185. Can Labour Win Back Scotland? (Anas Sarwar)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics: Leading

Episode 185: Can Labour Win Back Scotland? (Anas Sarwar)
Date: April 19, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart
Guest: Anas Sarwar (Leader of Scottish Labour)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart are joined by Anas Sarwar, Leader of Scottish Labour, just weeks before the crucial Scottish Parliament elections. The discussion dives deep into Sarwar's personal and political journey, challenges facing Scotland, Labour's positioning versus the SNP, and the broader themes of leadership, identity, extremism, and optimism in the face of political despair.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Anas Sarwar’s Backstory and Motivation

[04:05]–[09:56]

• Raised in a political and entrepreneurial household; his father, Mohammad Sarwar, was Britain’s first Muslim MP.
• Early experiences of racism and threats from far-right groups, leading to a distaste for elected politics.
• “The idea of being in politics really, really repulsed me.” – Anas Sarwar [06:52]
• Became a dentist, influenced by seeing the effects of poverty and inequality firsthand, which reignited his drive for public service.
• Decision to enter politics sparked by both his observations in the NHS and encouragement from friends seeking more diverse Labour candidates.

2. Experiences with Racism and Islamophobia: Personal and Political

[09:56]–[15:35]

• Sarwar describes a childhood incident involving a death threat from Combat 18.
• Discusses current and recent attacks from populist parties like Reform, with personal smears and xenophobic ads targeting his identity.
• “This weaponization of faith... That’s not how humans are. For me, faith has always been something that brings people together.” – Anas Sarwar [11:31]
• He argues that identity politics and the “us vs them” narrative are the main divides, emphasizing the need to confront this “politics of despair.”

3. Education Crisis and Reform in Scotland

[19:19]–[24:57]

• Scottish education, once exemplary, is now facing declining standards and increasing additional support needs (ASN).
• Sarwar promises radical reform: more support staff, a ban on mobile phones in classrooms, maintaining exams but changing “the culture,” and breaking the social divide in outcomes.
• Acknowledges controversy over private schooling for his own children, states personal decisions don’t dilute his commitment to improving state education.

4. Labour’s Economic & Business Approach for Scotland

[25:40]–[29:35]

• Sarwar stresses entrepreneurial background and the importance of economic growth alongside state investment.
• “You only get social change if it’s backed up with a strong, growing economy. So I will always be an economics first politician.” – Anas Sarwar [25:40]
• Lays out plans: lowering tax burden (“tax rates are too high in Scotland”), reforming business rates, streamlining planning systems, boosting regional economic development, and leveraging Scotland’s global brand.
• Emphasizes Labour’s distinct, pro-business vision to differentiate from past approaches.

5. Labour vs SNP: Electoral Prospects and Challenges

[29:35]–[41:09]

• Campbell and Stewart press Sarwar on Labour’s fluctuating poll numbers.
• Sarwar highlights SNP’s “lost their way” after 20 years, but stresses campaign should focus on change and hope, not just attacking the SNP.
• On calls for Keir Starmer’s resignation: “My first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland. And frankly, I don’t really care what people in Westminster think.” – Anas Sarwar [33:07]
• Argues he stands by putting Scotland first, regardless of Westminster opinions, and is not interested in “running against a UK Labour government.”

6. Approach to Coalition and Party Alliances

[43:18]–[45:52]

• Sarwar is firm: “No deals, no coalition, no grubby backroom stuff,” especially with Reform or the Tories. Dismisses SNP accusations as “desperate.”
• Emphasizes focus on supporting minority governments and seeking issue-based consensus – “go back to what devolution was supposed to be about.”

7. Reform Party & Right-Wing Populism in Scotland

[38:23]–[41:09]

• Scotland is not immune to right-wing populism; public attitudes are often less different from the rest of the UK than assumed.
• Both SNP and Reform accused of "politics of fear and blame," although Sarwar is careful to distinguish their value systems.

8. Devolution and Future Scottish Leadership

[47:35]–[48:15]

• Believes devolution has overall been a success, but calls for the next stage: decentralizing power from Holyrood to Scotland’s regions, mirroring regional devolution in England.

9. Personal Life, Traditions, and Soft Power

[48:15]–[53:09]

• Sarwar reflects on whether he’d want his children to go into politics: “I think sacrificing two generations is enough. Let’s not sacrifice a third.” [48:30]
• Jokes about never having worn a kilt – promises to do so on a major life or national occasion.
• Sees Scotland’s diaspora and soft power as potential economic drivers.
• Brief riff on Donald Trump’s Scottish connection: happy to utilize heritage for tourism, not keen to embrace his politics.

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Notable Quotes

“The single biggest political divide... is probably the ‘us versus them’ culture.”
– Anas Sarwar [13:33]

“For too long, sadly, in the last 20 years, we’ve not been good enough. And that’s why we got beat.”
– Anas Sarwar [41:47]

“Let’s have an argument, debate about how we fix our schools, how we reform our NHS, how we grow Scotland’s economy... not this kind of nonsense about Nigel Farage.”
– Anas Sarwar [45:39]

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Memorable Moments

• Sarwar’s vivid storytelling about opening a hate letter as a child [06:52], and about working as a young dentist witnessing systemic poverty.
• The repeated good-natured ribbing over kilts, Scottishness, and family—showing a lighter, human side to both the guest and the hosts [50:18–51:54].
• Rory pressing Sarwar to go “for the jugular” against the SNP and exploring why Sarwar resists negative campaigning [54:34–58:23].
• Discussion about whether his break with Starmer strengthened or weakened his position with Scottish voters [60:04–61:37].

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Critical Reflections & Analysis (Hosts’ Discussion)

[53:27]–[61:37]

• Rory Stewart gently critiques Sarwar's reluctance to use strong attacks or memorable lines against SNP, noting his warmth doesn't always translate to public appearances.
• Campbell argues that Sarwar’s positivity and refusal to make the campaign about independence or just attacks offers a notable contrast to political negativity.
• Both hosts praise Sarwar’s business-forward agenda, agree on the importance of “memorable, crisp phrases,” and discuss the positives and challenges of his split with Keir Starmer.
• “He is trying to do this a little bit differently and fight a positive campaign. I think the worry I have... is that the campaign's not going to be long enough to get him, to get him through to the public.” – Alastair Campbell [57:48]

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Timestamps for Major Topics

• Anas Sarwar’s upbringing & father’s influence: [04:05]
• Racism, Islamophobia, identity politics: [09:56]
• Education challenges and reform: [19:19]
• Scottish Labour’s economic plan & business vision: [25:40]
• Labour vs SNP; calls for Starmer to resign: [29:35]
• Coalitions and alliances: [43:18]
• Attitude to Reform Party/right populism: [38:23]
• Devolution and decentralization: [47:35]
• Personal/family anecdotes, kilts, Trump, soft power: [48:15]
• Hosts’ critique & analysis of Sarwar’s approach: [53:27]

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Overall Tone and Style

The episode is a blend of serious political discourse and relaxed, candid conversation. Sarwar is earnest, values-driven, and occasionally self-deprecating; the hosts push for clarity and colour but also show respect for Sarwar’s positive, “bring people together” approach.

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Takeaway

Anas Sarwar presents himself as a new kind of Scottish Labour leader: shaped by adversity, personally ambitious, pro-business, and focused on hope and unity over division. He’s determined to shift both Scottish Labour’s fortunes and Scotland’s political narrative—but faces the challenge of making his positive vision heard in a polarized landscape.

