is to open a further seven gambling clinics this summer — almost doubling the current number. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking. if, and it is a mighty big if, keir starmer makes it to number 10, the route to downing street will have to run through scotland. labour will have to win votes and votes in big numbers in the original red wall, in those once heartlands for the party, north of the border. now, they have just one member of parliament. my guest on political thinking this week is labour's scottish leader, anas sarwar. he is the son of the first muslim mp in britain,

the first asian mp in scotland. he trained as a dentist but then he returned to the family business — politics. anas sarwar, welcome to political thinking. my pleasure, thanks for having us. now which is more frightening, waiting for the dentist drill or waiting for the verdict of the electorate? definitely waiting for the verdict of the electorate. i mean, the great thing about dentistry is that you get to be in complete control about, you know... the dentist always asks the awkward questions when they are already in the person's mouth doing the treatment, and i used to always have this thing with my patients when they came in, i always used to try and loosen them up, say, you know, "don't worry, i'm a pain—free dentist. "i never feel any pain." and, you know, that, that interaction part was what i loved about dentistry and actually the people interaction part is what i love about politics as well. i was going to say... although some people would say being a dentist, really deeply unpopular profession, being a politician, deeply unpopular profession, perhaps i'm a glutton for punishment

when it comes to these kind ofjobs! when you got this job as leader of the labour party in scotland, you said something that took me slightly aback when i read it. it was the "hardestjob in british politics". why? so i think when i took on the job, we were in third place in scotland. the greens were predicting they would push us into fourth place in scotland. we were 32 percentage points behind the snp, only 7% of people in scotland believed labour would win the next general election and nicola sturgeon had an approval rating of plus 58, which is extraordinary to even think about that, plus 58. and to try and persuade people that one, the labour party could survive. second, that the labour party was relevant to modern scotland and modern britain and then third, to try and persuade people that the labour party could govern again was something that people just thought, "ok, you might do the first part but could "you do the other parts?"

actually, thejourney we've been on has been quite incredible. i'm sure we will touch upon that later but i would say, i still think i've got the hardest job in british politics but i think humza yousaf is catching up with me. yeah, well, we will talk about him and his problems injust a second. but you in a sense, as i said, were simply going into the family business. this was something you'd prepared your whole life for. your father was notjust an mp but a powerful and successful figure in scotland. do you feel as you grew up that this is what you were expected to do and almost certainly would do? it's interesting because i always recoiled at the thought of standing for politics. i think my father wanted me to go into politics, if i'm honest with you. when i was a teenager and i recall when he asked whether i would go into politics and i was studying and i said, no chance, i'm not going to stand for politics. he didn't speak to me for six months because he obviously wanted me to go and do that. but actually, growing up... really didn't talk to you for six months? he really didn't talk to me for six months. he denies it now of course,

but i know it to be true. and the reason why i recoiled from going into politics is you mentioned him being britain's first muslim mp and actually that came out a sacrifice. it came at a sacrifice for my mum, it came as a sacrifice for us as kids, and we lived through controversy. we lived through people being at our doorstep, in terms of whether that's press or indeed whether that's threats or abuse, and we lived with the fear of headlines, in terms of some of the dangers. there's a particularly shocking story about when you were 12, you come down the stairs and you see something on the mat at the front door? i suppose that's probably my first introduction to politics, is being a 12—year—old and going to school and seeing what looked like a strange envelope on our doorstep. rather naively, picking it up, rather naively, opening it and when i opened it, it was a picture mocked up of my mum tied to a chair with two guns

pointed to her head, with the message in cut out letters saying, "bang, bang, "that's all it takes." and it was a message from an organisation called combat 18 at that time, which was a far right organisation that didn't want to see the election of britain's first muslim mp and that was part of a really deliberate attempt to intimidate my family. that really made me want to recoil from the politics, i didn't want to put my own children through that. but interestingly, i decided to go into politics not because of my father, actually, but because of my mother. people often think that my dad's the driving force for my politics. actually, i don't get my politics from my dad, i get my politics from my mum. because? because i always remember throughout all that difficult period, through all the hell that my father was going through, that we were going through as kids, my mum was the constant and the rock through all of that. i remember her always saying, "we don't walk away, "we don't give up, that's what we want. "we stay and we fight." "we don't give up, that's what they want. "we stay and we fight."

