SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar tried to sell the British Labour government’s virtues to the Scottish TUC today — just before the announced closure of Grangemouth exposed its failure to defend industry or jobs.

Mr Sarwar included a promised £200 million to secure the refinery and petrochemical plant’s future among the achievements of Keir Starmer’s government, though the money was intended to attract larger sums in private investment and has not been deployed.

He blamed the Scottish National Party for Scotland’s industrial decline, saying on its watch Scots had had “a new bridge across the Forth built with Chinese steel, scores of new wind turbine contracts sent around the globe while Scottish workers missed out, new ferries for Scotland’s islands built in Turkey and Poland and Scotland’s natural resources and seabed flogged off on the cheap to foreign multinationals.”

A higher minimum wage and improved rights through the Employment Rights Bill, including protections against fire and rehire and guaranteed sick pay and maternity leave from day one of employment, were other positives he said were unthinkable without Labour having replaced the Tories in office last summer.

He claimed Labour had ended austerity with “record investment in public services,” though means-testing the winter fuel payment, maintaining the two-child benefit cap and steep cuts to social security cast doubt on the claim.

Mr Sarwar also called for unity against “the snake oil and easy answers of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK,” condemned war crimes against the Palestinians by the Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and said only Scottish Labour could fix its NHS.