Transcript

[Alistair Campbell]

Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com youm

[Rory Stewart]

did call for the Prime Minister Keir Sama to resign, right? I mean, that's a big deal for a Labour leader in Scotland.

[Anas Sarwar]

I was making it abundantly clear that my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland. And frankly, I don't really care what people in Westminster think. I only care what people in Scotland think.

[Alistair Campbell]

You must care who the Pride Prime Minister is.

[Anas Sarwar]

Look, I'm not doing it to run against a UK Labour government. I'm running against a Scottish SNP government. Let's be honest, are we spending every penny of public money? Well, we're not. We will demonstrate to the rest of the UK how you can win in the politics of hope and unity, not feed off the politics of despair.

[Rory Stewart]

I guess you're very politely skirting around one of the massive things.

[Anas Sarwar]

I'm happy not to be polite, Rory, and don't let me cut to the chase. I'm happy to cut to the chase.

[Rory Stewart]

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[Rory Stewart]

Welcome to the rest is politics.

[Alistair Campbell]

Leading with me, Rory Stewart, and with me, Alistair Campbell. And we are with Anas Sawa. Anas Sawa is a second generation Pakistani Scot. He's a second generation Labour Member of Parliament who followed his dad Mohammed into the Westminster Parliament before losing his seat in 2015 after just one term. A year after that, he became a member of the Scottish Parliament. And five years after that he became leader of Scottish Labour. And in Scottish elections on May 7, so 30 odd days away, he hopes to become Scotland's first minister after 19 years of an SNP government. Now, that prospect looked very likely after the last UK general election when Scotland played its part in the Labour landslide. Since SNP fortunes seem to have recovered and Labour's fortunes have declined sufficient for Annas to call for none other than Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister. We'll get into all of that, but I think we'd like to start with the backstory, don't we, Rory? And Anas does have quite a good backstory.

[Rory Stewart]

You definitely do. Annas, let's start with your father, who I remember and of course I remember you coming into parliament in 2010. Tell us a little bit about your father and mother and a little bit about your father's political career, which was quite unusual in many ways.

[Anas Sarwar]

Yeah, look, I mean, I had a really different unbreaking in the sense of I was being brought up in a household where my dad, when I was in my really early years, trying to set up and doing it really well, successful family business, successful wholesale business, and then wanting to become a councillor in the city of Glasgow and then obviously wanting to become Britain's first Muslim Member of Parliament. And while lots of people, it's interesting, you mentioned about both my mum and my dad. It's really interesting because lots of people think that automatically, somehow, maybe I get my politics from my dad, when in actual fact, I always say that the best politician in our family and the person that's probably got the most values based in terms of that politics is probably my mum and she's probably a much better politician than I or my father would ever be. But just think about upbringing, a house full of love, even if perhaps not expressed by the old man. Always motivated, always being dr, particularly by Mum, but also posed its challenges in terms of being brought up in a political household and my dad trying to be Britain's first Muslim Member of Parliament. And in a weird way, because he was a politician and because of many of the dark things that we had to experience, because either he wanted to be a politician or after he became an elected member in the House of Commons, it really put me off politics. I hated the idea of being an elected member, so I was a member of the Labour Party. I love being a member of the Labour Party, I love being involved in campaigns. But the idea of being an elected member honestly repulsed me. And it's one of the reasons why I went to study to be a dentist and worked in the NHS as a dentist. And it's one of the reasons why my dad and I fell out at one point because he was very keen for me to be a politician. I was desperate not to be a politician because of some of the things we experienced growing up.

[Alistair Campbell]

And he won.

[Anas Sarwar]

Absolutely. It's really funny because he makes a point, even to this day, of reminding me that every day he was a Member of Parliament was every day of the Labour Party being in government, and every day of me being in politics is every day of Labour being in opposition when I was in Westminster or in opposition when I'm in the Scottish Parliament. So I need to break that duck in the election.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, you do. I'd written down your dad because he came in in 1997 as part of the first New.

[Anas Sarwar]

Yeah, he totally credits himself for Labour's landslides, not Tony Blair or Alistair Campbell.

[Alistair Campbell]

And then he went, so what happened to get you from a place where you had absolutely zero interest in being a politician to then actually following him into Parliament in the same seat?

[Anas Sarwar]

I suppose I should first of all explain why I was repulsed by the idea of being an elected member, because I was, of course, really proud that he was standing for politics. I was really proud that he was able to be Britain's first Muslim Member of Parliament. But my earliest political memory is when I was about 12 years old, leaving to go to school and there was a strange looking envelope on our doorstep. And being a really curious young boy, Luke picked up this envelope, made the mistake of opening it up and there was a mocked up picture of my mum tied to a chair with two guns pointed to her head and in cut out letters from the newspapers it said, bang, bang. That's all it takes. And it was a message from Combat 18, a far right organization at the time who were dead against the idea of electing Britain's first Muslim member of Parliament. And obviously shook me and shook our family. And the experience of coming home from school, having to go to the police station, give my fingerprints, because obviously I touched this letter and they had to exclude my fingerprints from it. And that made me think, this is not a normal situation I would want my kids to grow up in. So the idea of being in politics really, really repulsed me. And then when I started off as an NHS dentist in Paisley, I saw firsthan the impact that not just your oral health impacts on someone's outcomes, but I lost count of the number of 17 year olds, 18 year olds, 19 year olds, that I was having to do full dental clearances. So literally pulling out all their teeth and replacing it with full acrylic dentures. And I got to see firsthand the direct impact of poverty, of inequality, of addiction, of family background, a lack of access to skills and good employment and the impact that then has on health. And it gave me a hunger and a passion to want to do public service properly. And then one of my best pals, who was also a counsellor in Renfrewshire at the time, came to see me and asked if I'd have dinner with him one night after I'd finished my clinic in Paisley. And we went to a local restaurant in Paisley and he was like, you know, you'll know this from lots of Labour Party conversations, Alastair. This was in the run up to the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. He said to me, you know, we don't really have a diverse group of candidates, and so you'd be really doing us a favor if we can add your name as a candidate, as a paper candidate, so we can talk about having diverse candidates. And I was like, okay, where do you want me to stand? And he goes, will you be the candidate in Selkirk and Roxburgh? And I had no idea where he was talking about. And I was like, listen, I am not going to be the candidate in Selkirk, in Roxburgh, but if you want me to make up the numbers on a regional list somewhere, I'll do it. So I agreed to stand on the Glasgow list. I got involved in the campaign really heavily to try and get high up on the list and I ended up coming top of the Glasgow list. And actually combined with what I was seeing in Paisley and getting the bug of going through that first election campaign, I think that kind of Sparked that interest to be in frontline politics.

[Rory Stewart]

Just want to come back to this horrible message, this threatening, I mean, kind of illegal bullying that you were experiencing there. And actually this morning I've just been in a fight with John Cleese on Twitter, who's just put out a message saying Muslims are people who follow a holy book that says that anyone they don't like should be killed. I then found myself in a world of hundreds of people, including Tommy Robinson and others weighing in, and they seem to be trying to sell a line that Islam is a kind of inherently evil religion and that they, they claim not to be racist, they claim to just have a particular problem with the theology, but they're trying to apply that theology to nearly 2 billion people around the world. I just wondered, how do you process this? How do you deal with this? How do you argue against it? How do you make the case why is this happening? What's going on?

