK) at the end of last year showed that across key areas such as the economy, energy, the NHS, immigration and the cost of living, the SNP continues to be seen as the party most likely to deliver the best outcomes, though “none of the above” regularly outperformed any single party. That to say, signalling a break away from the UK Government will likely not be enough on its own to shift the dial.

Taking all of this together, Sarwar’s intervention is easier to understand. Labour’s polling position has weakened. Its former voters are splitting in multiple directions. Starmer’s ratings make association with the UK leadership a problem, yet Sarwar’s own profile remains underdeveloped. Meanwhile, there is evidence that voters are willing to look again at the alternatives but remain unconvinced by all parties. Against that backdrop, doing nothing might have carried its own risks.

Whether this move ultimately helps Scottish Labour recover lost ground, or simply creates another layer of uncertainty, will become clearer when the next wave of polling arrives. For now, what can be said with confidence is that it has reshaped the conversation and forced voters to look again at Sarwar and his strategy. The question is whether that attention turns into trust, and ultimately into votes.