Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has defended UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s comments about Margaret Thatcher, while condemning her “destructive force” across Scotland.
Mr Starmer came under fire over a Sunday Telegraph column in which he said Thatcher “sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”.
Mrs Thatcher – who died in 2013 – presided over a privatisation agenda during her time in Downing Street in the 1980s which saw the decline of coal mining and steelworks industries in Scotland.
Mr Starmer’s comments have been condemned by Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf, but Mr Sarwar urged the public to “actually read the article rather than the headline or opposition attacks”.
Mr Sarwar refused to say whether Mr Starmer got it “wrong” for Scottish voters.
However, asked by journalists on Tuesday if Mr Starmer’s apparent praise could be seen as pandering to Tory voters, or alienating Scots, Mr Sarwar said: “By its very nature, we have to persuade people who have voted for other political parties to vote for your political party in any future election.
“But let me be really clear, Margaret Thatcher was a destructive force for our country. She decimated communities across Scotland and in many parts of the UK.
“I would remind those opposition parties, though, that it was Alex Salmond (former Scottish first minister and SNP leader) that said Scotland didn’t have a problem with Margaret Thatcher’s economic policy – where was Humza Yousaf and (SNP Westminster leader) Stephen Flynn then?”
On X, formerly Twitter, Mr Yousaf said of Mr Starmer’s column: “What Thatcher did to mining and industrial communities was not ‘entrepreneurialism’, it was vandalism.
“Starmer praising Thatcher is an insult to those communities in Scotland, and across the UK, who still bear the scars of her disastrous policies.”
In 2008, while leader of the SNP, Mr Salmond said Scotland “didn’t mind the economic side” of Mrs Thatcher’s tenure, but rejected the “social side”.
Mr Sarwar went on to say that Mrs Thatcher would find the current Tory government “unpalatable”.
He said: “We were right to oppose her then, and we’re right to oppose this modern-day Thatcherite Conservative Party – actually a Conservative Party that’s gone so extreme that I imagine even Margaret Thatcher would find them unpalatable.”