even at the age of 12... and that's a labour principle now, if you think about all the carnage in the labour party for the last 16 years in scotland. that has constantly stayed with me. hang in there. so you're aged 12, you get this incredibly shocking piece of paper that you opened. do you remember what you did next, was it her that you showed it to? so i took it upstairs, i showed it to my mum. she obviously told my dad about it. and at that point, were they thinking that's what you get if you're an asian trying to break into british politics, or were they as shocked and as appalled as you as a 12—year—old boy? they accepted it as our reality because we used to get our car followed when we were going out. we used to get phone calls... i remember once vividly coming back from a family holiday from lossiemouth, my mum was from lossiemouth, she moved here when she was four years old. she lived in lossiemouth, a small seaside village in the north—east of scotland. i remember coming back and we literally entered the house, the phone rang, i picked it up

and someone swearing at us saying, "good to see you're back," and the phone slammed down again. as a warning? as a warning, absolutely. so i remember that. i remember a slingshot being fired through my bathroom window and it hitting my dad on the head, having to be hospitalised. i remember all of that really vividly. as you describe it now, it is shocking, but does it feel like another world ? here we are talking, i was looking back at something you said a few years back, back in 2006, "scotland needs "an ethnic minority politician, there isn't one in scotland" is what you said. now you're not only the first asian party leader but of course there's another asian party leader in scotland, who is now the first minister, humza yousaf. we also have an asian prime minister of the uk in rishi sunak as well. does itjust feel a lifetime since your father got into politics? absolutely. i mean, my grandparents would never have imagined the situation we are in just now. my father would never have imagined the situation we are in just now,

and he always genuinely believed... my mum in particular used to say, was the reason why they were being hardest with us, the reason why they were coming after us is because they know once one gets in the door it breaks that and other people will follow. now you're clear, he really, really wanted you to be a politician. you helped him with his speeches, didn't you? you learned to argue around the kitchen table? yeah, i used to get tasked with writing, i wrote his speech against the iraq war, for example. i wrote his speech when he spoke against 90—day terror detention. i wrote his speech when he was speaking about the iraq inquiry. i was of course putting in that he should support the iraq inquiry. he was leaned on very heavily to perhaps temper that down a little bit. so that was really interesting and a real learning curve. the other really interesting thing about him was, people often forget this, but he actually emigrated here when he was 24. english, he didn't speak any

english when he came at 2a, apart from the odd word, and he had to really learn english on the job when he stood for election first as a counsellor and then as a prospective labour mp. one of the things that people forget is you don'tjust speak in a certain language, you think in a certain language and he obviously thought in urdu and that obviously took time to then translate into speech—making, so that was really interesting. when you say wrote his speeches, you weren't literally doing the job that special advisers do for ministers and shadow ministers, i mean writing, the words they amend. in a way, you are having to get his thoughts down in the english he'd want to use? yeah, so i had to go to school the next day or go to university the next day and i would be literally sitting up with him until two or three in the morning, digesting what his view was and then turning that into words on paper so he could go and speak the next day. how much were his views your views? how much of that kitchen table did you sit round and row?

i would say i'm probably a bit more to the left than he was and i think he was very focused on foreign policy, international development and that was his real driving force of his politics. whereas for me, it's more the national health service, our economy, education. so i think in that sense, we probably have very, very different politics and very different priorities. now there are two ways of looking at your story. 0n the one hand, this is an extraordinary story, yours, of success for a second—generation immigrant against some pretty foul racism. you will probably know the other way of looking at it, it's a story of immense privilege. you're the son of a member of parliament, your dad was, what, a multimillionaire in the end? having set up a cash and carry business. you went to private school. a private school which is amongst the elite in scotland and produced a whole host of scottish politicians. do you accept in that sense... ..that you've got a privileged elite background? no, absolutely, i think you can look at that story and think of course there is a sense of privilege in that. i suppose the interesting thing

in all of that is there are... i'm very, very lucky in that i never needed to worry about whether there was going to be food on the table. i never really needed to worry about, you know, the clothes i wore. i never really needed to worry about that. i suppose i probably had a very different set of inequality, which was more about my ethnicity, my faith and the impact of the kind of political culture there was around about my father. i think that probably had a bigger impact on us. but again, my mum was really crucial to this in that i always remember, even when she says it now to my own kids, she's always said, "you're never going to bejudged on the title you have. on the kind of house you have. "you're never going to bejudged on the car you drive. "you are going to bejudged on what you do for people." and that has always stayed with me. that's why again i think i get my political values from my mother rather than my father.

