Amid the turmoil of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s fight for his political life, a moment of harmony.

When Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called, back in February, for Sir Keir to step down, among those who backed him was the MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Claire Baker.

‘The question of the UK leadership of our party and country is difficult but vital,’ she said. ‘I support Anas in his position.’

At that time, Ms Baker’s husband Richard, the Labour MP for Glenrothes and Fife, took a different position.

In the aftermath of Mr Sarwar’s failed attempt to lead a rebellion against the Prime Minister, Mr Baker said that, after Sir Keir’s leadership had been confirmed by the Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party, Scottish Labour’s Westminster Group was ‘united in continuing to repair the damage of 14 years of Tory rule’.

At 8.57am on Tuesday a new political peace alighted softly on the Baker household when he let it be known that, come to think of it, he agreed with her after all.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, Mr Baker wrote that he was joining calls for the Prime Minister to set a date for his departure ‘with great regret’.

Keir Starmer had shown courage in reforming the Labour Party but now it was time, Mr Baker wrote with considerable deadpan, for the PM to ‘show the courage to continue to serve it by resigning’.

Having restored unity to the Baker household, the Prime Minister set about further dividing his party.

Even as a defiant band of loyalists toured TV and radio studios, resignations kept coming.

First, there were departures from the junior ‘who’s that, again?’ ranks but, as the day drifted on, the names became more familiar.

The departure from government of Jess Phillips, one of Labour’s most high-profile MPs, felt like a moment of acceleration, a hastening of the Prime Minister’s inevitable political demise.

Among Scottish Labour ranks the emotional response to the Prime Minister’s defiance was intense.

Many members – including candidates who lost their seats in last week’s Holyrood election – remain convinced that, had Sir Keir resigned when Mr Sarwar demanded as much three months ago, their party would not now be in the humiliating position of being tied for second place with Reform UK in the Scottish parliament.

None is quite so delusional as to think a change of Prime Minister in February would have been enough to help Mr Sarwar to election victory but a number would like it to be known that Labour’s Scottish leader is not to blame for his party’s miserable result last week.

Of course, Sir Keir Starmer shoulders much of the responsibility for the result in Scotland.

At the 2024 general election, a battalion of Labour MPs defeated SNP incumbents the length and breadth of the country. In areas long thought lost to Labour –Glasgow, Lanarkshire, the Lothians – the party came roaring back, seemingly in rude health.

For a brief spell in the summer of 2024, the idea that Anas Sarwar might one day become First Minister was entirely plausible.

But a series of wildly unpopular decisions soon exposed the fragility of the support that had taken Labour back to power after 14 years in opposition at Westminster.

Sir Keir Starmer’s political honeymoon was, at best, a weekend break.

But while the Prime Minister did his party no favours in last week’s election, those in Scottish Labour now holding him solely responsible for their misery are, I’m afraid, gulling themselves.

When Mr Sarwar succeeded Richard Leonard as Scottish Labour leader in 2021, expectations were low. His party was trailing the Tories in the polls and there was much chatter among the political classes about whether Labour could survive in Scotland.

Mr Sarwar’s leadership began, then, as a nothing-to-lose mission. Labour had endured a succession of political drubbings under candidates of Left, Right and Centre and, if none of them had the answer, then perhaps he did.

To his credit, Mr Sarwar – after a slow start – begin to reconnect his party with voters who had long abandoned it.

When a video clip of him dancing to Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk at an outdoor fitness class went viral, the consensus was that Scottish Labour had found someone likeable and confident.

But a dance routine in a car park cannot, alone, catalyse a political comeback.

Mr Sarwar was assisted by the growing unpopularity not only of the Conservatives at Westminster but of the SNP at Holyrood.

Mired in scandal and out of ideas, the Nationalists could no longer take for granted the support of those who had kept them in power since 2007.

So, Mr Sarwar had the personality and the wind at his back, but it would be wrong to suggest that he bears no responsibility for Scottish Labour’s present malaise.

Mr Sarwar may have called for Sir Keir Starmer to resign but, by that stage, he’d done more than enough to damage his party’s prospects without any assistance from the Prime Minister. 

When, under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP legislated to allow anyone to identify into the legally recognised sex of their choosing, Mr Sarwar foolishly whipped his MSPs to back her.

Not only did this decision display a withering contempt for the rights of women, it showed astonishingly poor political judgment.

Mr Sarwar knew that self-ID was detested by the great majority of voters on the grounds that it erased women’s sex-based rights and trampled over the fundamentals of safeguarding but, instead of listening to the many female MSPs who urged him not to back it, he went all in.

By the time Mr Sarwar announced last February that he no longer supported self-ID, he had irretrievably lost much of the support he had built.

The Scottish Labour leader seemed to lose confidence around this time and, since then, has struggled to tell a coherent message of change.

Mr Sarwar went into the 2026 Holyrood election hampered by a desperately unpopular Prime Minister but he did himself no favours by arming himself with a manifesto so drab and uninspiring that I challenge you, just a few days after votes were counted, to name one thing he promised to do in power.

The talk in Scottish Labour circles is about when, rather than if, Mr Sarwar steps down. I’m bound to say there’s no rush.

The people of Scotland don’t currently much care who leads Scottish Labour and if Mr Sarwar was to hang on for another year, who’d notice?

If the Scottish Labour leader holds himself to the same standards to which he holds others, he will resign.

Yes, Sir Keir Starmer hurt Scottish Labour’s chances last week but Mr Sarwar also shares responsibility for his party’s woeful result in the election.

I wonder whether Claire and Richard Baker would agree.