I push Keir Starmer to be more extroverted in Scotland
The Scottish Labour leader also said he will not engage in any 'back room stitch-ups' with other parties if he becomes first minister following the Scottish election next year.
At an Edinburgh Fringe event in front of a live audience, Mr Sarwar was interviewed by Catherine Salmond, editor of The Herald.
He was pressed on his relationship with the UK Labour leader and whether Sir Keir was comfortable coming north of the border.
He said: 'We're different personalities… I am much more probably conversational, out there, a bit of an extrovert.
'I think it's safe to say he's a bit more introverted in that sense.'
Mr Sarwar said Sir Keir had become more relaxed and confident in the five years since becoming Labour leader.
He said Sir Keir was more relaxed in Scotland than in other parts of the UK, adding: 'I think we've built up a rapport, probably because I am pushing to be a bit more of extroverted than perhaps he is in other parts.'
He said he spoke to the Prime Minister around 'two or three times a month'.
However he said the early part of Labour's response to the war in Gaza had been 'challenging' for his party, referring to an interview the Prime Minister gave where he said Israel had the 'right' to withhold power and water from Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks.
'I think the early part was challenging, he himself accepts that what he said in the LBC interview wasn't right,' Mr Sarwar said.
Discussing the Middle East further, he said: 'I think we have to be doing much more to hold the Israeli government to account.
'To provide evidence that there is not any components that are being used in a proactive way in Gaza.'
Looking ahead to the 2026 Scottish election, Mr Sarwar said he was putting his 'heart, soul energy, time' into winning.
He said it would be a 'very close election' likely to result in a 'parliament of minorities'.
Rather than doing deals such as the SNP-Green powersharing agreement, he said he would 'work progressively with the parliament' if he became first minister.
He said: 'We are looking to form a minority Scottish Labour government that does no kind of back room stich-up but instead moves to govern based on what we promised.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
A long-term plan is needed to get the country out of its financial hole
SIR – Whether by raising income tax rates, a wealth tax or through less overt measures, the Government will try to extract more money from the people that it serves ('Reeves facing £50bn black hole as tax pressure mounts ', report, August 6). However, such measures risk being self-defeating. Those who are unable or unwilling to leave the country will bear the brunt of the tax rises. That includes standard and higher-rate taxpayers. Every pound the Government extracts from their bank accounts is a pound that cannot be spent on businesses that provide goods and services. Thus, businesses will take another hit which, in turn, will reduce their tax payments. Since the failure of the Truss administration, there has been no long-term plan to get the country out of its financial hole. Eventually, there will have to be one and it will likely involve curbing the insatiable appetite of government to control and spend. When such a plan sees the light of day we may be surprised at the boost it gives to confidence and investment. David Porter Plymouth, Devon SIR – Labour dug itself a financial hole when it pledged not to increase National Insurance (NI), VAT or income tax rates. Instead of imposing VAT on private schools and possibly even on private health, a simple 1 or 2 per cent rise on NI and/or the basic rate of income tax would have solved the Chancellor's problems. Now she is having to cast her net wider – and creating more problems as a result. John Tilsiter Radlett, Hertfordshire SIR – Taxing jobs and taxing capital is not going to result in economic growth. Is it too much to expect a former Bank of England economist to grasp this? Patrick Loxdale Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SIR – There is a limit to which any economy can be taxed. The UK is at that limit. The British public understands this. It is plain that public sector expenditure must be cut to balance the books. Given the Government throws billions around like confetti – on the Chagos Islands, the immigration fiasco, welfare, public sector pay rises, excessive numbers of civil servants – there is much low-hanging fruit. The economy is being badly managed as never before. Enough is enough. Please can we have some economic sanity. Stuart Moore Bramham, West Yorkshire SIR – Having continually criticised the Conservatives for the last 12 months for creating a £22bn black hole in the public finances, I trust Labour will now be constantly criticising itself for doubling the deficit. Paul Webster Dyserth, Denbighshire
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Millions of households will be hit with council tax hikes to pay for Angela Rayner's Government funding reforms
Households in wealthy areas could be hit with huge council tax rises under Angela Rayner 's plans to divert more funding to deprived regions, experts warned last night. Reforms being brought in by the Deputy Prime Minister will mean many councils in the South – including London and the Home Counties – face swingeing cuts to their core budgets. Those in the Midlands and North can expect to see large increases. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests the funding changes will see around a quarter of councils in England lose money in real terms – creating big 'winners and losers' as ministers try to address perceived unfairness in levels of funding across the country. However, the strength of cuts in wealthy areas that have historically kept council tax bills low means they will have less money to spend on vital services such as bin collections and elderly care – even if they increase bills by the maximum amount currently allowed. The report suggests that local authorities with low council tax that will lose funding should be able to make it up by hiking their rates on households even further. Kate Ogden, a senior research economist at the think-tank and the report's author, said: 'The Government should consider giving highly affected councils which currently have low council tax rates greater flexibility to bring their council tax bills up to more typical levels to offset funding losses.' Sir Keir Starmer's own council, Camden in north London, will be hit by the reforms when taking inflation into account, the IFS predicted. Overall spending will fall for 186 councils and rise by the same total sum for 161. One in ten will see a fall in overall funding, while one in ten will see an increase of 10 per cent or more. The overall Government spend on local authorities will not change, as the reforms are phased in across three years, from 2026/27 to 2028/29. London will gain the least under the changes with an increase in funding of 8 per cent in the next three years. Outside the capital, the East Midlands (22 per cent) and Yorkshire & the Humber (19 per cent) will see the biggest increases in funding, with the South East the smallest at 13 per cent. A spokesman for Ms Rayner's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it was 'taking decisive action to reform the funding system so we can get councils back on their feet and improve public services'.
