The call from Anas Sarwar’s assistant on Monday was friendly. The candidate for the Scottish Labour deputy leadership, recently backed by the Western Isles local party, was coming to Stornoway and wondered if I wanted a chat. Yes please, I said, because I would like to do a radio interview. We arranged to meet on Wednesday afternoon.
When I told certain political chatterers that I planned to interview the MP, they were pleased. Good man, they said. He will deal with whatever you pitch at him. I’m looking forward to this, I said.
Having promised several sickened members of Labour’s former faithful to expose the evil gay-hater John Macleod’s wretched involvement in the local party, I did so on the blog on Monday night. It’d give me something else to talk to Sarwar about because, like many of his party’s acolytes, he has spoken out firmly against extremism himself.
When the chatterers saw what I had written – well, thousands have read it – and how vicious Macleod had been over the years, they baulked. They had forgotten how hateful and deranged this cracked lunatic really was. What the hell was the local party doing even giving the time of day to such a toxic individual? they gasped. It’s a good question which one day will be answered, I promise you.
One chatterer was doubtful and said: “If Sarwar still speaks to you knowing you will have the homophobia that has infected the local association on the agenda, then he really is leadership material.” Hey, I’d got a dozen questions and that is just one of them. There was a lot of other things I wanted to ask too.
When the chatterer – he’s really my well-placed political adviser – phoned back Wednesday lunchtime, he wondered if Sarwar had cancelled. Nope, it’s still on for 4.30pm, I told him. “This guy could be the next PM. Not joking,” he said.
However, at about 3.15pm, Sarwar’s assistant called to say the interview was off. What? Oh, he’s really busy and things had regrettably been “pushed back”. I could email in some questions, she said. Oh, that’ll make fantastic radio, I said. We will just get his answers up on the computer screen and broadcast 10 minutes of silence.
“Sorry, bye.” Bye yourself, I thought.
Ten minutes later she was back on the phone trying to arrange a telephone interview. Ah, someone (can’t think who) has been dripping poison in his ear but Sarwar still wants to speak. Excellent. This must be good guy, after all. Why, I wondered, if he was able to do a phone interview at 4.30pm, could we not just meet so I could interview him face-to-face? I prefer to see the whites of their eyes, you see.
Still, a phone interview about the religious extremism strangling the Western Isles Labour Party with a Labour guy who has condemned all religious extremism and who will probably be the next deputy leader would be fantastic.
He never called back, I am saddened to tell you. As of this morning, I now know for certain who advised him not to.
Instead of standing up for the wee people and for their rights as he promised before he stood as a candidate, Anas Sarwar listened instead to a few well-heeled bigots and shattered his promise – and his reputation with many.
I have had messages from politicians up and down the country in response to that previous blog posting. They are fascinated that bigots can wield such power. It’s not news to us in the islands. They also note with interest that the local media here are all, as ever, scared witless to write a single word about the unholy mess into which two vicious individuals – it was three, but the third is coming to his senses – have plunged local Labour.
Now we have to wait and see if the person who really matters, Johann Lamont, is as happy to talk about the evils of religious prejudice and minority bashing in her own party as she was to make these promises before a bunch of compliant big city journos. I have, of course, written to ask her exactly that.
PS: I was asked today by a prominent politician how local Labour chairman Matt Bruce, who everyone thought was a decent fellow, can possibly allow religious right-wingers, who are vicious campaigners against Labour’s equality agenda to call the shots at a Labour Party branch. Who knows? I hope somebody will ask him soon.
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