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