“It is the greatest honour of my life to be elected leader of the Party”. Promising to “work day and night to change” the shortcomings of Scottish Labour. “The hard graft starts here…I am determined to bring that change, it’s in my blood”.

This was ’s first public statement after being the first Muslim Scottish-Pakistani elected leader of the Scottish Labour Party in March 2021. The hard graft will certainly be needed, as there are only a few weeks left until the Holyrood elections. Anas faces a considerable challenge in formulating a future roadmap and any new leader must first try to establish a strong connection with former and potentially supporters by presenting his vision for Scottish Labour and .

Anas was born in 1983 in to Mohammad Sarwar, a successful businessman and Labour MP for 13 years, and Perveen Sarwar, who grew up in Lossiemouth with a hard work ethic passed down from her father. He was a well-behaved young lad, helping with the house chores as he grew up in Glasgow in the 80’s and 90’s, as his mother has been quoted saying. Most Asian immigrants have humble beginnings and Anas’s parents were no different. Starting with a small shop selling eggs and cheese, Anas’s father saw a gap in the market and embarked on developing his business into a multi- million-pound Cash & Carry trade. They now both live in where Anas’s father is the Governor of Punjab and his mother keeps herself busy with charitable initiatives.

But who has been the biggest influence on Anas’s life, convincing him that politics was his true calling? The reader may assume that watching his father’s career in politics as a Labour MP at Westminster was the ipso facto, but it was in fact his mother who had the biggest impact. She recalls when Anas was twelve years old, taking him to Gaza, Palestine, to donate a sum of money to a Palestinian orphanage and meeting Yasser Arafat, the then Palestinian leader. This was the watershed moment when a young Anas decided that he wanted to go into politics.

But it hasn’t been plain sailing since Anas’s halcyon days of early 90’s, as the family started receiving hate mail and abusive phone calls once they joined the political world. It never deterred Anas, however, and he joined the Scottish Labour Party at the young age of 16, campaigning to Save the Govan shipyard – a monumental task in itself!

Educated at one of Scotland’s top independent schools – Hutchesons’ Grammar School – Anas did well in his studies and later studied Dentistry at the (no doubt a strategic decision if politics did not work out). He practiced dentistry in Paisley for 5 years, married a fellow dental student and now has 3 children. His colleagues in the Labour Party witnessed his potential and encouraged him to stand in elections for the Glasgow Central seat in the 2010 elections. His detractors might say that his father vacated the seat so that his son could take over the reins but there was a selection process, and Anas won the seat on his own merit with a larger majority than his father 5 years previously.

At the tender age of 27, Anas entered as an MP at Westminster and quickly made an impression on the seasoned politicians. The then Scottish Labour MP Sir David Hamilton, tasked with keeping an eye on the new intakes at Westminster, remembers the passion and confidence of this young rising star and how different he was from his father. Sarwar quickly became Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

However, the hate mail, threats, and abusive messages left on his answering machine continued but as a testament to his resolute and single-minded focus, he refused to be intimidated. As a well-educated man with a young family, he could have easily chosen to return to his professional dental career or join his well-established family business.

Unfortunately, in 2015 he suffered a setback by losing his Westminster seat to the SNP surge and a year later he became an MSP, becoming an effective Health spokesman. He raised concerns to the SNP about glaring safety issues at the newly built Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow, which led to a public inquiry. In 2018, Anas setup a cross party working group into Islamophobia, tackling racism and crimes against Muslims in the Scottish community.

In 2017 he lost the leadership vote to , but Anas persisted in his involvement in the Scottish Labour Party. To his critics, Anas is seen as a centrist, a new Labour, falling outside the vision and core beliefs of the Corbynites. His decision to send his children to the same private school he went to, Hutchesons Grammar School, did not bode well with the Labour movement and was at odds to the social justice programme that Labour espouses. The then leader of the Labour Party, , refused to support Anas’s decision, highlighting the pitfalls Labour politicians experience when choosing schools for their own children. Some may recall the backlash , former Labour front bench MP, received when she sent her children to grammar school.

Secondly, his detractors say that Anas Sarwar’s family wealth does not represent grassroots working class Labour and there were press reports of his father’s cash and carry paying less than the ‘real’ living wage. None of this unflattering publicity has relinquished Anas’s drive and enthusiasm for politics, and to Anas’s credit, he has transferred his shares in the family firm to a trust fund setup for his children in 2017.

Colourful Heritage’s stories of South Asian immigrants to the Scottish shores reflects the narrative of the Sarwar family, and indeed Anas. The narrative that whatever your race, religion, expensive private school education or default attendance, limited family resources or considerable inherited family wealth – passion, perseverance and dedication to one’s hopes and aspirations may just one day pay off. This is Anas’s day. Let him enjoy it - at least until the hard graft starts.