Scottish Labour faces an all-male leadership contest after Monica Lennon failed to win enough support for her campaign. The party imposed a deadline of 10am today for potential candidates to secure the public backing of at least three of its MSPs, three MPs and two trade unions.
Lennon was endorsed by both Unite and Unison - the two largest unions in the UK - but failed to win enough support from her parliamentary colleagues at Holyrood and Westminster. It means Scottish Labour members must choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan to become the party's next leader.
Contest sparked by Sarwar's departure
The contest was sparked after Anas Sarwar quit last month in order to accept a peerage and a UK Government ministerial position offered by Andy Burnham.
A group of prominent female Labour members had yesterday made a last-minute plea to "get Monica Lennon on the ballot" as speculation mounted the left-wing MSP would miss out. In a message on social media, 11 leading women activists, including Cathy Jamieson, the former Scottish Labour deputy leader, and Lesley Hinds, the former Edinburgh lord provost, called on parliamentarians to back Lennon.
Fagan's campaign message
Fagan said he would now take his case for a "bolder, grassroots Scottish Labour Party" directly to members across the country. "I'm standing because Scottish Labour needs to be bold again and because working people need a party that is firmly on their side," he said.
"As this contest moves into its next phase, I want to thank every member, trade unionist and affiliate who has backed our campaign and helped us make the case for change. This campaign is about more than understanding what went wrong. It is about what Labour does next. It is about respecting work, backing our communities and giving working people real power over the future, not asking them simply to live with decisions made elsewhere."
"I want to rebuild Scottish Labour as the party of the working people of Scotland, rooted in our communities, serious about using power to change lives and ambitious enough to make Scotland's future belong to the people who work, care, build, teach and keep our country going. That is the argument I will keep making throughout this contest, and if you share that vision, I hope you'll join my campaign to change our party."