should that work both ways, though, because you could argue that you shouldn'tjudge people on the fact, for example, that they are rich? that they are a millionaire. now you i assume are a millionaire, your father was a multimillionaire, you inherited a lot of money, are you a millionaire? not now. i very deliberately chose to give up all of my shareholdings and what was going to come to me in terms of my father's inheritance. i made a conscious decision that i've chosen to be in public life, i've chosen to be in politics. i want to dedicate myself to serving scotland and genuinely trying to be first minister of scotland. now, i mentioned you went to a private school. people in scotland will know it, people outside scotland don't know hutchies. what is it about hutchies that produces notjust you, notjust the first minister, humza yousaf, but a handful of other mps and msps. i think our own laura kuenssberg went there... did she? that explains a lot! well, yes, what does it explain? what is it that that school does?

i mean, hutchies is obviously a school on the south side of glasgow and there is now a disproportionate number of pupils, particularly from a south asian background and from a jewish background that go to the school and... look, i think humza yousaf was two years below me at school. i only ever had one conversation with him at school. i'm not sure it was a very positive one! he was a nationalist back then and i was a member of the labour party so i think we kind of rubbed up the runway we kind of rubbed off the wrong way in that conversation as well. but i part of it is i think confidence. i think the big challenge we have to win over is, it's part of our culture in scotland and the wider uk, where we have this inherent i think... we kind of downsell ourselves rather than upsell. if you compare us to the american education system, america is brilliant at upselling itself. i was talking to businesspeople

yesterday about scottish business. i think that's another good example, american business, great at upselling itself. uk business, not really good at it. we have to get much better at upselling. confidence is a good thing. i notice you said you weren't mates at school. we were not not mates... it's often said humza yousaf are friends or were friends. how would you describe your relationship now, friends who are now political rivals? look, think i've always had the nature and the view and to be fair i think humza yousaf has the same, is we can vociferously disagree on politics. we can have the full on ding—dong in terms of either in the parliament or indeed in television or radio studios, but that should never descend into disliking, hatred or personal stuff. so if labour are not quite there, haven't got that result they need in the next election, it will be easy for you two guys

to sort out some sort of arrangement so that the snp helps the labour party get into government, it would be mad not to, wouldn't it? let me be clear. no ifs, no buts, no deal with the snp. the snp has built their identity on trying to destroy the labour party in scotland rather than wanting to work in partnership with the labour party. everything is different after an election and not before it. i can be really robust with you now about what will happen afterwards as well. we will go flat out to win a labour majority, and we do that by winning significant seats in scotland. the question is what happens if and when you don't. i can give you the guarantee it will not happen. we'll have you back. it might not be a coalition, all sorts of options, of course. one of the reasons i think you would acknowledge that you and the labour party in scotland are doing so well now is not because of what you have done but everything to do with the crisis that is hitting the snp

and in particular hitting nicola sturgeon, the former first minister. now you sort of should know a bit of what this is like. i mean, your own father went through a "scandal" in inverted commas, it almost ended his political career in this country. he wasn't in the end found guilty of anything. do you have some empathy for nicola sturgeon as she goes through this? i think on a human level i of course have an empathy with anyone who is going through frankly what must be hell in any kind of form. i think even whether it is first ministers or prime ministers when they leave office, it's always struck me emotionally in terms of that kind of emotional toll you can see it's taken on them, regardless of which political party they are from. the only one i didn't feel sorry for was borisjohnson when he was leaving and i don't think he did much to attract any

kind of emotional attachment there. does it worry you that people in the end can't resist using an alleged scandal to make a political point when you know what the consequences of that are personally? first of all, it's for the police to make thatjudgment. it is not for me to interfere in that the police investigation or make any assumptions on that police investigation. i think there is a wider point, though, which i think goes to the heart of what you are asking. if the route back for the labour party relies purely on the carnage in the snp, it's not going to work. the only route back for the labour party is one of course for people to want to move away from a government that has been in power now for 16 years and has failed to deliver. but they also need to see a positive alternative destination they can support so they can get change. do they need to get a sense you understand why it went badly wrong? absolutely. i remember being in glasgow

