Anas Sarwar's first minister dream slips as Labour falters
Anas Sarwar is campaigning across Scotland while Scottish Labour’s hopes of turning its 2024 general election surge into Holyrood power are fading. He was at an emergency services roadshow on the edge of Loch Lomond, where he announced a new mental health policy and walked past an ambulance for campaign photographs.
The party won 37 seats in the 2024 general election, mostly from the SNP, on a 16.7 per cent swing. But it is now struggling to convert that Westminster success into MSPs and control of the Scottish Parliament, even as Sarwar’s ambition of becoming first minister has moved from touching distance to a position that looks much harder to reach.
Loch Lomond campaign stop
At the Loch Lomond event, Sarwar’s bright red battle bus carried his smiling face, and his personal social media manager operated a camera drone while he walked the streets. The setting matched the message: he was selling a fresh policy announcement while trying to hold attention on a campaign that now has to deliver more than last year’s Westminster gains.
Sarwar had already publicly disavowed Keir Starmer before campaigning began. That distance has become part of the backdrop to his effort in Scotland, where Labour MSPs have described Starmer as “electoral kryptonite.”
Starmer and Scottish Labour
That split matters because Labour’s national position is affecting the party’s pitch north of the border. In Scotland, the Prime Minister is now less popular than Nigel Farage, and Reform UK thinks it is in with a chance of winning second place.
For Sarwar, the immediate test is no longer whether he can point to the 2024 result as proof of momentum. It is whether Scottish Labour can translate 37 Westminster seats into a stronger position at Holyrood, where the party still has to win enough MSPs to put control of the parliament within reach.
Holyrood and Westminster
The contrast with 2010 is sharp inside the party, which described the 2024 general election as its best result since then. That history has not stopped the current slide in expectations, with Sarwar campaigning as the practical challenge shifts from winning support to holding it together long enough to matter in the next Scottish contest.
For voters, the immediate takeaway is simple: Sarwar is still trying to sell Labour as a governing force in Scotland, but the path from Westminster breakthrough to first minister has narrowed fast, and every stop like Loch Lomond now has to do more work than a standard campaign visit.
