Sarwar’s red carpet to Lords will shred Burnham’s integrity

Just when you thought the Westminster revolving door couldn’t spin any faster, Labour has handed the Scottish public another masterclass in political acrobatics.

Anas Sarwar – fresh from leading Scottish Labour to its worst-ever electoral performance – is packing his bags, tossing his Holyrood mandate into the bin of broken promises, and sliding straight into the ermine-trimmed comfort of the House of Lords to take up a ministerial post in Andy Burnham’s government.

If principles were boomerangs, Labour’s leadership would be undisputed world champions.

The appointment isn’t just a breathtaking display of hypocrisy from Sarwar; it acts as a giant neon sign illuminating the hollow core of Andy Burnham’s shiny new premiership.

From “Scrap the Lords” to “Sacrifice a stoat and pass the ermine”

It was back in 2022 that Anas Sarwar solemnly declared the House of Lords was an institution with “no place in 21st century politics”.

As recently as May, when asked if he would ever accept a peerage, his answer was an unequivocal, gold-plated, single-word promise: “No.”

Fast forward a couple of months, and Sarwar has sprinted toward a tax-free, lifetime of subsidised lunch with an unelected seat in London, faster than a bullet train to Shanghai.

• “It is unacceptable to have unelected representatives wielding such power.” – Anas Sarwar, before being offered unelected power.

As commentators across Scotland have noted, watching Sarwar swap his anti-Lords rhetoric for red velvet robes is like watching a lifelong vegan take a job at an abattoir.

The sheer audacity of grabbing a red bench for life after being rejected at the polls shows complete contempt for voters.

A pattern of pledge-and-dump policies

To anyone paying attention to Sarwar’s political track record, this sudden amnesia comes as no surprise. His word has become about as solid as a shortbread biscuit in the Clyde.

There’s the example of Grangemouth. Ahead of the 2024 election, Sarwar stood shoulder-to-shoulder with workers pledging that Labour would “save Grangemouth”.

Yet, when the crunch came, Labour abandoned the workforce and stood idly by as the facility closed, leaving Sarwar to lamely claim he was powerless over private companies.

Sarwar endlessly lectured Scots that Labour would “end austerity” and eradicate poverty, only to turn around and defend Westminster’s continuation of brutal Tory fiscal rules and the two-child benefit cap.

Despite previously waxing lyrical about the devastating damage of Brexit to Scottish businesses and pledging a return to the European single market, Sarwar seamlessly fell into line behind Westminster’s hard-Brexit consensus, ruling out any return to the European Single Market.

What could this say about PM Andy Burnham?

Andy Burnham campaigned for the Labour leadership posing as the “King of the North” – a crusader against the stale, transactional arrogance of Westminster.

Yet, within days of entering 10 Downing Street, his very first moves make it look like Burnham’s “new politics” is the same old Westminster patronage machine with a fresh coat of paint.

By handing out aristocratic lifelines to political allies, it looks like he is rewarding a defeated Scottish politician who helped pave his way to power.

Giving Anas Sarwar a peerage so he can sit in a government department isn’t modern democratic leadership; it’s feudalism with a Labour rosette.

It doesn’t help that he has spent years complaining from Manchester about how arrogant, centralised Westminster ignores the regions, when one of his first acts toward Scotland is to slam the door on democracy.

When First Minister John Swinney raised Scotland’s undeniable democratic mandate for an independence referendum, Burnham reportedly brushed it aside with a condescending “agree to disagree”.

John Swinney won an election with a thumping majority of seats over the next placed party. Andy Burnham has no such personal electoral mandate.

With such a lack of mandate, denying Scotland’s right to choose its own future while stuffing the unelected House of Lords with defeated Labour pals is as democratic as the 18th century.

Birds of a Feather?

Does Andy Burnham not realise that his actions make him and Anas Sarwar look like they were made for each other?

Like Sarwar he appears to be specialising in radical rhetoric while campaigning, only to deliver total capitulation to the Westminster status quo the moment he gets into power.

By rewarding Anas Sarwar’s broken promises with a taxpayer-funded seat in the House of Lords, Andy Burnham is making himself look remarkably naive and ignorant about Scottish democracy and politics.

Scotland deserves better than being treated as a playground for Westminster’s political rehabilitation projects.

The only real way to escape this endless circus of unelected lords and broken promises is to put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands with independence.