[Anas Sarwar]

That's a really good question because I think the way I think about lots of these things is less what it means for an individual faith, but I think being a dad of three boys, I think about a lot in the frame of fatherhood and a sense of identity and belonging for them and obviously for me, in the Scottish context and the sense, as you mentioned, this individual that said these comments to you in the Hamilton Larkhall Stonehouse by election, we had what is now sadly a mainstream political party. We had Reform spend tens of thousands of pounds on a Facebook advert claiming that I would prioritize Pakistan rather than prioritize Scotland. And even today, one of Reform's candidates has said that they're open to the idea of repeating that ad in this election campaign. There's another candidate for Reform that says that all Muslims in Scotland should be deported. So I think obviously what it means for me as a politician, but actually I think about what does it mean for my kids? Are they suggesting that my sons who are third generation Scots born and brought up here, have no, apart from their skin color and where they are grandparents were born, have no real affinity or identity with Pakistan? They are Scots, they are Brits, they are nothing else. And they wouldn't view themselves as anywhere else? Why is their identity being questioned? Why is their belonging being questioned? And this weaponization of faith and trying to create a homogenous block, whether it be automatically every Muslim must think the same or every Jewish person must think the same, or every, you know, evangelical Christian must think the same. That's not how life is and that's not how humans are. And for me, faith has always been something that brings people together and unites people rather than finds difference with people. And I just think there's too many people that want to use it as a way to weaponize for their own either warped ideology or a way to do politics, which is about division.

[Rory Stewart]

And it does seem to me growing. I mean, you're reminding us that it's been around a long time because you were experiencing this when you were 11 years old, but it seems to be so active now. I mean, if you look at the AfD in Germany, if you look at some of the people around Tommy Robinson, they are, I think, trying to specifically. I mean, you've mentioned that these comments could be made about a lot of religions and you're right, but this seems to be a real attempt to target Muslims and to portray Islam in this very essentialist way. You've got, as you say, people in Scotland talking about deporting. You've got people in Germany saying that there's going to be re migration. What's causing this? And how does one address this and deal with this and argue against it? I mean, is there a way of trying to make calmly the case against these people and change their minds or explain what's going on?

[Anas Sarwar]

So I think it definitely feels like it's on the rise. And I often question whether that's because we're online and because there's these voices and amplification that didn't exist before. Is it because it's more prevalent now or it's easier to say now, or it's more open now? I never truly set upon one on that. Maybe it was always underlying, but those people didn't have a voice. Now they've got a platform, they've got a voice. Or maybe it is on the rise now, but I think one thing is certainly clear is there are people now who are willing to use it and weaponize it for political purposes. So the concept of fear and blame is there are lots of people that feel a deep frustration about what's happening in their lives legitimately. And there's lots of people that think government doesn't work for them. Things are broken. This is as good as it gets. Our country's going backwards. Nothing works, nothing can ever work. So we need to smash the system. And then they have a layer on top of that of whether it's figures who are looking for attention or followers or to be voices online or whether it's even politicians are looking to get power who think how do we weaponize those problems? And find a group of people to point at and say, we wouldn't have these problems if it wasn't for them over there. And that fear, blame us versus them culture, I think, is probably the single biggest political divide in the UK and probably globally now for this generation of politicians. And I actually feel a bit of a personal responsibility how we fight back against that. Because the answer to that is, do you do an us versus them politics and think we create a different version of us versus them, or do we create some kind of all of us to confront it? And that, I think, is what we have to do. How do we do take on the genuine despair, the genuine mistrust that people have and give them solutions and pull our country together in the process and tell a story, a positive story in the process. That I think is the single biggest challenge facing Scottish UK and global politics right now.

[Alistair Campbell]

But one could argue the biggest single driver of it is Donald Trump. He's the President of the United States of America, he's got Scottish blood through his mother, and he has an absolute loathing of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, way beyond any sense of Sadiq's actual real power as the mayor of London, which is clearly, to my mind, driven by the fact that he doesn't like the color of his skin and he may or may not like his religion. Are you worried if you become First Minister that you, because he probably doesn't know that much about you, are you worried that you then become the new Sadiq Khan and what do you then do about that? Because I think we pander to this guy way too much.

[Anas Sarwar]

So there's a couple things in that. One is Sadiq Khan is a proud Londoner, yes, a Liverpool football fan, but still a proud Londoner and someone that wants to deliver for every community in London rather than just be the voice for one community in London. But there is an attempt to other him very, very often. But I think he's done quite a good job of looking like and sounding like the voice of London. And for me, there'll be lots of attempts to other me to claim I'm not Scottish enough or I'm not on the side of Scotland. For me, I always think about just say what I believe, do what's right by Scotland and always argue what's right by Scotland and not worry about what comes. Are we? If I am successful in this election, and that is definitely our intention and our goal, the one thing I would push back on is I think it's too easy an analysis to say it's all Donald Trump's fault.

[Alistair Campbell]

No, it's not all him, but he does drive a lot of this.

[Anas Sarwar]

So I would agree that there is a driving of it from individuals, Donald Trump being one of them. But there's an underlying sentiment, fear and failure that then is weaponized by politicians like Donald Trump in order to try and get the outcome they want. How do we address the underlying and find a different way of challenging and telling a story that confronts that kind of politics? I think is the big, big challenge for this generation.

[Alistair Campbell]

No. And I guess when you were describing your time as a dentist and taking the full set of teeth out of young people, that was during a period when we had a Labour government, so we were failing them as well.

[Anas Sarwar]

I actually think there's undoubtedly a challenge. So back in. So it was 2007 when the SNP came to power, and so I spent some of my time, of course, when there was a Scottish Labour government as well as when there was an SNP government. But I think huge progress was made under a Labour government. And I'm not going to pretend for a second that every single thing that the SNP has done in Scotland the last 20 years has been bad, because I just think any politician that tells you that just isn't telling the truth. There's a reason why they kept winning elections for 20 years. There's a reason why people kept voting for them because they were doing some things that were good. But my argument is they've lost their way and they aren't what they were. And we need a change of government in Scotland, new ideas, new leadership, new energy, et cetera. But are there communities that feel as if structurally they've been left behind? I think the honest answer to that is yes. So it's interesting, we've talked about, Rory's mentioned around the impact on Muslim communities, around the rise in Islamophobia, or the impact on. You've mentioned around Siddiqan impact on minority communities and the rise of racism. I think one of the dangers we have is let's not pretend that there's a hierarchy of inequality that exists in our country. Let's be really honest. For many working class communities, I think about the East End of Glasgow, where we are just now, for generations, young people in the East End of Glasgow, young white boys, their life chances, outcomes and life expectancy is defined not by their talent, not by their knowledge, not by their ability, but by their post score and their social background. That is scandalous and shouldn't be happening. So we've got to address those underlying, harder issues if we are also going to take on that politics of fear and blame at the same time.

[Rory Stewart]

One of the things that seems to have not worked as well in Scotland under the SNP is education. We grew up in a world where we looked at Scottish education as being the great exemplar of the world. And actually, the results have been pretty disappointing. I suppose my question to you is, are you prepared to do what it takes to really radically reform the education system, or is it just going to be a, if you win, a continuation of the snp, which looks like a pretty lax kind of indulgence of old ideas of education and not really transforming the life chances of those people from working class communities you're talking about.

