I would 'unite and renew' Scottish Labour as leader

Michael Marra

In the early afternoon of the 8th of May I was standing in the Dundee International Sports Centre waiting for the result of the Dundee City West constituency.

While my result wouldn’t come until 4pm that day, my party and I already knew that the election was over.

Indeed around 2pm that day, with only 7 seats having been declared, Scottish Labour conceded defeat.

Any election loss is painful and if you’re in politics long enough, you’re going to feel experience it more than once, but the nature of our defeat felt familiar and by that, I mean too familiar.

The reality is that for six Scottish Parliament elections in a row now our party has gone backwards and that should be telling every single person who cares about what the Scottish Labour Party stands for something very important. If anyone thinks this is about one bad result they are badly wrong.

We in Scottish Labour find ourselves looking for a new leader. I believe this is a moment to renew not just the leadership of the party but the purpose of Scottish Labour.

Andy Burnham has shown the difference it can make when Labour gets back to offering hope and shows a willingness to fight to make a difference for people

I believe that people in Scotland want a party that speaks confidently about work, industry, economic growth, public services and opportunity - and that is prepared to make the case for change.

What Scottish Labour has done very well in the last five years is scrutinise the actions of the SNP Government.

We rightly pointed out time and time again that, as a party that was approaching two decades in power, the SNP should have done so much more.

But highlighting the incompetence of the SNP is not an argument for why people should put their faith in Scottish Labour instead.

People have seen what the SNP has done or hasn’t done with power for almost 20 years – people wanted to know what Scottish Labour would do tomorrow if we won power and that just wasn’t clear enough.

What I want is for our party’s goals to become obvious and unmistakable.

My leadership would be grounded in the delivery of those goals and what we want to achieve as a party.

For me politics is about improving people’s lives: creating better jobs, strengthening public services, expanding opportunities for young people and rebuilding trust among people who feel politics has stopped listening to them.

To achieve that I would want to be collaborative, serious and focused on outcomes rather than headlines.

I want Scottish Labour to be a confident voice for working people. I would work closely with trade unions, businesses and local communities to deliver real change across every part of Scotland.

That is my goal - to unite and renew the Scottish Labour party. I believe we can rebuild trust in politics. I believe we can renew Scottish Labour. And I believe we can once again become the party of hope for Scotland. I am asking my fellow party members to put their trust in me to unite and renew our party.