Anas Sarwar has become the UK’s first Muslim to lead a party. He was elected to lead the Scottish Labour Party after beating his counterpart MSP Monica Lennon by 57.6% to 42.4%.
Sarwar’s father, Mohammed, was the first Muslim MP, elected to Glasgow Central in 1997, holding onto the seat until 2010 before going on to be governor of the Punjab region in his native Pakistan.
Born in Glasgow in 1983, Sarwar graduated from the University of Glasgow, and worked as a dentist in Paisley for five years prior to becoming a MP. He took an active role in the pro-Union campaign leading up to the 2014 independence referendum, touring Scotland in a bus with No activists.
The Glasgow MSP and his family has faced a series of racial hate mail and threats. He has recalled opening a hand-delivered envelope at his childhood home in 1997 to see a mocked-up picture of his mother with a gun to her head, saying: “Bang, bang, that’s all it takes.” He has also faced criticism over his children attending a fee-paying school in Glasgow. Questions were also raised over reports that his family’s cash and carry firm advertised jobs that paid less than the “real” living wage of £8.45 an hour.
Despite racist threats and abuse, however, Sarwar left his job as a dentist in 2010 to enter politics, winning the same Westminster seat as his father in an election in which Labour lost power after 13 years to a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition. Sarwar was next elected to be deputy leader of Scottish Labour from 2011 to 2014, as well as the job of coordinating the party’s campaign during the independence referendum. He would also serve as acting leader following the resignation of Johann Lamont in 2014.
In 2015, he lost his seat to the Scottish National party’s Alison Thewliss as the party swept Scotland, winning all but one of the constituencies north of the border. The following year, he was elected to Holyrood on the Glasgow regional list, and just more than 12 months later would be fighting his first leadership election, taking on, Richard Leonard, who polled 56.7% of the vote.
Since his loss, Sarwar has been the party’s health spokesperson – before being sacked by Leonard which he claimed to have heard about through social media. He was most recently appointed as constitution spokesperson, as well as campaigning for an inquiry into issues at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow.