[Anas Sarwar]

So I think the short answer is, yes, we will take that different approach because the opposite would be an absolute dereliction of duty and will not do in fear by a generation. So you're right, Rory. Scotland had this history and tradition of education and it being an example to the rest of the UK and to the rest of the world. But let's be honest about what's happening in far too many places in Scottish education right now. Our literacy and numeracy rates have declined. We're way behind in terms of where we need to be around science and technology. Our proportion of children that are now classed as having some kind of additional support need has increased to 43% of pupils at school. At the same time, the resources in classrooms have been pulled back. So at the same time as ASN numbers have gone up to 43%, the number of ASN teachers has fallen by almost 20%. And we have lack of discipline in our schools, partly with what happens with mobile phones, partly because we don't have, in many places, permanent contracts for teachers, too many resources taken away, and a curriculum for excellence that was introduced as a good concept but actually does not promote excellence, instead has seen the gap narrow between social demographics more by the top coming down rather than raising everybody up. And that fundamentally has to change. So we will not scrap exams, because I think you still need exams. Of course you do. But we have to change the culture that exists in our schools and the kind of education. So how do we have mobile phones banned in our classrooms so people can concentrate on their education, not on their brains being polluted by dopamine hits that come from algorithms or social media feeds? We can get distance in the classrooms. How do we get more classroom assistants around our teachers so we can make sure every kid in the class is getting the time they need. And the reason why I think that's really important is because if you imagine a class of 30 plus with one teacher, no classroom assistant, if 43% of that class has some kind of additional support need, if there is distractions in the classroom because of the mobile phone, if there's really bad discipline and behavior, just think about those kids in that classroom who that little bit of nudge, extra time with their teacher could be the difference between them getting into an apprenticeship, a college place, a university, that's life changing for them. And right now we don't have a system that works for all those kids. So we have to change that and get all those things. And then when they leave school, how do we make sure we don't have this culture in Scotland that just says if you go to university, we're going to throw every kind of resource at you and you are the chosen ones. But if you don't choose to go to university, you are somehow written off. There is no one right path. So how do we invest in our colleges? How do we maintain free tuition, but do it differently? How do we invest in apprenticeships? And how do we finally link the growth areas of our economy to the skills we need in our country? Around defense, around AI, around technology, all these are huge, huge opportunities for us. I know that's a really long answer to what your question was, but fundamentally, I've always been a believer that the best route out of poverty is a good education, an adequate skill and a well paid job, rather than simply thinking about a welfare payment. I believe in the welfare state, but it's a sticking plaster. It doesn't challenge and end structural poverty. How are we going to end structural poverty in Scotland is through good education, good skill, good well paid job.

[Alistair Campbell]

Now you know what I'm gonna come at you with. Now, your dad educated you privately. That was his choice. And I can see Rory getting. Rory and I argue about private education a lot, but you educate your children privately, why?

[Anas Sarwar]

So every family will have conversations with their own household. Every family will talk about decisions that they think are best for their child. And one of the things I've been really conscious of is that different kids in different ways will have different challenges in their lives. So I'm really lucky that I didn't have to worry about food on the table and bills when I was growing up. My kids are lucky in that same sense too. But how do we have an education system that works for every kid right across the country? And that's why I'm so determined to Fix that going forward.

[Alistair Campbell]

But do you know what? I think that if you become first minister, that somebody who's watching what you say and do in relation to education would maybe feel more compelled to listen and follow if actually you were saying my kids are in the state sector too.

[Anas Sarwar]

So, look, I don't pretend to be something I'm not. I don't hide away from decisions either that I have made or my family have made about our kids or anything else. I've very much lived all my. Since I was 12, all my life, very much in the public domain. People know who I am. They can make judgments based on who I am. They've made those judgments since I became leader. They've made those judgments, obviously, in the election in 2024, and they'll make those judgments in this election campaign as well. But am I determined to deliver a country that gives every young person a chance and an opportunity? Absolutely, I am. Because right now, so many of our kids are written off at birth and that cannot be allowed to happen.

[Rory Stewart]

Some people might say, listening to you, the labor default often sounds like we just need more money, we need more resources. We're not giving enough money to teachers, we don't have enough teaching assistants. But you might say you don't need, maybe even to be Donald Trump to say that the UK economy is really struggling, it's not really growing. And your family ran a business and you must be aware of how many regulations there are, how much red tape there are, is how non business friendly in many ways. The British economy has become. A lot of investment is leaving, not much investment's coming in. So what would you do to actually restructure, make it more business friendly, get more entrepreneurs in, get the economy growing? Or am I sounding too right wing?

[Anas Sarwar]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, Rory, because I think probably what makes me different from previous Scottish labor leaders and gives me a different understanding about all these things. So I grew up in a entrepreneurial family. I spent lots of my childhood sweeping floors in my old man's warehouses, stacking the shelves and seeing and taking lots of questions about buying margins and such like, so thinking about businesses and costs. I then spent time in our public services, obviously being a NHS dentist in Paisley, and then have spent the last 16 years in politics. So I've got a view of all three of those different sides. And if I'm honest, I don't think more money is the answer. I think one, how you generate wealth and use that wealth in a way to fund a functioning public sector, I think is really Important. How you inspire entrepreneurship and celebrate success is also really important. I think too often as a country, success is seen as quite a dirty word or ambition is seen as a dirty word when actual fact, if we don't have entrepreneurship, we don't have successful businesses, we don't have anything else because you only get social change if it's backed up with a strong growing economy. So I will always be an economics first politician. Secondly, let's be honest, are we spending every penny of public money? Well, we're not. And so much of what is accepted and tolerated in the public sector would never be accepted or tolerated in the private sector or indeed in the third sector. So we've got to spend the money better in Scotland, but we've also got to not just keep slicing the cake into thinner and thinner pieces, we've got to increase the size of the cake and if we fill the growth gap that exists in Scotland. So if our economy in Scotland had grown at the same rate as the rest of the UK bar London, we would actually have £800 million more to spend than our public services every year. So to your question on what we would do differently is I want to be a first minister that's a deal maker that gets things done, not just one that legislates and regulates. Secondly, our tax rates are too high in Scotland. How do we drive down tax rather than using it as a substitute for economic growth? How do we reform our rate system so it's rigged in favor of the town centres and high streets rather than against them with the online giants? Our planning system is archaic. How do we create a national planning agency so we can try and half the time it takes for a planning application because we are competing with the world where investment goes and we want the investment to come to Scotland. Our skill system. We are not creating the talent supply chain for our economy. So how do we partner business with colleges and universities so we do have that supply chain of businesses? How do we have a transport system that works and inspires growth? Regional economic development is a huge part of what's working in London. It's working in Manchester. We don't do regional economic development in Scotland. Instead we treat Scotland as if it's one big homogenous block when the reality is the economic model for the islands and the islands is very different to Glasgow and the west of Scotland. Our enterprise agencies are huge, but we're spending on wage bills rather than actually investing in good quality businesses that need to get pushed over the line. We're good at startups in Scotland, we're not good at scale ups in Scotland. How do we support those businesses to scale up and to grow? And the final bit, and actually you both are a good example of this, and you both will know this from your own lived experience and you both travel a lot, is why don't we tap into the soft power of Scotland for economic benefit? Ireland does it brilliantly. It taps into brand Ireland to attract investment, tourism and opportunity with the rest of the world. Scotland can do the exact same, particularly in the North American market, but much more besides. So I want people to believe, because it is Scotland's a great place to visit, it's a great group of people, it's got beautiful landscapes, but I also want big neon signs that say Scotland is also a great place to do business.

