The entire Scottish media and professional-politician community is currently in a self-righteous froth about a campaign ad being run by Reform for the Hamilton by-election targeting Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.
Obviously none of the acres of press coverage trusts voters to see the ad and decide for themselves, because that simply isn’t how journalism works nowadays. You’re told that a bad thing happened – whether it be a campaign ad, a comedian’s joke or the supposed terrible abuse sent to a celebrity – and how outraged various pundits or other celebrities are about it, with the clear implication that you should feel the same, but you almost never get shown or told what was actually said.
So to start with, as a basic journalistic principle, here’s the ad itself in its entirety.
Now let’s look at what you’re being ordered to think about it.
In a piece for The Times today – which ironically accurately identifies the pious political inverse racism which has directly contributed to so much of Reform’s success – Alex Massie nevertheless calls the ad “disgraceful and baseless”.
But is it? Wings readers have already seen the longer clip of a 2022 Sarwar speech from which the ad has extracted its short clips.
And to be honest Reform’s ad seems a pretty fair summary of it. Much of the criticism has been focused on the fact that he didn’t literally say the words “I will prioritise the Pakistani community”. (And alert Wings readers may feel a slight pang of familiarity here as they recall Unionist politicians during the indyref angrily denying they ever actually said “too wee, too poor, too stupid” in those exact words.)
But the ad doesn’t put that claim in quotes. It doesn’t attribute those words to him, only the sentiment. It’s simply an interpretation of the content of his speech, and it’s an interpretation for which a perfectly valid and reasonable argument can be made.
So let’s play devil’s advocate and do that, by looking at the words he DID say.
Anas Sarwar claims to be a Scot, and as far as this site is concerned he is one – he was born and raised in Glasgow and therefore as Scottish as any of us. But in that case, why was he describing “Pakistanis and South Asians” as “we”? We’ve checked, and Scotland isn’t in South Asia.
Does he also think it’s important that more Scots sit in the parliament of Pakistan for some reason? Because if not, why should more Pakistanis be needed in Scotland’s? Statistically they’re already over-represented: Sarwar, Humza Yousaf and Kaukab Stewart are all of Pakistani heritage, and those three alone make up 2.3% of the MSPs at Holyrood – considerably (77%) more than the 1.3% of Scotland’s population that is of Pakistani origin according to the most recent official census.
Of those three, one is a current government minister, one is currently the leader of the main opposition party and one of them was First Minister until last year. But apparently that isn’t “real power” (what’s ranked above First Minister?), and Sarwar wants even more representation for what he calls “OUR South Asian community”.
(The proportion in fact doubles to 4.6% if you also include those of “South Asian” origin, adding Tory MSPs Foysol Choudhury, Pam Gosal and Sandesh Gulhane, which means there are already over three-and-a-half times as many Pakistanis and South Asians in Holyrood are there ought to be to fairly reflect the Scottish electorate.)
Again, if you profess yourself Scottish, aren’t Scottish people your community?
And if you want even more representation for a particular ethnic minority, even though that minority is already substantially over-represented, isn’t that “prioritising” them? Why would it be an important issue for you when there are so many serious problems in the country to solve? Why do you care more about MSPs’ skin colour than what abilities they might have?
Well, apparently it’s something to do with what Scottish children get taught in schools. What things do Pakistani and South Asian people want taught in schools that aren’t taught there now? Sarwar didn’t say, so we can only speculate as to what teachings mostly-Muslim peoples would want to impose on the 97.8% non-Muslim population. Perhaps the Scottish media could ask him to elaborate so that everyone could be enlightened instead of assuming the worst?
Yes, okay, now we’re being silly. The Scottish political media exists to broadcast party press releases, not to ask anyone in their cosy little Holyrood club to answer any awkward questions, which is why it previously circled the wagons to protect Sarwar and Yousaf from having to explain their infamous co-ordinated “WHITE!” speeches of June 2020, in which they railed furiously against a 95% white country having mostly white people in positions of authority.
Anyone who raised concerns about those speeches was also instantly labelled racist, but neither man was ever asked to explain exactly what their issue with white people was, or why it should be intrinsically and axiomatically bad that a nation’s polity looked broadly like its populace.
Indeed, the media’s grim failure to resolve or even properly address those speeches is ultimately the root of this latest manufactured furore, because it created a lot of the resentment which led people to scrutinise Sarwar’s comments in the first place.
So naturally Reform – who must be absolutely delighted with the response the first ad got – have doubled down with a new one clipping the 2020 speech.
It’s bizarre that a relatively perceptive commentator like Massie somehow can’t see the contradiction. Looking at the evidence dispassionately, there is CLEARLY at least some legitimate basis for believing that Sarwar is racist and is prioritising people of his own ethnic background over native Scots.
The right thing to do with that fact is discuss it and debate it and make a coherent grown-up argument against it, not spew out lazy kneejerk dismissals and suggest that anyone holding that view is a “disgraceful” bigot deserving only the sneering contempt of their betters. Not least because it simply doesn’t work.
Because steamrollering people’s manifestly rational feelings and calling them names rather than dealing with their concerns is exactly why pretty much the whole of both Scotland and the UK are completely sick to death of all the established political parties. (And of course also a large part of why Brexit happened, and why Donald Trump is again the President of the USA.)
And it’s why they’re increasingly tempted to vote for one which is highly unlikely to be any better, but at least hasn’t been PROVEN to be useless yet, and in any event will definitely achieve voters’ goal of delivering a much-deserved kick in the balls to all of the others, even if it achieves nothing else.
