Somewhere in hell there’s a snowball laughing at Anas Sarwar. I’m old enough to remember last summer when everyone was convinced that the SNP were dead and Labour was going to moonwalk victorious into Bute House come the next Holyrood election.
Well, as matters stand, there’s about as much chance of that as there is of someone, anyone, tuning in to watch a show – any show – on BBC Scotland.
Keir Starmer has taken Sarwar’s hopes of becoming First Minister and drop-kicked them into the sun. To be fair to Starmer, Sarwar has ably assisted in the destruction of his own ambitions. It’s not all the fault of King Charisma down there in that London.
Starmer started throttling the life out of Sarwar’s dreams the moment he and his equally scintillating Cabinet plodded flat-footed into Number 10.
There were absurd venal scandals, more gaffes than Homes Under the Hammer, and an aping of the Tories which sickened anyone who’d been wide-eyed and innocent enough to fall for Labour’s deliberately vague promise of "change".
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What we got was a changing of the guard, not change in any real or substantive way. It’s hard to see the difference between the current Labour Government and Tory governments under the likes of Theresa May or David Cameron.
It’s not the bug-eyed madness of Boris Johnson or Liz Truss, or the slightly less insane chaos of Rishi Sunak, but it’s still pretty damn Conservative.
Despite the ugliness and failure of the Starmer government, Sarwar might have stood a chance of keeping his Holyrood hopes alive if he’d put some clear red water between him and Tory-blue Starmer.
There was always absurdity to Sarwar’s pre-election promises that he’d stand up to Starmer if the Prime Minister failed to take decisions in Scotland’s interest. It was like asking to be a guest at a party, as long as you could bring your psycho friend whom you keep on a leash.
But at least it was a promise. And it gave the pretence that Sarwar was, to some paltry and insipid degree, in control of his own party in Scotland.
The promise is now kaput, along with the pretence. Grangemouth killed both stone dead.
Grangemouth is Starmer’s Thatcher moment in Scotland – the selling out of ordinary people, the smashing of their lives, the destruction of their jobs; all done while simultaneously grovelling to the rich and powerful.
Grangemouth is a gift to the SNP. It can be portrayed as yet another Scottish industrial grave dug by lying, venal English politicians; it will be portrayed as proof of Scotland’s second-rate status in the union.
This has all happened while Sarwar sits on the sidelines sucking his thumb. If this is Sarwar protecting Scotland against Starmer, imagine depending on him to have your back in a bar if matters got handy on a Friday night. He’d be hiding under the table, while you got splattered over the puggies.
Let’s count the ways that Labour has shafted Grangemouth. Oil refinery workers have received redundancy notices by Petroineos, a joint venture between Ineos, whose chairman is Jim Ratcliffe, and PetroChina.
While Grangemouth workers go to the wall, Labour gives £600 million in loan guarantees to Ratcliffe for a Belgian factory.
Labour announced a £100m one-off growth deal for Scotland on the back of Grangemouth, but as Labour’s Falkirk MP Brian Leishman said: “What Ian Murray [the Scottish Secretary] is not telling you is that £80m of that £100m was already given by the previous Tory government.”
There’s clearly self-interest in Leishman’s comments. His constituents will shred him at the ballot box if he doesn’t protect Grangemouth. Nevertheless he’s doing more in a few sentences to defend Scotland than either of his two bosses have done in their entire political careers.
Backing Belgium and screwing Scotland is only the start though. As hundreds of Grangemouth workers prepared for the end, Labour decided to pledge £1 billion to redevelop Manchester United’s stadium – which Jim Ratcliffe part-owns.
You couldn’t make this up. If you turned this into a script, producers would cover it in red ink with notes like "too far-fetched, please re-write". Labour could save us all a lot of trouble and just start stuffing ballot boxes for the SNP.
A billionaire’s English football club prioritised over Scottish jobs snuffed out by said billionaire. Put that in your populist pipe and smoke it. It’s free votes for the SNP.
Grangemouth comes against a backdrop of infrastructure spending in England: Heathrow expansion; an Oxford-Cambridge corridor to create "Silicon Valley" in the shires; nine new reservoirs … and lots, lots more folks!
You’ll note that Scotland is as absent as Donald Trump’s conscience.
Grangemouth is a totemic hit on Scotland. Jobs and families destroyed; a symbol of Scottish industry killed. Such scars remain on the national psyche.
Evidently, none of this should let the SNP off the hook. Is it doing enough to help Grangemouth? How much is it investing in infrastructure?
All legit questions. But all questions of the second tier, unfortunately for Starmer and Sarwar, as it’s Labour in the hot seat.
Labour’s cult of true believers – a goon squad if ever there was one – can engage in whataboutery until those famously wanderlusting cows finally do come home, and it will make not a jot of difference.
The storyline is fixed on this one: Labour has sold out Scotland. Starmer is Maggie Thatcher. And Sarwar is a useless patsy.
Polls show Labour now losing nearly all the gains it made against the SNP at the last election. The Telegraph is running headlines like "Scotland heading for largest pro-independence majority in history". STV talks of Labour’s "implosion".
Hollow laughter greets any suggestion that Sarwar can turn the tide. He’s just not the man for the job. A few days ago he was prattling on about not ruling out “good ideas” from Reform.
Sarwar couldn’t help the cause of independence more if he dressed up as a Redcoat and marched around Edinburgh Castle with a flintlock musket.
John Swinney must get down on his knobbly knees each night and thank the fates for delivering him such a joke as an opponent. As long as Starmer reigns and Sarwar fails, Swinney thrives.
Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
