The new poll find support for Sarwar, but Scottish Labour is still languishing in the polls.
Scots have swung behind Anas Sarwar over his decision to call for Keir Starmer to quit as Prime Minister. A new poll has found a majority believing the Scottish Labour leader made the right move in demanding the PM’s resignation.
But his decision has not shifted support for his struggling party, with Labour still in third place for the Holyrood election. Sarwar stunned observers on Monday after he staged an unscheduled press conference urging Starmer to go.
He claimed the PM had made too many mistakes and called for new leadership in Downing Street. But his stance divided his party as Scottish Labour MPs lined up to support Starmer.
A new Norstat poll of 1,001 people, conducted after Sarwar’s press conference, found 52 per cent backing the Glasgow MSP against 26 per cent who took the opposite view. Starmer’s approval rating is now minus 47 in Scotland and just 15 per cent of voters believe he is doing a good job. A little over 40 per cent of Scots believe he should resign immediately.
However, the polling on the Holyrood election continues to be grim for Sarwar. The snapshot found 17 per cent of Scottish voters planning to back Labour with their constituency vote and regional ballot.
The party is trailing the SNP by a double-digit margin and is just behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. If replicated on May 7th, such a result would be the worst ever performance by Scottish Labour at a Holyrood election.
READ MORE: MP mocks Anas Sarwar’s ‘Brooklyn Beckham’ moment in explosive Labour meeting
The poll put the SNP on 35 per cent in the constituency vote and 30 per cent in the regional list.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are on 19 per cent in both the constituency vote and regional list.
A seat projection gives the SNP 60 seats, five short of the majority that first minister John Swinney says is needed for indyref2.
Reform would return 22 MSPs on these numbers, while Labour would have just 16 MSPs – a historic low.
Fifteen per cent of those polled said Sarwar’s quit call made them more likely to back Scottish Labour, with almost six in ten saying it will make no difference.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “This poll demonstrates that Anas Sarwar was right to be honest with Scots and they have responded positively to that.
“His only interest is in the future of Scotland and the next election is about who runs Scotland, our NHS, schools and public services.
But Professor Sir John Curtice, the UK’s top pollster, said the intervention on Starmer “may have even made things worse”.
He said: “Crucially, for the first time, slightly more (33 per cent) of those who voted Labour in 2024 now believe Sarwar is doing a bad job as Labour’s Scottish leader than feel he is doing a good one (30 per cent).
“Sarwar’s attempt on Monday to escape seemingly inevitable defeat in May has, it seems, left him, if anything, in an even weaker position to turn things around.”
Sarwar said on Friday he felt “liberated” after calling on the Prime Minister to resign.
He told the Sunday Mail the turning point was frustration at getting grilled by journalists on the Peter Mandelson row minutes after holding the SNP government to account on an NHS scandal.