[Alistair Campbell]

I said in the introduction that when the general election happened and Labour got that huge landslide, you must have thought we are in a really good place now for the Holyrood election. And yet here you are looking pretty grim, grisly poll figures and the SNP looking like they're coming back, going to be staying in power after 19 years. I mean, what has happened?

[Anas Sarwar]

I think we're going to surprise some people, Alice.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, maybe, but what has happened that's gone from point A to point B or point C, and point B being where you were so frustrated that you felt you had to call for Keir Starmer to go.

[Anas Sarwar]

So I think there's a couple of caveats to put on that. First, first of all, this was always going to be a hard election and is a hard election, but one I still believe we can win. Secondly, if we hadn't won the UK general election, there is no chance we could have even been in contention for this election because I think the politics of the UK would have been Tories re elected despite all the scandal and chaos. And I think that would have been a very different approach between the SNP and another Tory government across the uk. But I mean, I remember saying it to UK shadow cabinet and then very early UK Cabinet, that the election in Scotland will be much easier if it's a midterm of a popular Labour government rather than the midterm of an unpopular Labour government. So that is undoubtedly a challenge. I think there are two things in the analysis, though, that is missing in Westminster, but actually also up here as well, which is undoubtedly a UK Labour government is unpopular, but I think right now that is overpriced in the opinion polls. And at the same time, I think people underestimate how unpopular an SNP Scottish government is, and I think right now that's underpriced in the opinion polls. And my job over the course of the next five weeks or so is to persuade people that let's not pass a judgment on two years of a UK government, let's pass judgment on 20 years of an SNP Scottish government. And this is what we would do differently, using the power we have right now by pulling our country together rather than simply dividing it on those constitutional lines.

[Rory Stewart]

I guess you're very politely skirting around one of the massive things.

[Anas Sarwar]

I'm happy not to be polite, Rory, and don't let me skirt. Tell me what we cut to the chase. I'm happy to cut to the chase.

[Rory Stewart]

You did call for the Prime Minister, Keir Sama, to resign, right? I mean, that's a big deal for a Labour leader in Scotland. Do you regret doing that? Have you changed your mind? Are you backing off from that? I mean, you didn't quite engage with Alistair's question around that. You didn't lean into it and say, I was right to do so. He needs to go.

[Anas Sarwar]

I could see you wanted a follow up, Rory. That's why I was letting you back in.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

[Anas Sarwar]

I stand by it. I don't recoil from it. And I think people need to understand what I did and why I did it. And there's lots of people, I think, that think about it in the premise of what it means for the ups and downs of individual Westminster politicians. And I think there's lots of people think about it in the context of what does it mean for Westminster. But I think they misunderstand One, me. But second, also the reality of what's happening in Scotland. I am putting myself in front of the people of Scotland in the next five weeks, looking them in their eye, asking them to put their trust and faith in me. And I think people in Scotland deserve to know what do I stand for, what are my values, what am I willing to accept, what are my standards, and whether I will be honest, not just have a private view and say one thing in private and a different thing in public, but will I be honest? And what would I do differently? And lots of people have thought about what I said in the context of Westminster. Genuinely, I was making it abundantly clear that my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland. And frankly, this might sound a bit harsh. I don't really care what people in Westminster think. I only care what people in Scotland think.

[Alistair Campbell]

You must care who the Prime Minister is.

[Anas Sarwar]

Of course I do.

[Rory Stewart]

And it's just. So you said. You're going to be honest.

[Anas Sarwar]

You're smiling there, Rory. I like your smile. The Rory Stewart smiles out Alistair.

[Rory Stewart]

Right, so you want to be honest, you want to tell us what you think. So be honest, tell us what you think about Keir Starmer and why he shouldn't be Prime Minister.

[Anas Sarwar]

Well, you've heard what I've said and I made it really clear.

[Rory Stewart]

You haven't actually said much about it. You've sort of told us that you stand by your values.

[Anas Sarwar]

Yeah, yeah, look, I said what I said, I stand by what I said.

[Rory Stewart]

What did you say again? I mean, I can't actually remember.

[Anas Sarwar]

I think you know exactly what I said, Rory, what my view is. And let me explain why. Let me explain why. Because I had spent weeks in the Scottish Parliament exposing the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal where myself families impacted, some of them who'd lost loved ones, healthcare professionals who had been bullied and gaslit. We spent eight years campaigning to get truth and justice about what was happening at the infections situation at the hospital. And to this day that hospital has not been validated and words verified. And so I was in Parliament making this argument of First Minister's questions. And honestly, if that was a hospital anywhere else in the uk, I believe it would be wall to wall news coverage every single day about how this could be allowed to happen. I came out of that Parliament and got doorstepped by the entire Scottish press lobby. And I didn't get a single question about the hospital, I didn't get a single question about the families. Every single question was about Peter Mandelson, the UK Labour government and the judgment calls on him being appointed as the US ambassador. And honestly, I'm just not willing to defend that. I'm not willing to defend what was someone who shouldn't have even been considered for the job of ambassador, nevermind be ambassador. And also I'm not willing to sacrifice Scotland to that kind of argument, to that debate, because who the government in Scotland is, who the First Minister is really matters to us in Scotland because it's our schools, our hospitals, our care homes, our town, cities, villages, it's our ferries, it's our transport system, it's our local businesses. And I'm not willing to sacrifice any of them because I'm not willing to be open and honest about what's happening across the uk or indeed what needs to happen here in Scotland.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay? And a final one for me, it strikes me that once you've taken that big decision, decision to separate yourself From Starmer. It opens up a lot of opportunity for you to be clear about what you would do in running Scotland, which is different from what Labour's doing in England. And it seems to me you haven't taken enough of that opportunity. You've put yourself in a very difficult position where you've said, okay, I'm criticizing you about this narrow thing about Mandelson, but your voters are angry about a lot of the stuff that the UK Government's doing. So now that you've taken the radical decision to separate yourself, why don't you lay out a radically different Scottish Labour vision instead of trying to defend a lot of things that irritate people about what the Labour government's doing in the

[Anas Sarwar]

uk I'm not sure what you're suggesting I'm defending. So first of all, look, I'm not doing it to run against a UK Labour government. I'm running against a Scottish SNP government. But where I think, I do think we can show and lead by example here in Scotland is we are going to bring down the tax burden in Scotland and demonstrate we can grow our economy and cut tax. We are going to reform our rate system to make sure we're not rigging it against high streets and town centers. But even bigger than that, if you think about the first conversation we had when we started this conversation around 45 minutes ago, is we talked about the big challenge around the politics of the right, largely the politics of reform. I honestly believe in Scotland we will demonstrate to the rest of the UK how you can win in the politics of hope and unity, not feed off the politics of despair. And I honestly think we can be an example to the rest of the UK how you can do change by bringing people together, not further dividing people, and also be an example to the rest of the UK that you can do it while telling a positive story about your country. And I think a lot of that's been what's missing since the UK Labour government got elected.

