If the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is sincere in wishing to deprive Nigel Farage of the ‘oxygen of publicity’, he’s got a funny way of going about it. In a vituperative interview on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today, he gave the Reform leader another blast of oxygen by offering a public debate on the eve of his visit to next week’s Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. This is publicity Reform couldn’t buy with any of the money it has so far devoted to a blitz on social media.
Sarwar is incensed at a mischievous attack ad last week in which Reform doctored a quote to suggest that the Scottish Labour leader intended to ‘prioritise’ the Pakistani community. What Sarwar actually said in a 2022 speech was that ‘the days where the South Asian community gets to lead political parties and gets to lead countries is now upon us’. The former SNP leader Humza Yousaf was the first Muslim to lead a government in Western Europe.
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