in the referendum, in areas that i knew largely because they were the home of alex ferguson, a guy i know through my admiration as a football manager saying, "labour all our life, never again." have you understood properly why they thought that? i totally understand. i think it's important also to reflect the labour party was getting gubbed in elections even before the referendum. i'm not one of those leaders that thinks we were right and everybody else was wrong. the brutal reality is we lost elections in scotland because we were not good enough and we lost because we didn't deserve to win. the challenge that i've tried to overcome is one, giving people in scotland a labour party where it is worthy of the name, and secondly i hope with humility, reaching out and trying to persuade people to come back. this is not the today programme interview. we will have the pleasure of doing that at some point. i will look forward to that.

let me ask you, oil and gas, a big one. you and keir starmer in scotland, he can't keep away from the country now. i think he has been seven or eight times already, which is good. it seems to me if you summarise it rather brutally, you are in favour of new oil and gas fields if they are approved by the conservative party but not if they have to be approved by the labour party, it's like trying to have it all ways, trying to look green on the one hand but to reassure people who get their work, get theirjobs, whose communities are supported by the oil and gas industry in aberdeen and elsewhere in scotland... i will do a nick robinson and say you can flip it and look at it a different way, which is what you said to me earlier on. which is we have a huge opportunity here. i genuinely believe there is going to be a global leader in the green revolution and i want that global leader to be scotland. i want it to be the uk.

the only way it's going to be scotland is if we have the strength of a uk treasury behind it to help us deliver it. i suppose my point to you is you are not satisfying either group here. 0n the one hand, the greens are saying, i thought are saying, "i thought "you were against oil and gas that now it seems you are in favour "as long as rishi sunak approves it." you have people in the oil industry saying, "i'm hearing all the words "about no cliff edge and not turning off the tap, that ain't "what it looks like to us." we are seeing oil well after oil well and gas field after gas field close down in the next seven years because 2030 is the target and nothing to replace them. we are not closing by the 2030s. we had said they will have a significant role for decades to come. that gives you the reason why we need the transition. labour's position on our energy revolution is not driven by or guided by whether we want to glue ourselves to the street or whether we want to be luvvies or walking about in sandals and neither is it because we want to just drill for the sake of drilling until the end of time.

0ur energy policy is driven by three principles, which is lower bills, more jobs and energy security. let's head to another issue that caused difficulty for the snp and i would argue for you, too, gender. you voted for a bill that would have allowed isla bryson, a male rapist, to become classified as a woman. that's not true. we were very clear that there should be clear causes around those that are awaiting trial for rape or sexual offences or those convicted of rape or sexual offences. but when you didn't get your way in the scottish parliament you said we will vote for gender reform. partly because the government gave a commitment that they would work with the equality and human rights commission to develop guidance to resolve some of those issues and they of course did not do that. but i think two really important things about the bill. the first is...

gender recognition reform bill. everyone has lost, no one feels like they have won. i don't think our trans community feel any more protected since the passing of the bill, women don't feel any more reassured, so everyone has lost. the second reflection is my urging to colleagues across the uk is learn the lesson from scotland. don't make the same mistakes. find a way to navigate this that takes people with us, that finds a way of recognising the importance of recognising biological sex and protection of single sex spaces while getting rid of some of the inhumanities that exist. it seems to me a few years ago, tony blair i think it was who said he would know the labour party had changed if peter mandelson was welcomed back to the heart. i like peter, he's a good man. could labour ever welcomejk rowling back into the heart of the labour party? jk rowling would disagree with me

on the position we took on the bill butjk rowling is a national treasure and notjust a national treasure for scotland but actually the whole of the uk. i'll give you one practical example. i had the really good fortune last year after three years of covid to go on an international holiday and i took my kids, my young kids to universal studios. there is a whole big part of universal studios dedicated to harry potter. if people around the world can celebrate the creativity in the mind ofjk rowling, it would be an absolute tragedy if we didn't celebrate that here. she is a national treasure and one we should respect. and would you meet with her, talk with her, see if you could persuade her? i would, of course, why not? i've always believed there is common ground that can be found and compromise that can be found and a way forward if people have the political will. some people say gender reform, even what we have been discussing on oil and gas, it proves power lies

