Sarwar successfully begins Scottish Labour’s Holyrood marketing campaign with tax pledge

Anas Sarwar has successfully fired the beginning gun on the 2026 Holyrood election marketing campaign as he pledged to not increase revenue tax if he turned first minister.

Sarwar informed an viewers of candidates and activists on the launch of Scottish Labour’s Westminster manifesto in Edinburgh, “we all know change for Scotland is a two stage course of” and that voters wished to “flip the web page … on 14 years of chaos beneath the Tories, and 17 years of failure beneath the SNP”.

Requested if he may particularly rule out any enhance in any Scottish revenue tax band or charge – that are devolved to Holyrood – beneath a Labour authorities at Holyrood, Sarwar mentioned: “Sure. Subsequent query.”

Labour and the Scottish Conservatives have attacked the SNP authorities at Holyrood over the truth that folks being paid greater than £29,000 pay extra in tax in Scotland.

Launching the manifesto at Murrayfield Stadium on Tuesday morning, Sarwar mentioned: “Due to the Tories, the common mortgage is now £2,000 greater per 12 months. And because of the SNP, anybody incomes £29,000 a 12 months or extra pays extra revenue tax than folks in the remainder of the UK. Unbelievably, the SNP now assume a nurse ought to pay extra tax, however that oil and fuel giants incomes billions of kilos in revenue ought to pay much less tax.”

On the final Scottish leaders’ debate, the primary minister, John Swinney, justified his authorities’s “laborious determination on growing taxation for greater earners” by saying it funded the Scottish baby fee, which it estimates will preserve 60,000 youngsters out of poverty. Swinney’s instant predecessor, Humza Yousaf, refused to back Labour’s plan to increase the windfall tax, arguing it will price 100,000 jobs within the oil and fuel sector.

The SNP chief has insisted his celebration will publish the one leftwing manifesto of the marketing campaign on Wednesday, as he makes an attempt to woo again independence supporters who polls indicated are turning to Labour.

The Scottish Labour manifesto largely mirrors UK Labour pledges on rising the economic system, slicing NHS ready lists and extra assist for younger folks set out by Keir Starmer final week. However there’s extra element on how these will impression Scotland – VAT on personal faculty charges, for instance, may ship greater than 1,800 new academics whereas having the headquarters of GB Vitality in Scotland would make the nation a “world chief” within the transition to scrub vitality.

Sarwar attacked “scaremongering” from the SNP that Labour’s plans would imply a return to austerity, saying: “It’s now in black and white within the UK and Scottish Labour manifesto there might be no return to austerity beneath a Labour authorities.”

In its overview of the UK Labour manifesto final week, the Institute for Fiscal Research continued to boost questions on how the celebration would “sq. the circle” of its tax and spending plans in authorities.

Sarwar, who has been sounding more and more assured as Scottish Labour sources transient that the celebration has elevated its checklist of goal seats in Scotland in gentle of optimistic polling, additionally promised to “reset devolution” and take it again to its founding rules with a “turbo-charged Scotland Workplace”.

“Too many alternatives of devolution have been squandered during the last 14 years the place you’ve had two governments wanting to make use of devolution as a battering ram to select fights with one another,” he added.