Anas Sarwar may have won politician of the year, but real test lies ahead for Scots Labour

ANAS Sarwar was doubtless delighted to be named Scottish Politician of the Year at an awards bash on Thursday.

But while the applause of fellow politicians, lobbyists and journalists may be good for the ego, the contest that matters is the Holyrood election in 17 months’ time.

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That will be determined by votes, not the whims of a chin-stroking judging panel.

And while Labour may have trounced the SNP in July’s General Election, the May 2026 Scottish Parliament vote is a different ball game.

Focus will be on Sarwar and SNP leader John Swinney. Not Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.

And without trust in Sarwar, Scottish Labour will fail.

Last week, two worrying signs emerged for Labour on that very issue.

Firstly, another poll showed the SNP – despite their obvious shortcomings – are still most trusted to run the show at Holyrood.

The Nats have a comfortable lead in Scottish Parliament voting intentions, despite losing support.

That can perhaps be put down, in part, to Labour’s rocky first months in power. Look how public opinion has changed since July.

Despite Labour claiming they’d do things differently to those dastardly Tories, they seem to be doing their best to disappoint.

If there is one thing that people dislike, it’s being treated like mugs.

There’s enough people who feel Labour are doing just that.

There was the feigned horror at the state of public finances right after the General Election.

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The next stage in this act — probably scripted months before the election — was to say they’re going to have to cut the universal Winter Fuel Payment to help fill this hole.

This is a party that deployed the “Tory cost of living crisis” mantra precisely because they knew how much it mattered. So, to make it worse for millions of pensioners was a bold move.

They also whacked up employer’s National Insurance at the Budget. This was clumsy sleight-of-hand, with Labour insisting they had stuck to their manifesto pledge that “We will not make working people pay more tax”.

So, they lump the burden on employers — but in the full knowledge this will be passed on to workers.

Worse still, the Labour-controlled Treasury then boasted in a thoroughly dishonest social media campaign that there were “no increases to rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT”. Such was the backlash, they removed the ad.

But with power, comes arrogance. They think they can get away with this stuff — especially as they are at the start of a five-year term.

However, Scottish Labour leader Sarwar is not in power. He doesn’t have the luxury of time. He needs to earn trust, not haemorrhage it, and show that he, unlike Starmer and Reeves, is not in the business of hoodwinking ordinary folk.

Yet last week — in that second of the worrying signs I mentioned — he did just that. His emphatic claim that a Scottish Labour government would “reinstate” the Winter Fuel Payment is misleading at best.

A bit of background is needed to explain this nonsense. The Winter Fuel Payment has just been devolved and is now called the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment.

The SNP echoed the Chancellor and ended the universal nature of the benefit, arguing it had lost cash due to the Westminster change.

So, across the UK, the payment will now go only to those who get pension credits.

But Scottish Labour know — because Swinney has said so — that SNP ministers may bring back the universal payment from next year.

They may well announce this at the Holy-rood Budget next week, using some of the extra funding that came to the Scottish Government from Reeves’s UK Budget.

With this in mind, it seems Sarwar decided to get in first. And I admit that when I saw Labour’s snazzy social media graphic, I fell for the spin.

A photo of Sarwar smiling at a pensioner was accompanied with the statement: “JUST ANNOUNCED: A Scottish Labour Government will reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment.”

I thought — like many readers doubtless will — that this means that all pensioners would get the payment again, on the same terms they did previously. Because that’s what “reinstate” means.

But no. On looking into the details, Scottish Labour admit they intend to “taper” the payment — meaning the payment amount falls as a pensioner’s income rises.

So, they are going to means-test it, but in a different way. Not “reinstate” the previous regime, as the emphatic pledge says.

Might the “taper” mean some pensioners get, say, a token £1? A Labour spokesman told me this was possible, but details had not yet been decided.

So, what are we left with? A pledge to “reinstate the Winter Fuel Payment” which will not reinstate the previous regime.

That’s not just spin, it’s utterly misleading. It exploits the fact that the subject is a bit complicated and many people would just swallow the soundbite.

But even if not now, people will twig in the end – especially given 17 months. And what’s that going to do for trust in Sarwar?

Leaving people with a false impression, is of course a technique deployed frequently in politics.

This is done on the basis that a great deal of people who work for parties and governments are smartarses who do think you’re mugs.

That is starting to look as true of Labour as it is of the SNP and the Tories.

But if the slipperiness continues, it will not bode well for Sarwar’s electoral fortunes.