EUAN MCCOLM: Sarwar wants to be our next First Minister - now might be a good time for him to start telling the voters why

For the first time in living memory, the mood has lifted in SNP ranks. After a prolonged period of turmoil, Nationalist MSPs are indulging themselves with mild feelings of optimism.

Brows have begun to unfurrow. Some SNP members have even been seen smiling in public.

The game, they think, might not be over yet. Their spirits have been lifted by the contents of the draft Budget announced by Finance Secretary Shona Robison last week.

So far as Nationalists at Holyrood are concerned, this document just might be the key, in 2026, to a fourth successive Scottish parliamentary election victory for the SNP.

Ms Robison’s colleagues don’t rejoice because her draft Budget is in the best interests of Scotland. It is not.

Rather, the Finance Secretary is now the toast of her colleagues because she has managed to make life difficult for the Scottish Labour Party leader Anas Sarwar.

Finance Secretary Shona Robisons Budget earlier this month has made make life difficult for Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar

After receiving a £3.4billion funding increase in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, last month, the Scottish Government’s already tired attack line about ‘Westminster austerity’ finally ran out of steam.

The challenge for Ms Robison was to show what she could do with a substantial sum of extra money, rather than simply to describe what she might do if only the cash was available.

Inaction

In the end, the Finance Secretary’s draft Budget was low on innovation.

Much of the extra funding is earmarked for new pay agreements, while there is no significant planned spending on long overdue reform in the NHS or the education system.

But Nationalist MSPs haven’t cared about the inaction of their government in those key areas for the past 17 and a half years, so we should not be surprised that this ongoing neglect is of no concern to them now.

What matters to Nationalists at Holyrood is that two headline-grabbing announcements in Ms Robison’s draft Budget present political difficulties for Mr Sarwar.

The Labour leader may wish to vote against the SNP’s Budget – and he would have many good reasons to withhold his support – but the political cost of refusing to back a plan which includes the maintenance of the winter fuel payment for pensioners and the removal of the two-child benefit cap would, I think, be too high for him to pay.

Values

The SNP became the dominant party of the left in Scotland by persuading former supporters of Labour that it maintained the values their party had abandoned.

That accusation landed, hard. The refrain ‘I didn’t leave Labour, Labour left me’ could be heard across constituencies which had once seemed stained indelibly red.

Ms Robison and First Minister John Swinney, whose fingerprints I detect on the draft Budget, have used money supplied by Labour at Westminster to make life difficult for Labour at Holyrood.

This is smart, if unattractive, politics. If the SNP is to see off Labour in 2026, it will have to win back Scottish voters who got behind Sir Keir Starmer in July’s general election.

The draft Budget is an attempt to do that. Over recent years, it has suited Mr Sarwar perfectly well to be seen to be close to Sir Keir.

Scottish Labour leaders of the recent past may have suffered from the accusation made by SNP opponents that they were nothing more than ‘branch managers’, but the inevitability of Labour’s general election victory made a virtue of Mr Sarwar’s closeness to his boss.

Now, however, while I don’t for a moment think Mr Sarwar should do anything to distance himself from the PM – unless it is politically necessary for him to do so – it is time for the Scottish Labour leader to tell us more about himself and – if he has one – his vision for Scotland.

Mr Sarwar is clever and affable and, although the SNP may be back in the fight, there is a reasonable chance that he will become the next First Minister of Scotland.

Scottish Labour leader Anar Sarwar must convince voters to give him a chance

However, if the Scottish Labour leader is to achieve this ambition and break the nationalists’ political gridlock, he will have to do more than be clever and affable.

For reasons of cynical political expediency, Mr Sarwar should support the SNP’s Budget.

He cannot win an argument against the measures outlined by Ms Robison with the voters he will need if he is to replace John Swinney as First Minister (even if those measures are poorly thought through and largely uncosted).

The Scottish Labour leader has no choice but to be reactive when it comes to the draft Budget.

If he is to lead his party to victory in 2026, it’s time for him to get proactive on matters of policy.

Bogged down in a police investigation and split over independence strategy, the SNP has not looked more vulnerable in two decades, yet it would be wrong to assume that the Nationalists are a spent force.

Recent polling may have given Mr Swinney a net approval rating of -11 but Mr Sarwar fared worse, with -16.

The Scottish Labour leader doesn’t have time to spare if he is to persuade voters to give him the chance to lead the country, yet even those closest to him struggle to describe his political vision.

One ally said: ‘He’s been incredibly careful not to put a foot wrong. The party’s been disciplined and he’s been a great communicator. 

But all that said, you could also accuse us of lacking a real identity.

‘If we weren’t a viable alternative government, then it would be fine for us to just attack, attack, attack, but we need to start showing people at least the shape of a plan.’

His fear of provoking any kind of backlash left Mr Sarwar at odds with voters on the controversial issue of gender self-ID.

While the majority of Scots are opposed to allowing male-bodied people access to female single-sex spaces, Mr Sarwar supported the SNP’s plan to allow just that.

Since plans to allow self-ID were blocked last year by then Scottish Secretary Alister Jack, Mr Sarwar has remained conspicuously silent on the matter.

Failure

The Labour leader is naive if he thinks the matter of gender ideology and its impact on women’s rights won’t play a substantial part in the next Holyrood election campaign.

On this – and, indeed, on a wide range of subjects – Mr Sarwar needs clear messages.

The SNP’s government of Scotland since 2007 has been marked by failure after failure. All things considered, Scottish Labour should now be runaway favourites to head the next government at Holyrood.

As things stand – thanks, in part, to Shona Robison’s tricksy draft Budget – Labour and the Nationalists are neck and neck in the polls.

If Mr Sarwar is to change this state of affairs and take those smiles off Nationalist faces, I suggest he gets on with persuading us he’s more than merely Sir Keir’s man in the north.

Anas Sarwar wishes to be Scotland’s next First Minister. This being so, it might be a good idea for him to start telling us why.