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[Alistair Campbell]

One of the conventional wisdoms that seems to be getting challenged as we get nearer to this election on May 7 is a sense that existed over the last few years that Scotland was kind of a bit of immune to the threat of reform. But you look at the polls and reform seemed to be doing reasonably well. Is that because we got that conventional wisdom wrong? Or is something changed in the body politic in Scotland that has made that right wing populism more attractive?

[Anas Sarwar]

So I've always had a view, Alistair, that our chattering class in Scotland had a more progressive left of centre position than what would be the nuts and bolts. If you poll people about priorities and different issues. So people often talk about the rest of the UK wants to be much more stringent and strict on welfare, whereas Scotland wants to be really generous on welfare. Actually, if you look at polling, it's about 2 or 3% difference how people view the welfare state. Immigration, again, people will think, oh, the rest of the uk, they really want to clamp down on immigration. They think immigration is a huge issue people don't really care about in Scotland. But in actual fact immigration is now rising as an issue in Scotland. It's probably a top three issue in Scotland now. And actually always, if you look at views on immigration, it was always a 2 or 3% difference. So I've always been of a view that we have a chattering class in Scotland that is a bit more left wing than the rest of the uk. But what are challenges? We're not immune to this in Scotland compared to anywhere else. And in some ways, whilst I don't think well, I know the SNP and reform aren't of the same political values, I'm not going to pretend they are. I'm not going to pretend that the SNP and Reform have the same view when it comes to right wing politics. They don't have the same value system. It'd be childish to even suggest that they do. But they do have one similarity. They both play the politics of fear and blame. Both fundamentally have an argument that says identify a problem and point at a group of people or an institution and say it wouldn't be that problem if it wasn't for them over there. The SNP do it by pointing to Westminster or to London or to the UK and saying, we've got these problems in Scotland, we wouldn't have them if only we were away from that law and reforms say, look at this problem if it wasn't for them over there, usually pointing at a community, whether it's by race, religion and saying, we wouldn't have these problems if it wasn't for them over there. Both feed off on us versus them. Both feed off of fear and blame. And I'm just done with that kind of politics. And that is, I think our generational challenge is do we become a country that lets the politics of fear and blame and despair take hold and all the dangers that then poses to our country more broadly, or are we going to confront it with a positive story about what the challenges are, how we change the country by bringing the country together in the process? And that's what I want to demonstrate we can do in Scotland. And that's what I think is a lesson for a UK Labour Party as well.

[Rory Stewart]

How on earth have the S and P managed to survive? I mean, admittedly I'm not very friendly to them, but I look at them even when I'm in Scotland. I think these guys lost their independence referendum. As you said, Scottish schools are in a pretty big mess. The Scottish economy isn't even doing as well as the pretty lamentable English economy. They had this amazing scandal where their leader and their chief executive ended up with weird stuff to do with the police and motorhomes and they've been in forever. I mean, nobody likes insurgents and governments get tired. How on earth can they, after umpteen years, still be on course to win again?

[Anas Sarwar]

So there's a couple of things in that. One is I always joke that it's often better being lucky than good. And they've been very lucky with lots of circumstances that have happened across the UK and lots of what to campaign against. So Boris obviously was a contrast to Nicola Surgeon through the COVID period, etc. But I think there's a more self reflective part that we have to be honest about. They kept winning and we kept losing because we weren't good enough. And I set myself that challenge when I took on this job five years ago when everyone said the Labour Party was dead and it was just a shell when I took over five years ago is how do we get the Labour Party back on its feet, make it worthy of its name and make it worthy of people's support again. How do you earn people's trust? And we did the hard work to get ourselves back into second place in the council elections in 2022 issue. We did the hard work to win the Rutherglen by election. When people said we couldn't win. We did the hard work to earn people's trust and to win the general election in Scotland, getting a share of the vote. There was a 10 times increase in share of the vote in Scotland compared to the rest of the uk because we did the hard work and won People's Trust in 2024. We did the hard work to win the Hamilton by election. When people say we were going to come third, one journalist even suggesting we would come fifth in that by election. And now we're going to do the hard work to persuade people for this election. So we've got to earn people's trust and their support and be good enough to win. And for too long, sadly, in the last 20 years, we've not been good enough. And that's why we got beat, given

[Alistair Campbell]

the complicated electoral system which we. Which we brought in in 1998, partly to make sure that no one party ever had absolute power. And that's called very, very well.

[Anas Sarwar]

Are you taking responsibility? I was a young boy then, so I wasn't part of that anyway, that.

[Alistair Campbell]

That was part of the thinking. Since when the SNP have had quite a lot of power. Which of the parties that are standing in this election would you definitively not ever go into coalition with.

[Anas Sarwar]

We're not doing any coalitions, any deals, any stitch ups. Alex Salmond demonstrated actually in 2007 that you can do minority government and the Parliament can work. And don't forget, in 2007 he did minority government and he went on to win a majority in 2011. And my intention is to hopefully win the majority of constituencies in this election and to form a minority Labour government and go back to what devolution was supposed to be about, which was try and find common ground on individual issues to make progress in our country.

[Alistair Campbell]

So why is John Sweeney going around the place saying that you and Nigel Farage are. I hesitate to put this thought into your head, but getting in bed together,

[Anas Sarwar]

I mean, it is the act of a desperate man, Alastair.

[Alistair Campbell]

But can I just say that you would never, ever, ever go into any sort of deal with.

[Anas Sarwar]

Well, of course not.

[Alistair Campbell]

And what about the Tories? No.

[Anas Sarwar]

No deals, no coalition, no grubby backroom stuff. And the reason why I think it's really important is this is a political party in reform that literally spent tens of thousands of pounds on an advert saying that my first loyalty would not be to Scotland. It would be to somewhere else. Today they're launching a billboard campaign claiming that we are being overrun by rubber dinghies in Scotland. And also today, they've repeated that they're opening to the idea of rerunning that ad in this election campaign. And I just think John Sweeney has gone in the matter of a week in this election campaign, from starting the first day of the campaign saying they were guaranteed to win, to now saying, don't vote Labour in this election because they're going to do some kind of grubby deal with reform. So therefore vote for the SNP again. It's desperate. Our politics needs to be much bigger and better than that. Let's have an argument, debate about how we fix our schools, how we reform our nhs, how we grow Scotland's economy. Let's have that kind of debate. Let's demonstrate the best of Scottish politics, rather than this kind of nonsense about, Nigel Farage is going to be in bed with me, this and the next thing. The guy's a horror. I won't touch him with a barge pole. I reject his politics. I want him gone. I can't wait till he gets gubbed at the next general election. And I hope we start the process of gubbing them in this world.

[Rory Stewart]

But you're not talking about the S and P in quite that way. I mean, I'd be interested in talking about corruption in the snp, the behavior of individual politicians. We talk about Tory sleaze and scandal, but honestly, Alex Salmond, Peter Morrell, there's a sense sometimes of a very small, cozy, intimate, weird party where the leader can be married to the chief executive or all kinds of shenanigans going on. Isn't it time that that was called out in this campaign?

