By Paul Hutcheon

Copyright dailyrecord

Labour conference in Liverpool and the rest of 2025 are a write off for Anas Sarwar . The Scottish Labour leader’s party is seventeen points behind the SNP in the race for Holyrood and Sarwar badly needs momentum . But the next three months will bring him pain rather than political gain . Conference will be a showcase of Labour divisions, with a fractious deputy leadership contest and Andy Burnham’s every utterance dominating the airwaves. Public squabbles will then be followed by the slow march towards Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ £30bn cuts Budget in November. Unpopular ideas will be trailed in advance and the final package will produce howls of anger from affected groups. The news will be dominated by UK Labour woes until Christmas and the SNP’s poll lead will likely widen. Sarwar’s strategy in this rocky period is to keep his head down until Scots are ready to think about the Holyrood election. The smart money would be on him making a speech in the first days of 2026 on the policies he is keeping under wraps and which lay down the dividing lines of the election. I would also expect him to lend enough support to the SNP in January for John Swinney’s Scottish Budget to pass. Sarwar blundered last year by dithering on an SNP Budget that announced the abolition of the two child cap and the restoration of winter fuel payments. All this strategy achieved was handing Swinney a mallet with which he hit Sarwar over the head on a daily basis. Time is running out for Scottish Labour and Sarwar will not make the same Budget mistake again. Keir Starmer’s central role in Scottish Labour’s slide in the polls cannot be underestimated. But hoping the Labour Government will come to Sarwar’s rescue is like throwing a sack of bricks to a drowning man. Scottish Labour, despite the unforgiving political winds, still have two of the best arguments in the build up to the Holyrood election. One, only Sarwar or Swinney will be the First Minister after May. If you want rid of the SNP, there is no alternative to voting Labour. Two, voters will be asked a telling question: do you really want twenty five years of SNP rule in Edinburgh? Senior Scottish Labour figures are itching for good news to come from London, but they should lower their ambitions. The best help Starmer could give Sarwar is a period of calm and a few months of quiet progress. The rest of this year is a wash out for Scottish Labour. 2026 is when the election really starts. To sign up to the Daily R ecord Politics newsletter, click here