Anas Sarwar has had his hypocrisy and disdain for the ordinary voters of Scotland exposed as he jumps from the Holyrood ship for a sniff of power in the UK Government.
The jump takes place less than three months after the last Scottish election in which his party was returned as one of the largest opposition parties to the governing Scottish National Party (SNP), sharing the position with Reform UK.
Abandoning his constituents
Despite failing to win the constituency of Glasgow Cathcart and Pollok, Anas Sarwar was returned to the Scottish Parliament via the list system and was elected as a regional MSP for Glasgow.
Given his election, Sarwar has a duty to represent all the constituents of the Glasgow electoral region. His resignation to take up the offer of a peerage in the House of Lords and a position in the UK Government so soon after the election speaks of abandonment of his constituents for career opportunities.
Disturbing lack of democracy
Anas Sarwar is heading to the UK Government, serving as the Minister of State for Trade. But unlike other ministers, Sarwar is not an elected MP. Not one constituency in Scotland, or the rest of the UK, elected him. Not one single person voted for him. So how is he in government?
It’s not just members of the House of Commons who can serve as government ministers in the UK. Members of the House of Lords can also do this. The difference between the two, however, is that members of the House of Lords are unelected and voters have no say on who sits in it. The members of the UK’s second chamber are given their roles by the Prime Minister.
This is exactly what has happened here. The new Labour Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has given Sarwar a place in the House of Lords so he can serve in the UK Government, bypassing, entirely, voters who might not have elected him, even if there had been a vacancy for a by-election.
It is a disturbing time when the head of the nation’s government doesn’t choose ministers from their group of elected MPs but rather sneaks somebody unelected in through the back door by gifting them a peerage.
Not a good look for Labour
A government minister arriving through the back door of a peerage is not unprecedented. In November 2023, former Conservative MP and Prime Minister, David Cameron, was given a place in the House of Lords so he could become the Foreign Secretary, despite him being unelected and bypassing the need for an election to parliament for him.
Labour stood in the 2024 general election on the platform of “change”, yet it can hardly make the party look good when they essentially copy a move straight out of the Conservative Party’s playbook from three years prior. That said, while this move is usually made by the Conservatives, Labour have done this on occasion as well.
Added to that is the fact that Anas Sarwar joins the Lords despite claiming he wouldn’t; despite claiming he didn’t believe in it and despite Labour’s once upon a time pledge to scrap the House of Lords.
The abandonment of his constituents, the lack of democracy and the double standard. Anas Sarwar and Andy Burnham have done nothing to help Scottish Labour’s image and cause and, if anything, have shown that advances in career, by any means necessary, are more important than commitments made to the people of Scotland.