[Anas Sarwar]

Yes, and let's be honest, John Sweeney has been the architect of much of this. John Swinney wants to pretend that he's now some kind of. I think the line he's using is a fresh start. Someone who's been in government for 20 years to claim that he is now the fresh start that our country needs, I think is frankly laughable. But I think there's something a bit more serious at play here. So look how a party operates. Of course, that's the subject of investigation and the facts of that have to be to come out. But let's look at how they functioned as a government. It is a government that thinks secrecy, cover up, never taking responsibility, always finding somebody else to blame is the correct path. John Swinney's instinct has always been protect the party first, do what's right by Scotland. Second. And I just think that kind of politics, again, is something I've got no time for. I want to demonstrate that I will do what's right by Scotland, I'll put Scotland first, and that Scotland can do differently than what we have just now. And I'm not going to pretend the SNPs got everything wrong in 20 years, but they've lost their way, they're out of ideas, they're out of energy, and we need a new generation of leadership in Scotland, and that's the positive offer I'll be making to Scots over the course of the next five weeks.

[Alistair Campbell]

Has devolution overall been a success?

[Anas Sarwar]

I think devolution has been a success, and I think it is a successful concept. I think the danger is that unless we start demonstrating the gains of leadership for this generation of the here and now, that the debate then becomes polarized between whether it's leave the UK or shut down the Parliament, and that would be a terrible, terrible place for us to be. So let's demonstrate that devolution can work and actually let's do the next step of devolution, which is take power out of Holyrood and give it to the regions of Scotland so that different parts of the country can flourish in a similar way that regional devolution has really worked successfully in England.

[Rory Stewart]

Would your children go into politics? And what would they say if we put them in the studio and said, are you lining up to be the third generation politicians?

[Anas Sarwar]

Are my kids going into politics? Honestly, if I met your kids, I

[Alistair Campbell]

thought they were very much brighter than you.

[Anas Sarwar]

Undoubtedly, undoubtedly brighter, better looking, the full shebang. But I think sacrificing two generations is enough. Rory, let's not sacrifice a third. Look, the reason why I wouldn't want them to do it, and ultimately I'll obviously always back my kids in what they want to do, but I don't think they'd ever want to do it, and I wouldn't want them to do it is for all you. And I think about fatherhood a lot, as you would. And I just think that I know how I had to create an alternative normal for myself when I was growing up, and I know that my kids have to do the same as well, where I've presented and projected an unnormal normal for them. And that comes with burden, comes with some opportunities, no doubt, but it comes with burden and it comes with some levels of hardship, particularly in the current climate of how politics is. So I want to serve my time as First Minister do right by this country, demonstrate we can do politics differently. And then having done that, I want to make sure I'm spending my time nurturing, supporting my kids. And by that time, you never know, I might even be a granddad. I can look after them as well.

[Alistair Campbell]

A lovely. Well, listen, one thing you mustn't let them do is read Rory's book because in fact you probably should let them read it because that means they'd never ever think about going to politics.

[Anas Sarwar]

I think my eldest has read Rory's book. You were chinning my eldest yesterday for his dress code. He was, he was very upset about that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Was he about the Stone Island? He was pointing out the Stone island as a brand is associated with football.

[Anas Sarwar]

Maybe not anybody, honestly. He's my eldest. I'm not going to say anything about the other two, by the way, but my eldest is the most calm, sweet, sincere, sincere, hard working you can ever imagine. They're the ones to watch.

[Alistair Campbell]

So listen, well, last couple of questions. You mentioned the, the success of the Irish in the way that they brand Ireland globally and Scotland does it a bit, but not maybe as successful. I want to know why have you never, ever, ever worn a kilt, given you want to be the First Minister of Scotland? And secondly, have you seen my knees,

[Anas Sarwar]

Alice, pointing in opposite directions.

[Alistair Campbell]

Nobody's knees look good. Naomi Campbell's knees don't look that good. She's my cousin, you know,

[Anas Sarwar]

I've never looked. So I wouldn't know the answer to that, Alistair.

[Alistair Campbell]

But that would be a powerful thing. A Muslim senior Muslim Scottish politician who may be First Minister. He couldn't get more Scottish than. I think he should do it, I really do.

[Anas Sarwar]

So I do tartan truse.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's what Rory and his friends do.

[Anas Sarwar]

I don't have the pink. I don't have the pinky ring like Rory. That's the thing, that's the difference. So I've done tartan trews, obviously tartan waistcoat. I'll wear Harris tweed. I've done the tartan tie. But the actual, the reason why I've not. So it's funny because there's been a few occasions where I thought about, right, I'll wear a kilt. But I've always said, so I will wear a kilt for the first time, but I want to wear it when it's something majorly significant.

[Alistair Campbell]

So Scotland winning the World cup.

[Anas Sarwar]

So. So post Scotland winning the World Cup, I'm that way. I might never wear a kilt then if it's Scotland win The World Cup. So I don't know whether it is post an election or a son's wedding or something like that, but there'll be a kilt, Alistair. And I'll make sure I send you a picture of my knees when it happens.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay? Okay. And then my second point on softpad is Trump and his Scottish connection through his mum. Is that an asset to Scotland or is it a bit of a. You'd rather his mum had been Venezuelan?

[Anas Sarwar]

So, look, I think there is actually an opportunity. So I was actually in Stornoway this week, and I was looking at the relatively new cruise liner terminal that they've opened at the port of Stornoway.

[Alistair Campbell]

Stornoway. And Lewis. Where his mum came from.

[Anas Sarwar]

Correct. Where he calls Serious Scotland.

[Alistair Campbell]

Serious Scotland.

[Anas Sarwar]

And they were actually telling me how they. They're getting more and more people making bookings and interested in more stops from American cruise ships than pre the election of Donald Trump. So if there is an opportunity to create that connection for positive tourism opportunities, then why not? I think there's a way of doing it without having to say that you agree with someone's politics.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay. I think it'd be much better if his mother had never left Lewis, and the world would be a much better place.

[Anas Sarwar]

It's not his mami's fault how he's turned out. I'm a defender of the mamis, by the way. I wouldn't be half the person I was if it wasn't for my mother. So I would say all the good things about me are because of my mother. All the bad things I take responsibility for. Okay.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay. Well, somewhere in Punjab, your dad'll be listening to this thinking, you cheeky little buggy.

[Anas Sarwar]

Oh, no, he knows I prefer my mum to my dad. Anyway, it's fine. That's an open secret.

[Alistair Campbell]

All right, well, listen, thank you for your time.

[Anas Sarwar]

My pleasure. Thank you so much.

[Rory Stewart]

Thank you, Anas, very much.

[Anas Sarwar]

Thanks, Rory.

[Alistair Campbell]

So, Rory, what do you think of that?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, look, I like him very much. He came into Parliament with me. I think he's very, very funny. Warm, cheeky in person. I mean, if the listeners had seen all the shenanigans about you teasing him about being late and him accusing you of chinning him and all this kind of stuff. But I do fear that not enough that comes across when he's doing his public stuff. I mean, maybe I'd be interested in this. But what I would have thought was massive open goals to lay into the snp. And he kept coming back to this line. I'm not going to say that everything they've done for the last 20 years has been a bad thing. Trump. It's not that difficult to say. Trump is a blithering idiot and I don't want anything to do with him. There's something a bit odd about it, particularly in modern politics, to be unable to say very clearly that the parties you're running against are pretty monstrous and that somebody like Trump, I mean, there was a lack of. Just occasionally I just kept thinking it's not quite sound, but it's a lack of, kind of, given how funny and smart he is, just a lack of energy and adjectives and clarity.

