Anas Sarwar’s refusal to criticise Rachel Reeves over the Winter Fuel Payment cuts makes him look weak and damages his campaign to be the next First Minister.
The Scottish Labour leader is first in line to dish out criticism of the SNP Government when they get things wrong. He has been right to hold John Swinney and his predecessors to account for failings on the NHS, drug deaths and the economy.
But when a Labour Chancellor strips 900,000 Scots pensioners of their WFP, many of whom are poor, he stays silent.
Today’s vote at Holyrood on reversing the Westminster decision is smart politics by Swinney and a headache for Sarwar.
Practically none of his MSPs, including his deputy Jackie Baillie, support the Reeves cut yet they are keeping quiet in case they annoy a powerful member of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet.
Every party, apart from Scottish Labour, is likely to vote for a motion calling for a u-turn on means-testing the WFP. Labour find themselves in the extraordinary position of being the only group at Holyrood that wants to take an axe to a policy implemented by Gordon Brown.
Sarwar’s strategy of demanding the SNP Government use a £41m pot to fund a more progressive replacement also rankles. His party is asking Holyrood to mitigate a policy pushed through by his own Labour Government.
This is a curious position for any pro-UK party to take. If you are Labour, you are supposed to care about pensioners in Manchester or Croydon as much as older people in Glasgow. Their current position is opportunistic and will not wash with voters.
A better approach would have been to lead a campaign with Labour mayors and the First Minister of Wales on rewriting the Reeves policy. They could have supported the principle of targeting but only if the means test was significantly more generous than Reeves’ miserly offering.
Local by-election results in Dundee and recent polling show the WFP debacle is harming Scottish Labour. If Sarwar does not stand up to the Labour Government, he will keep getting trampled on.
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