Anas Sarwar has been branded a ‘coward’ by members of his own party for going into hiding following Labour’s catastrophic election defeat.

Despite having ambitions of becoming First Minister less than a week ago, the Scottish Labour leader avoided the media yesterday in the wake of his woeful 17-seat result while fellow party leaders outlined their next steps.

Mr Sarwar’s party will be the joint second largest in Holyrood, alongside Reform UK, having lost four seats since the 2021 vote.

Yet he has so far failed to set out whether he would work with any other parties, what his priorities are for the next term and his assessment of what went wrong.

Privately many of his party colleagues have questioned whether he should now consider his position.

Several Labour sources who spoke to The Scottish Mail on Sunday said they blamed Sir Keir Starmer for the poor outcome, not just in Scotland but in Wales where Labour lost control of the Senedd for the first time.

Others said Mr Sarwar was a ‘disgrace’ for retreating when it became apparent Thursday’s vote wasn’t going to deliver him to Bute House.

One senior Scottish Labour figure said: ‘Anas didn’t come to the Glasgow count for ages. He spent most of the time on Friday at the party offices with his inner circle.

‘He turned up, spoke to a few people, then left and didn’t come back. There were some MPs there who said it was a disgrace that he wasn’t there to go over the top with his troops, even though it was a bad result. It just came across as very cowardly.’

It comes after the Prime Minister faced similar criticism when he avoided the public during a trip to Scotland last month in the wake of revelations that Peter Mandelson had been made a UK ambassador despite failing security vetting.

The source also laid the blame for Scottish Labour’s poor performance on its campaign, saying: ‘A Scottish Labour manifesto should be full of policies that will meaningfully change people’s lives.

‘The one we put forward this time was not that. It was just full of nonsense that sounded like it was made up by think tanks and focus groups.’

Grangemouth Labour MP Brian Leishman said his party needed to realign with its roots. ‘If we don’t rediscover our radicalism, then the Scottish Labour Party will become an electoral irrelevance,’ he warned.

One unsuccessful Labour candidate said the campaign strategy, devised by deputy leader Jackie Baillie and Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, was a huge problem.

 ‘Running a presidential-style campaign when Anas was nearly as unpopular as Keir Starmer made absolutely no sense. Chucking £100,000 at digital adverts when there wasn’t enough focus on organisation on the ground was an error,’ he said.

‘We thought the election would be like 38 Hamilton by-elections, where we won by a whisker anyway and it was a fluke rather than strategic.

‘The party didn’t take Reform seriously until it was far too late.

‘On top of that, calling on Starmer to resign, regardless of whether he should or not, made Anas look insincere, untrustworthy and disloyal.’

Another failed candidate said there was too much reliance on Mr Sarwar’s ‘energy and personality’ and not enough ‘solid plans on how to make people’s lives better’.

The candidate said party bosses had ignored official polls which showed a poor result for Labour, insisting they were inaccurate.

Last night a source close to Mr Sarwar said Scottish Labour’s failure was mainly as a result of the unpopularity of Sir Keir.

‘Whether you are up, down, Left or Right, people had a visceral, negative reaction towards Keir Starmer across all areas of our vote.

'Elderly people hate him, middle class people think he has broken his promises to them, immigrants hate him, progressive voters hate him,’ he added.

Asked whether Mr Sarwar was now considering resigning, the source said he would remain ‘for the foreseeable’ and added: ‘A leadership contest is not in the offing.’