Rutherglen by-election: Anas Sarwar can't resist a pop at The National

To receive the update on the behind-the-scenes goings-on from our newsroom straight to your inbox every week, click here.

ANAS Sarwar couldn’t resist taking a pop at The National following Labour’s win at the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.

It was clear that the Scottish Labour leader wasn’t expecting there to be such a difference between the results for his party’s candidate Michael Shanks and the SNP’s Katy Loudon - a whopping majority of 9446.

READ MORE: LIVE: Reaction as Labour win Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election

When Sarwar and Shanks made an appearance in the media room just before 2.30am on Friday morning, when most of the reporters were packing up and heading home for the night, I braced myself to slip in a question.

Readers of this newsletter will be well aware that the last time I tried to put a question to Sarwar - at an economic policy event last month before parliament returned for recess - he shut down questioning from the press the moment I put my hand up.

He really has not forgiven me for that row in London we had over his party’s backroom deals with the Tories at local councils in front of his boss Keir Starmer.

So on Friday morning we were told we had one question each. It had been a long night so I wanted to get mine in early.

I asked if the result could really be described as “seismic” when 50,000 voters in the constituency had not turned out to vote. Only 37.19% of the electorate did, just over 30,000 people.

“I think the point to stress is when the SNP won the Airdrie and Shotts by-election with a lower turnout, they weren't decrying the turnout in terms of what it meant for the result,” he said in response.

“And the suggestion that perhaps rainfall only fell on SNP houses is perhaps maybe even a conspiracy theory too far, even for The National.”

When I pointed out that neither I nor the newspaper had said such a thing, Sarwar claimed that he had seen one of our tweets.

​READ MORE: SNP split on independence plan after Rutherglen by-election result

Odd, because we had tweeted no such thing. Check our feed for the proof.

I pointed out that Sarwar always has a go at The National during press events.

He said: “No, no I’m … you never take a pop at me.”

I pointed out that I don’t actually, I just ask him questions.

I’m used to being treated differently as a journalist for a pro-independence paper.

It comes with the territory when you’re taking a different tact than everyone else in the room.

Unfortunately, I’m also used to this from Labour, whose treatment of our newspaper suggests they've no interest in speaking to those in the Yes movement.