Category Archives: Anas Sarwar

Home secretary suspends refugee family reunion applications until new, tighter rules are put in place – as it happened

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Yvette Cooper says rules were designed years ago to help families separated by war but are being used in a different way now

And while we are talking about Blair-era Labour aides, Peter Hyman, who wrote speeches for Tony Blair and later worked for Keir Starmer in the run-up to the general election, has launched a new Substack blog. It is called Changing the Story, which tells you quite a lot about what he thinks is going wrong with No 10. Here is an extract from his first post.

Starmer is an ‘opportunity’ prime minister forced to become a ‘security’ one. And that’s why the government’s narrative is seen by some to be elusive.

Let me explain.

I remember well Tim Allan’s leaving drinks at Number 10 in the earlyish Blair era. In his fulsome farewell speech Tony Blair noted only half jokingly “Tim’s even more right wing than me..”

The same Tim Allan who as head of Portland had a contract to polish Vladimir Putin’s reputation?

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Swinney demands Meta remove ‘racist’ Reform UK ad attacking Labour’s Sarwar

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Scotland’s first minister criticises byelection campaign video that claims his rival ‘will prioritise Pakistani community’

The SNP leader John Swinney has demanded that the owner of Facebook act on Reform UK’s “racist” byelection advert that attacks the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar.

The Facebook video, which incorrectly claims Sarwar has promised to prioritise Pakistani communities, is now subject to formal complaints from Scotland’s two main political parties. Scottish Labour contacted Meta, Facebook’s parent company, about the video two weeks ago and has yet to receive a reply.

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Phasing out fossil fuels ‘doomed to fail’, says Tony Blair as he calls for rethink of net zero policy – UK politics live

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‘Any strategy based on either phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail,’ says former PM

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Keir Starmer is not expected to campaign in the Hamilton byelection, a critical contest for Scottish Labour which takes place in early June, Anas Sarwar has confirmed.

I wouldn’t expect Keir to be campaigning in the byelection. That’s not to say he won’t, but I’m not expecting Kier to campaign in the byelection.

I’ll be on the stump campaigning for a Labour win. I’m the candidate for first minister next year. I’m the one that wants to remove the SNP from government.

Next year, we’ve got to demonstrate to people that for all Nigel Farage might want to come here with his easy answers and create a bit of a circus, the reality is a vote for Reform only helps the SNP. If you want to get rid of the SNP, only Scottish Labour can beat them.

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Starmer says most farmers won’t be affected by inheritance tax change as Clarkson tells rally it’s a ‘hammer blow’ – UK politics live

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Jeremy Clarkson tells Westminster protest that government should admit plans weren’t ‘thought out and are a mistake’

In an interview with the BBC, Steve Reed, the environment secretary, defended imposing inheritance tax on some farms when Labour said in opposition that it was not planning to do that. Asked why the government changed its mind, he replied:

After we won the election, we discovered that the Conservatives have left a £22bn black hole in the public finances. And if we want to fix our National Health Service, rebuild all schools, provide the affordable housing that rural communities and across the country rely on, then we’ve had to ask those with the broader shoulders to pay a little bit more.

I’m sure we all feel betrayed because of the state that the Conservatives left the economy in. A £22bn pound black hole isn’t a small problem. It’s massive, and fixing that is necessary if we want to stabilise the economy and rebuild our public services.

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‘Scunnered with the Tories, frustrated by the SNP’: Labour in bid to be Scotland’s biggest party

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Candidates in key central belt hope to scoop up voters who have become disillusioned with their election rivals

Not for the first time, Blair McDougall, Labour’s candidate in East Renfrewshire on the outskirts of Glasgow, is telling a wavering voter that the election here is “so, so close”.

If predictions of a knife-edge outcome weren’t enough to motivate him, many people – including some in Barrhead, which he is visiting today – have just received their postal ballots. Their votes will be cast in the next few days.

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General election: Starmer and Sunak clash over taxes, the NHS and immigration in head-to-head TV debate – as it happened

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Labour leader says prime minister’s claim he would raise people’s taxes by £2,000 is ‘nonsense’

The Guardian’s visuals team has produced an interactive boundary map for the UK general election which shows you if your constituency has been altered because of boundary changes. You can check it out here:

Ed Davey has been speaking about his party’s plan to provide free personal care for adults. The Liberal Democrats leader said he wants carers to have a special, higher minimum wage.

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SNP says Scottish Labour is rewriting party’s spending plans in TV debate

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John Swinney claims Anas Sarwar not keeping to Rachel Reeves’s constraints on NHS, schools and renewables funding as leaders clash

The SNP has accused Scottish Labour of “completely rewriting” Rachel Reeves’s spending plans, as the party leaders took part in the first televised debate of the election campaign.

The clash between the the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats was screened by STV, without a studio audience, and involved intensive cross-examination of each leader by his political rivals.

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