Reform are ‘unedifying people’ and I hope they get ‘hammered’ at polls – Sarwar

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has described Reform UK politicians as “unedifying people” who he hopes are “hammered” at next month’s election.

The war of words between Mr Sarwar and those in Malcolm Offord’s party continued on Tuesday as the Scottish Labour leader stood by claims that a Reform candidate had called his leader “useless” and a senior councillor “a weasel”.

Graham Simpson denied making such comments, and claimed he had been approached by Mr Sarwar three times to work together to beat the SNP.

The row was sparked during a televised debate last week when Lord Offord said Mr Sarwar had made the offer of working together.

The Scottish Labour leader has consistently rejected claims of seeking to work with Reform UK.

Speaking during a visit to a college in Glasgow on Tuesday, Mr Sarwar hit out at Reform.

“These are people who only want to divide us, who only want to create noise, when they are fighting like ferrets in a sack amongst themselves,” he said.

“The only thing Reform can do in this election campaign is help the SNP stay in power – a vote for Reform helps the SNP, I want to beat the SNP.

“I want to change Scotland and I want Scotland to utterly reject the poison of Reform.

I want Reform to get hammered in this election campaign.”
Asked if the exposure of apparently private conversations is “unedifying” and putting the public off engaging with politics ahead of the May 7 election, Mr Sarwar said: “These are unedifying people.”
Speaking to the Press Association on Tuesday, Mr Simpson described the situation as “all a bit daft”.

“I just regarded conversations that I had with Anas – that he instigated – as private,” he said.

“He’s spent the past week denying ever wanting to work with Reform, but what happened yesterday was he said things about me that were untrue and I had to respond to it, so that’s why I’m speaking today.”
He added: “People can believe what they want – people who know me know that I’m an honest individual and if I say it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.

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“What did happen is Anas has approached me at least three times and said ‘we need to work together after the election to get rid of the SNP’, and I don’t know why he is denying that, because he said it to me and he said it to others.”
Speaking to PA at the STUC Congress in Dundee, First Minister John Swinney said there is a “terrible spat” going on between Reform and Labour.

“Alongside this has been newspaper articles written by respected Scottish journalists who have suggested that the only way in which Anas Sarwar could become first minister is with the support of Reform MSPs,” he said.

“So there is a whole debate going on between these two parties about the co-operation between them, and I just want to make it clear today that under no circumstances will there be any co-operation between the SNP government that I lead and Reform.

“If people want to lock Reform out of governance in Scottish politics, the straightforward way to do that is to vote for the SNP and I will lock them out.”
Former Tory Mr Simpson – who was Reform’s only MSP in the last session at Holyrood after his defection last year – also said he would not like to see an advert from his party about Mr Sarwar which was described as “racist” by critics re-run.

The video – used in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election last year – accused the Glasgow candidate of seeking to prioritise Scotland’s Pakistani community and was widely slated by opposition politicians, but senior figures, including Reform candidate Thomas Kerr, have suggested it could be deployed again.

Mr Simpson said: “I wasn’t happy at the time, although I wasn’t in Reform, I was in the Conservative Party at the time.

“What I saw, I didn’t look at it in a great detail, what I saw didn’t look right to me and I don’t like personal attacks during campaigns, which is why what Anas has been doing has been so disappointing.”