Scottish Labour Conference Friday February 16 2024

The Scotsman

The Scotsman's Rachel Amery and  Alistair Grant discuss Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar's speech today at the conference.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 Hello.

00:06 I'm Alistair Grant.

00:07 I'm the political editor of The Scotsman.

00:09 And I'm joined by Rachel Emery, The Scotsman's political

00:12 correspondent.

00:12 And we're here at Scottish Labour Conference in Glasgow,

00:16 where Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has just

00:18 been giving his main speech from the stage.

00:21 I think it's safe to say that it was a fiery and confident

00:24 speech.

00:25 It was certainly well-received in the hall.

00:27 But quite policy-like.

00:28 There wasn't really any particularly new announcements

00:31 in it.

00:31 What did you make of it, Rachel?

00:33 Yeah, I think it was very good.

00:34 It was a very long speech, over an hour.

00:37 But the crowd were very much kept engaged.

00:39 The crowd were very much hanging on his words there.

00:41 So it went down well, I think, with the audience.

00:44 And what was great as well, when Anas Sarwar walked

00:46 up to the stage, it was to see us unstoppable.

00:48 So I think everyone's here that song

00:49 that I'm going to think of this conference.

00:51 It's an interesting choice of song as well,

00:53 for him to perform.

00:54 I felt, though, that if you're hearing speeches

00:56 from previous years at conferences,

00:58 it felt like this was quite almost statesmanlike.

01:00 It wasn't really acting like the leader of an election party,

01:03 for example.

01:03 I felt he was acting like someone who was

01:06 going to win the election, perhaps.

01:08 So I thought that was quite interesting as well.

01:10 I think both Anas's wife came, for example, on stage.

01:13 I thought that was quite interesting to look at.

01:15 It's quite different from previous conference speeches

01:18 that we've seen.

01:20 But actually, it looks a bit like on policy.

01:22 I think, for a decade, we've only got one, two, three, four,

01:25 five things to talk about.

01:26 I'm not sure we do at the end of the day.

01:28 No, I think usually at a party conference,

01:30 political parties use it.

01:33 There will at least be a couple of policies

01:34 that have not aired off before.

01:36 There will be something that they're

01:36 seeking to emphasize at the end.

01:38 But this one was very much based around rhetoric,

01:40 based around attacking the Tories in Westminster.

01:44 You need to get the Tories out of power in Westminster.

01:46 Attacking the SNP, there was lots of dicks.

01:48 For example, Michael Maxson's 11,000 pound iPad bill.

01:52 Lots of dicks about WhatsApp.

01:54 Yes, a lot.

01:55 Yes, a lot of jokes, a lot of dicks.

01:57 But in a funny way.

01:58 So I think we're trying to get the more humorous side

02:01 of what's going on in politics now across their top.

02:04 One thing I think was quite interesting

02:06 was the very start of the speech.

02:07 Once he's been introduced, he went straight

02:09 into talking to the war in Gaza.

02:12 And obviously, that's been an issue,

02:13 a bit of a thorny issue for the earlier party

02:15 leading up to this conference.

02:17 I thought it was quite interesting that's what he

02:18 chose to go in straight away with.

02:20 We'd see him take his policy, we'd

02:21 see a ceasefire in the region as well.

02:24 And also saying that we need to tackle

02:25 whole battles in Britain and the battle of Libya.

02:28 When the whole battle's coming in,

02:29 what kind of things that was.

02:30 So the first big bit of the speech was that.

02:34 And a real refrain throughout the speech as well.

02:36 There was a repeated couple of lines that he kept doing.

02:39 That's what change means.

02:41 That's why we need change, or whatever it was.

02:43 It was this real focus on, I guess, the future of Scotland

02:47 and why things need to change.

02:48 I think the tagline of his conference was

02:51 we need to change Scotland's needs.

02:52 That's what Labour are trying to push going into

02:54 the general election, but also looking ahead

02:56 to that Holyrood election in 2026.

02:59 - Absolutely, so I think some of the things

03:00 that we were trying to emphasize was

03:02 they are the party of working people,

03:04 which has obviously been one of the policies

03:06 of the Labour Party for a long time, pretty much.

03:09 One of the things the Warriors say is

03:10 we want to end violence in hire, for example.

03:14 Reduce the level of wage, end the zero hour contracts

03:16 as well, so I thought that was quite interesting.

03:18 And a lot of talk about the NHS and the health service.

03:21 If anyone's been watching First Message Questions

03:23 for the past couple of years, you'll see that

03:25 the Labour Party are always going in on the NHS,

03:28 pretty much every week is the NHS.

03:30 They talk about particularly the part

03:32 that Jack Staley, the leader, is doing.

03:34 So they mentioned the NHS there as well,

03:36 saying they're going to reduce their health workers to three,

03:39 which is not very many, but they say that's going to,

03:42 it's going to cut out more of the managerial side of things

03:46 and base it on working with doctors and nurses, for example.

03:49 And I think the other thing that they said as well

03:50 was we want to have a mental health worker

03:52 and a GP surgeon.

03:54 I thought that's quite ambitious.

03:56 I don't want to be cynical right now,

03:58 but I thought that's something that would be

03:59 almost impossible to achieve.

04:01 - Yeah, I think it's probably worth

04:02 just pointing out to people as well.

04:04 We were standing in the main part of the conference,

04:07 it's not the actual hallway where David speaks,

04:09 but you can see just how big it is.

04:11 I've been going to Labour conferences,

04:12 Scottish Labour conferences, since around 2017.

04:16 There was a period in which they were quite small

04:17 that the party felt like it was sort of

04:20 in the world of this a little bit.

04:21 There was a very downbeat atmosphere.

04:23 It's totally different this year.

04:24 There's a real buzz about it, there's a real optimism.

04:27 And as we talk to lobbyists behind the scenes,

04:30 they're talking about clients falling over each other

04:32 to get access, which I think says a lot about

04:36 the way that outside bodies, outside companies

04:38 think about the political future of Scotland potentially.

04:40 So a real change of atmosphere this year.

04:43 - Definitely, a big difference,

04:45 even just from last year's conference

04:46 to this year's conference,

04:47 I don't think there'll be any great big difference.

04:49 How many people are here,

04:51 how many people were here early in the morning.

04:53 I think it started at this late this morning,

04:54 and yet, even though it was early in the morning,

04:57 it was still busy, there were still people here doing things.

05:00 A huge sort of scrum to get into the room

05:03 to see Anna Sauer as well,

05:04 I don't think we've seen that in the past few years

05:06 at a conference.

05:07 So I think the speech was delayed as well at the start,

05:11 and it took so long to get everyone sat down.

05:14 So I think that really shows just how much

05:16 we're meant to be talking about,

05:17 and that's why we just weren't caught for action that day,

05:19 because we had so many people

05:21 who had to care so much for Scotland.

05:23 - Sadly I was here at half past eight this morning,

05:26 but we'll be here throughout the weekend,

05:27 we'll be covering it tomorrow into Saturday

05:29 and also into Sunday,

05:30 so stay tuned to the Scotsman's website

05:33 for all the latest news and analysis.

05:35 (upbeat music)

05:37 (upbeat music)

05:40 [MUSIC]

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