Spectator
an hour ago
- Spectator
Mossad's secret allies in Operation Wrath of God
More than half a century ago Palestinian terrorists stormed the 1972 Munich Olympics, murdering two of the Israeli team and taking another nine hostage. The West German authorities, ill-equipped to deal with such incidents, agreed to fly the terrorists and their hostages to Egypt. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, offered to mount a rescue operation. The Germans launched their own, resulting in the deaths of a police officer, four of the seven terrorists and all the hostages. One consequence was the Israeli government's Operation Wrath of God, a programme to assassinate any leaders or planners associated with the massacre. Ten missions were organised in Europe, each signed off by the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir on condition that no innocent bystanders were killed. There have been several books about the operation and a 2005 film by Steven Spielberg. Aviva Guttmann's account does not merely rehearse the stories, though each operation is outlined. Rather, she shows how the security services of European nations cooperated in identifying, monitoring and investigating international terrorists in general and how this aided Mossad in its pursuit of vengeance. Cooperation was via the Club de Berne, an intelligence exchange between eight countries founded in 1969 in response to the growth of international terrorism. Soon expanded to include other countries, among them Israel, it handled communications via encrypted telegrams (which Guttmann calls cables) using the code word Kilowatt. Guttmann found these communications in publicly available Swiss archives. She analyses each assassination, showing how the exchange of Kilowatt information helped Mossad identify and locate their targets, how the various security services learned about terrorist tactics, such as the recruitment or duping of young European women, and how hitherto unknown plots to murder or hijack were prevented. The first assassination was only a month after Munich. Wael Zwaiter, a young Palestinian translator in Rome, returned to his flat to find two men on the stairway leading to his apartment. They shot him 11 times, a bullet for each Munich victim. Journalistic opinion at the time and since concluded that Mossad got the wrong man – a bit-part player at best. But the Kilowatt telegrams show that he had an important logistical role. One operation that Mossad very definitely got wrong was in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer in 1973 when they shot an innocent Moroccan waiter alongside his seven-months pregnant wife. Not only that, but the assassins were caught. Contributing factors to this debacle were an inexperienced, hurriedly assembled team and insufficient research – the poor man was confused with a real terrorist solely on photographic resemblance. Mossad teams generally comprised about 15 people – two to do the killing, two to guard them, two to organise cover and facilities, six to eight to research the target's routines and movements and two to communicate both within the team and back to Israel. Guttmann's principal concern – oft-repeated – is that European security services 'played a vital role in the organisation and execution of Operation Wrath of God'. The extent to which they did so knowingly is not always clear, although they could not have failed to know after Lillehammer. There is no doubt, though, that the information they exchanged with Israel (including their own investigations into Mossad killings) facilitated assassinations within their own borders. 'One would simply not expect Europeans to help kill Palestinians… Governments… failed in their duty to keep safe all citizens,' Guttmann notes. Her disapproval is evident throughout, though not explicitly stated or argued. This is a pity because the opposite case – whether it can be justifiable to murder those seeking to murder you – is nowadays too prevalent to be dismissed without argument. We witness its effects daily on our screens. She concedes, however, that all participants benefitted from the exchange and that Israel was itself a significant contributor. But in claiming that the various agencies 'did not need to respect the same normative considerations as official foreign policy lines' she implies that they acted independently or against their own governments' policies. On this side of the Channel at least, actions by the intelligence agencies, including exchanges with liaison services, require government approval. MI5 does not simply do what it likes. It is not the case that relying on 'foreign intelligence shows… weakness and dependency', as Guttmann says of Mossad. Nor are attributing information to 'friendly services within the region', or claiming a source has 'direct access', forms of boasting; they and other formulae are necessary and conventional guides to assessing reports. She is on firmer ground in questioning the effectiveness of targeted killings, as assassinations are now often called. In the short term they can be highly disruptive and satisfy an understandable thirst for revenge; but in the longer term leaders may be succeeded by those with renewed determination and security. Half a century on, the causes that prompted Wrath of God are with us still.
