EXCLUSIVE: Lord Haughey said the Scottish Labour leader’s gamble has benefited him and Keir Starmer at the same time.
One of Scottish Labour’s top donors has claimed Anas Sarwar’s call for Keir Starmer to quit was the “best Machiavellian plot” Labour has “ever hatched”. Lord Haughey said the Scottish Labour leader and the Prime Minister are both in a stronger position after Sarwar’s explosive intervention.
Sarwar sent shockwaves through Scottish politics on Monday after he demanded the resignation of his friend Starmer. He said the Labour Government had made too many mistakes and called for fresh leadership.
But the move shored up support for the PM, as Cabinet Ministers and Scottish Labour MPs lined up to support Starmer. A new poll has also found that Scots back Sarwar’s intervention.
Lord Haughey, a successful businessman who has donated millions to Labour, attended an emergency meeting of the party’s Scottish parliamentarians on Tuesday. Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show, the Sarwar ally spoke of the moment he watched the Glasgow MSP make the call at a dramatic press conference.
“I’m explaining it to my missus that, ‘no, this is a Machiavellian plot. Something’s going on here.’ And she’s like that, ‘don’t talk rubbish. This is what you say all the time’.”
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“What I said and what I implied is exactly what happened.”
The tycoon said both Sarwar and Starmer had been emboldened by the quit call:
“Anas, to be fair, showed true leadership. He didn’t need anybody behind him, [he] said exactly what he thought.
“He’s put it out there that we’re not a branch office of London. We’ve got our own opinion. We’re going to do what we’re doing here. And without cutting the umbilical cord, he kind of declared UDI for Scotland.”
“I’m sure that he felt a bit disappointed that ten or twenty other people didn’t fire in after him, but he decided whether to do it or not, this is what I think is right for the country.”
He said of the impact of the Starmer: “It smoked everybody out. So, within hours, every Cabinet Minister that may have been plotting, not been plotting, had to come out and back the Prime Minister. He goes into a meeting at night and gets a standing ovation in the way in, and a standing ovation in the way out.”
He added: “Today, Anas is in a much stronger position than he was last week and so is Keir Starmer.
“It’s going to go down as the best Machiavellian pot that Labour ever hatched.”
He said: “That’s a fact.”
Haughey also said: “I’ve said for years and years and years that maybe we should look at an independent Labour Party in Scotland.
“I think Anas went a long way to saying, ‘we’re going to operate as that anyway’.”
It comes after a new poll found Scots backing the Scottish Labour leader over his call for the PM to resign.
A new Norstat poll of 1,001 people for the Sunday Times, conducted after Sarwar’s press conference, found 52 per cent backing the Glasgow MSP.