in westminster but not holyrood. would you want to follow your father and come down the road from where we are talking to westminster? i want to help us elect more scottish mps, i don't want to be a scottish labour mp. i had a great pleasure of serving him for five years. of serving here for five years. the people of scotland decided that was enough and they wanted a change and i have had the pleasure of being in the scottish parliament since 2016. but i honestly believe we have a job of work to do in scotland that having a strong scottish labour party and i believe, i hope a strong scottish leadership in the labour party, helps us deliver a strong government. including a man who rumour has it, keir starmer, doesn't always play fair. you are talking about football here, opening up old wounds? this is where you get to open up another scottish grievance, where i think you are referring to a five—a—side football match we had where i was captain of team scotland and keir was captain

of team england. it shows you, i suppose you could spin a positive out of this, his ruthless hunger to make sure he always wins. we were winning that game, i should have you know, after 60 minutes by a clear six goals. actually, he was rather smart in having one of his staff being the referee and in charge of the clock and extended the game by 35 minutes until his team went one goal up and then they blew the whistle. so i have got that ingrained scottish grievance after it, so i welcome a rematch any time. anas sarwar, leader of the scottish labour party, thank you forjoining me. there is an awful lot riding on how anas sarwar handles the next year or so. he knows, keir starmer knows, if they don't get labour's message in scotland right, they won't get into power. perhaps he's hardened by the experience of a father who didn't speak to him for six whole months when he said he didn't want to go into politics.

thanks for watching. hello, it's a fairly fresh—feeling july day out there today. we've got the breeze coming in from the west or northwest. so in general, things are looking bright and breezy for most of us. there are some showers in the forecast, but the bulk of them will be across the northern half of the uk, whereas further south you'll have longer spells of dry and sunny weather. so we've got low pressure which is just sitting to the north east of scotland drifting towards scandinavia. the winds are rotating around that area of low pressure and we're seeing more persistent rain sitting across the far north of mainland scotland up towards 0rkney. a rash of showers elsewhere across scotland. one or two for northern ireland and northern england i think, could be the odd rumble of thunder for central scotland. but further south you should avoid most of those showers. perhaps the odd one for wales and the south—west, but very

few and far between. and temperatures range between 1a to 22 degrees north to south, fairly typical for the time of year, but the breeze taking the edge off the temperature. most of the showers ease away so things become largely dry through this evening and tonight. but we have got more cloud and light, patchy rain across the north of scotland again. the next weather system arrives in the west here during the early hours of monday. so overnight lows around 10 to 1a degrees. but it's still an unsettled picture on monday because we have got some more areas of low pressure. you can see this little frontal system moving in from the west. so that is going to bring some rain early on to southern parts of northern ireland. later in the day it'll drift eastwards across parts of wales and england too. scotland seeing another day of sunshine and showers. but i don't think they'll be quite as frequent as the showers we're seeing today and less in the way of any thunder risk as well. 13 to 20 degrees our top temperatures, a little below par for this stage injuly. and as that rain just sweeps in towards the southeast, just a chance that we could catch a shower or two, i think, at wimbledon during the afternoon. so the cloud thickens, but any of those showers should be

passing through fairly quickly i think there. into tuesday then another area of low pressure arrives for southern parts of the uk. some uncertainty about the detail of exactly when and where we're going to see the rain. but it looks like a pretty wet day on tuesday across southern parts of england and wales, whereas further north, sunshine and scattered showers, some of them i think quite heavy and frequent as well. so all in all, an unsettled, breezy, showery day on tuesday for most of us, 13 to 19 degrees, so it is going to feel rather cool for this time of year. so cool and unsettled over the next few days. but it looks like things turn warmer and drier, at least in the south, as we look towards the end of the week. bye— bye.

live from london — this is bbc news. a fifth night of violent clashes in france — with more than 700 arrests. two dead and 28 others injured, following a mass shooting in baltimore. a search for the shooter is under way. we find you and we will find you. until then, i hope with every single breath that you take that you think about the lives that you took. seven new nhs gambling clinics seven new nhs gambling clinics to open in england — to open in england — almost double the current number. hello, i'm lewis vaughanjones.