[Alistair Campbell]

It's funny because I spent part today, this morning, with some friends I know up here who were talking about the election. And one of the things they were saying is that they get fed, fed up at the fact that all the parties ever do the SNP talk about themselves and they talk about independence the whole time and all the other parties just attack the snp. One thing he's definitely doing, I talked about this to him earlier, is avoiding trying to make this election about remotely about independence, because the SNP are trying to do that. I think he's trying to. I think that's a deliberate thing of not just being a kind of negative politician. I actually thought he came most alive when you were pushing him on a pro business agenda and being different from the uk. I thought that's. And I think he's trying to be more positive than just sort of sitting around saying the SNP are terrible. And let's be honest, Rory, if he does become First Minister of Scotland, he cannot say Trump's a blithering idiot. I'm sorry, he just can't. That is not. We're back to our Sanchez argument. Labour cannot be like Sanchez and the rhetoric. You and I can, but I think if you're the First Minister Scotland, you've got to be a little bit careful.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, okay. But when it comes to Alex Salmond and Peter morale and the scandals in the snp, I think he could be pretty clear about that. I mean, I didn't really see that he'd suffer much, saying, listen, it's pretty pathetic. They're pretty incompetent. It's a bit of a disgrace. I mean, why is he being quite so polite about the party he's running against?

[Alistair Campbell]

I think he would think he's not being that polite. I think he keeps saying, the countries, they fail the country, they've lost their way, we need to replace them. I think he's trying to do a positive campaign which normally I think you would applaud.

[Rory Stewart]

I love the business stuff. I love the business stuff. But maybe there's a balance here. I think that he could find a few crisp, funny, brutal lines about his opposition which would get you laughing, which you'd remember. I mean, can you remember any of his lines about the S and P? Really?

[Alistair Campbell]

That's the only one. They've lost their way. They've lost their way.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. The most positive stuff I thought was lovely. I mean, all, all for him on business. And I think that's hugely important and it's great to see somebody in British politics making old fashioned arguments about entrepreneurs and business people. And so I just. No, I was just. So many of the American politicians we've interviewed recently seem to be just, you know, from Gavin Newsom onwards, just much more colorful and relaxed and memorable in the way that they talk about the world and their opponents. And British politics still seems a bit cautious and cramped.

[Alistair Campbell]

It's interesting. Listen, I think if you compare him to most Labour politicians, he is not cautious and crazy cramped and he's very, very colorful and he's very, very. I kind of see what he's trying to do, I think, which is you could spend all your time whacking the snp. And the SNP seems to me up here fighting a pretty strong base campaign at the moment, which is why they do keep going on about independence. But I think that, and yes, you can attack the record, but I think he's trying to answer that question and it's interesting he goes one step further. He actually says, says, we can't just criticize the snp. We have to look at ourselves for not having been able to beat them. So I think he's genuinely trying to do this a little bit differently and fight a positive campaign. I think the worry I have from a Labor perspective is that the campaign's not going to be long enough to get him, to get him through to the public in a way that I think if he could get through to the public, I think he'd be very, very popular.

[Rory Stewart]

Is there maybe something I'm missing about the way that people think about the snp? I mean, for example, look, Labour doesn't run campaigns against the Tories in a general election in Britain, saying, I'm not going to pretend that everything the Tories have done for the last 20 years is wrong. They go for the jugular. They're incredibly clear about what a disgrace they are and why they need to be booted out. Is it that Actually, he senses there's a huge amount of residual sympathy for the snp and people don't really see them as bad people. And therefore he can't really. You can't do what Labour would naturally do to the Tories?

[Alistair Campbell]

No, I think it's more that he is trying to project a sense of positivity about himself, about Labour and about Scotland. I think the reason that ultimately, and, you know, we discussed it in the podcast at the time, I thought it was a very big call, as you said, to go for. To call for Keir Starmer to resign. But I think that was his kind of breakpoint. And it's. You know, the SNP were all ready to go with posters that basically said, Anasawa is Keir Starmer's man in Scotland because they were going to capitalize on this sense that Labor's not as popular as they were when they were first elected. So I think he's trying to be positive about himself, his own personality, his own character, try to put a more positive vision for what the Labour Party stands for, which is where I agree with you. I think the business thing is very, very important. And probably saying to himself, it's dead easy to track the snp, but every minute I'm doing that, that I'm not telling people why we're the alternative. And I think it's why labor is the alternative that is the hardest battle right now.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, well, maybe my final thing would just be it's not a question of time. It might just be a question of two or three more memorable crisp phrases and adjectives and metaphors and bit of way of making people wake up in a telling image somewhere.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, the one thing I know Roy is he listens to. He listens very closely to the podcast, often tells me, in fact, he was talking about it last time I spoke to him, and he was remembering interviews that I'd frankly forgotten we'd done. So he follows it very closely. As he left the room, he said, oh, God, this is the bit where you guys talk about me. So you'll doubtless be listening. And then he'll probably come and say, come on then, already. Give me these adjectives. Give me these. What are these adjectives? I've got to find.

[Rory Stewart]

Good. Well, let's have that. I also agree with you about the kilt.

[Alistair Campbell]

You think he should wear a kilt?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. I kind of some ways, in a way, I spent quite a lot of time at the coronation next to Humsay youth Joseph, who was wearing a kilt. I don't Understand why he's not wearing a kilt. Final one from me. Do you think it's worked for him coming out against Keir Starmer? I mean, how would you balance. Let's say you were giving strategic advice. Do you think that in the end was net positive or a net negative, just politically?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, talking not just to Annas, but to other people in the Scottish Labour Party. They say how it's definitely worked in that it's much harder when they're meeting people who are. Who are just generally pissed off with life. They find it harder just to blame the Labour government when they know that the guy who's standing to be their first minister has come out. So I think it probably has. Net positive. I sort of agreed with you, though, at the time that I always. I know you don't always get my football analogies, but it's like if a star player calls for the manager to go, but the manager doesn't go, the star player then has to have a relationship with that manager. And I think that's the bit he underestimated, maybe, when he was talking about, you know, my first interest has to be Scotland. Well, that's fine, but Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. Labour wants it to be part of the United Kingdom. And it kind of does matter who the Prime Minister is of the United Kingdom is. And the first minister of Scotland's relationship with the first. With the Prime Minister matters as well. But I think the one thing he's got, because he is such a kind of warm, empathetic character, I think if there was one politician on the landscape now who I could imagine breaking a bridge, but then rebuilding the bridge in personal terms, I think he can probably do that.

[Rory Stewart]

Good. Well, thank you, Alistair, for getting it. Very pleased to join it. And I think he's a. He's a really fascinating guy and I thought, thank you for getting it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, see you soon.

[Rory Stewart]

See you soon. Bye. Bye.

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[Gordon Carrera]

Why did we really go to war with Iraq?

[David McCloskey]

And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of. The Rest is Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures. Iraq WMD.

[Gordon Carrera]

In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But they were wrong.

[David McCloskey]

This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting and far more dangerous.

[Gordon Carrera]

Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.

[David McCloskey]

In this series, we go deep inside the CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made, and look at the sources who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.

[Gordon Carrera]

The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east and permanently weakened public trust in governments and intelligence agencies. And its consequences are still playing out today.

[David McCloskey]

Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who were at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell, and former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell.

[Gordon Carrera]

So get the full story by listening to the rest is classified and subscribing to the Declassified Club. Wherever you get your podcasts,