Starmer's Scottish headache

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

'What does a party get after nearly two decades in office, collapsing public services, an internal civil war and a £2 million police investigation? Re-election again - perhaps with an even bigger majority', writes James Heale in The Spectator this week. He's talking about the SNP, whose change in fortunes has less to do with their leader John Swinney and more to do with the collapse of support for Scottish Labour and their leader Anas Sarwar.

Who could benefit from the increased fragmentation of voters in Scotland? Will demands for more time, money and attention cause even more issues for Rachel Reeves? As Scottish Labour meets for its conference in Glasgow this weekend, James and editor Michael Gove join Katy Balls to discuss the dynamics between Holyrood and Westminster. Michael also spots a positive avenue for Labour, should they wish to take it...

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews.
0:06.4	Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online,
0:11.7	along with a free £20 £10 £10 or Waitrose voucher.
0:14.6	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:32.7	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Scotts, the spectators' occasional Scottish podcast.
0:36.1	I'm Katie Bowles and I'm joined by Michael Gove and James Heel.
0:39.4	Now the Scottish Labour Conference is getting underway in Glasgow.
0:42.9	James, just bring us up to speed on the festivities so far.
0:45.4	Well, today the main event has been Anna Sawa's speech.
0:49.7	And really, it's been a remarkable sort of 12 months for the Scottish Labour Party.
0:51.3	A year ago, they were riding high.
0:58.0	It looked like finally they were going to get the SMP out of power after four terms and all the various scandals we've talked about endlessly on this podcast before.
1:03.2	And then, of course, Kirstama gets elected and it all falls apart, really. And what's happened is their polling has halved in that time. Donald Trump, the much malign Donald Trump,
1:07.6	is now more popular in Scotland than Kirstama, and that's having a huge drag on
1:11.4	Scottish Labour's ratings. And so Anasawa is under pressure. There's questions about how they
1:15.2	handled the Scottish budget process and whether he could differentiate himself more from the
1:18.8	UK Labour Party. And he gave a big speech today. And he tried to catch some headlines by
1:23.3	talking about how if he was elected to First Minister, he'll introduce a Department of Government
1:27.1	Efficiency, Doge, even the Labour Party, are backing Elon Musk's ideas now.
1:31.4	What about Projects Perth?
1:32.6	Projects Beff was not mentioned, sadly, but it shows perhaps a sort of ideological echo maybe
1:38.3	of our efforts down here.
	...

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