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Scottish Labour will win next year’s Holyrood election despite the polls, the party’s leader has said. Anas Sarwar said he is confident he will become first minister after the May 7 election, claiming Scots are not currently focused on the ballot, which is skewing poll numbers. A study by Survation for the IPPR Scotland think tank has suggested Reform UK has leapfrogged Labour into second, with the SNP maintaining a large lead with almost six months left before voters go to the polls. “I have been told by polls, pollsters, commentators, pundits, that I’m massively behind, that Scottish Labour is going to lose,” he said. “I was told that before the general election, we won, and we won a clear majority, I was told that before the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election we were going to come third, we won it, and I’m being told that now. “I’m telling you now, I’m going to prove them all wrong. “We are going to win next year.” He said of next May’s election: “I don’t think people’s focus, the broader public’s focus, is actually on the choice that faces them in May 2026, and I think that once that choice becomes clearer, I am absolutely confident we will have the right platform and the right message to win.” Mr Sarwar used his speech at the IPPR’s conference on Wednesday to lay out his vision for a Scottish Labour government at Holyrood. He said his party will cut red tape in the NHS, scrap the 14 territorial health boards and replace them with just three, and it will push power out of Holyrood to local communities with the creation of directly-elected mayors. He also reserved some praise for former SNP first ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, describing them as “the two most powerful politicians” Scotland has had in the last two decades. But he added: “I think, on reflection, the biggest disappointment of those two big politicians is they used their huge mandates and their undoubted political skills to do other debates and other arguments, whether it be about the constitution, or to tinker, rather than to deliver that big, bold, fundamental change. “I think I want to do it differently.” With an election around six months away, the Scottish Labour leader said Scots have had enough of politicians setting targets and not meeting them and are “seeing past the press release”. He added: “I’m determined to get our Parliament back to a place where we come together to deliver for people, rather than using it as a way to pick fights with each other and just build an ‘us versus them’ politics.”
