Yahoo Finance Sarwar continues family tradition of firsts with leadership win
Anas Sarwar has continued a family tradition by becoming the UK’s first Muslim to lead a political party.
Mr Sarwar’s father, Mohammed, was the first Muslim MP, elected to Glasgow Central in 1997, before going on to be governor of the Punjab region in his native Pakistan.
Now, the younger Sarwar has been elected to lead Scottish Labour, beating fellow MSP Monica Lennon by 57.6% to 42.4%.
Born in Glasgow in 1983, Mr Sarwar remembers his first political memory being a threat made against his mother.
The Glasgow MSP 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”.
Despite racist threats and abuse, Mr Sarwar left his job as a dentist in 2010 to enter the world of politics, winning the same Westminster seat as his father in an election which saw the Labour Party lose power after 13 years to a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition.
His time as an MP also brought with it leadership responsibilities, with Mr Sarwar elected to be deputy leader of Scottish Labour from 2011 to 2014, as well as the job of co-ordinating the party’s campaign during the independence referendum.
He would also serve as acting leader following the resignation of Johann Lamont in 2014.
However, in 2015, he lost his seat to the SNP’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 over 12 months later would be fighting his first leadership election, taking on the eventual winner, Richard Leonard, who polled 56.7% of the vote.
Since his loss, Mr Sarwar has been the party’s health spokesman – before an acrimonious sacking by Mr Leonard which he claimed to have heard about through social media – and most recently as constitution spokesman, as well as campaigning for an inquiry into issues at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
