Leadership Jim Murphy Murphy, a former
President of the National Union of Students, was first elected to the House of Commons as the MP for
Eastwood in the
1997 general election. Having spent nine years at university without graduating, he worked for the Labour Party before becoming an MP. After serving in junior roles in the post-1997 Labour government, he was appointed as
Secretary of State for Scotland in 2008, where he led a Scottish business mission to
Shanghai and played a key role in organising the Scotland leg of
Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom. He took charge of Labour's Scottish campaign for the
2010 general election, securing a three per cent swing to Labour in Scotland amid a defeat for the party at UK level. He became
Shadow Defence Secretary after the election before moving to the post of Shadow International Development Secretary in 2013. In 2011, he co-chaired the
Murphy–Boyack review of the structure of the Scottish Labour Party, and was a prominent figure in the Better Together campaign during the 2014 referendum, touring 100 towns in 100 days to campaign for a "No" vote. Commentators, such as the BBC's Aiden James and
The Guardians Severin Carrell, have described Murphy as being from the
Blairite right wing of the party. His bid to lead the party was backed by the
Community and
USDAW trade unions. and by Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran. Murphy spoke of uniting Scottish Labour – and Scotland – after the referendum, and said that, if chosen to lead the party, he would stand for election to the Scottish Parliament at the
2016 election, "if not before". He claimed that a "lack of vision" and a failure to listen to Scottish voters had led to voters' deserting Labour. He suggested that it was "compulsory" that an MSP should be his deputy, and expressed support for greater devolution for Scotland. Murphy said that Scottish Labour should take greater responsibility in areas such as policy making, fundraising, and campaigning, and that funds paid to UK Labour by Scottish Labour councillors should be used exclusively for Scotland. Murphy also wanted to spend £5,000 on campaigns in every Labour-held Scottish constituency at Holyrood and Westminster, as well as seats the party planned to target at future elections, and pledged a "radical change" in Labour's campaign strategy. He promised to introduce gender-equality legislation requiring an equal male/female representation in the
Scottish Cabinet and on the boards of Scottish-based companies, and planned to appoint a Cabinet Minister for Women. He announced plans to invite the leaders of Scotland's other political parties to talks aimed at developing a strategy for the provision of services for the elderly, services which were coming under increasing pressure from an aging population. and devolve some welfare responsibilities handed to Holyrood by the Smith Commission, such as the
Work Programme, to local authorities. On education, he pledged to create a facility to promote good teaching practice, introduce
chartered status for teachers, and identify and provide support to
secondary schools that were deemed to be failing. Unlike his two opponents, Murphy supported the continuation of the
UK Trident programme, due for renewal in 2016.
Sarah Boyack Boyack, a former
planning officer and lecturer who served as chair of
Scottish Labour Students and its UK-wide counterpart,
Labour Students, was elected as the MSP for
Edinburgh Central at the Scottish Parliament's
inaugural election of 1999. She served in both the
Dewar and
McLeish governments, where she was Environment Minister and later Transport Minister.
The Guardian reported that she would stand as a centrist candidate;
Lesley Riddoch of
The Scotsman suggested that Boyack had "an instinct for co-operation and consensus building". Boyack describes herself as a socialist. Her campaign was launched in Edinburgh on 7 November, supported by the
Scottish Co-Operative Party. Boyack said that she would be a "listening leader" who would tackle funding shortfalls in the
National Health Service (NHS) and local government. Positioning herself as a unifying candidate who would make the party "fit for purpose", she called for "bold and radical" new approaches to policy, which would require Labour to be honest about funding crises in local government and health. She backed the scrapping of the Trident programme. She wanted to reform
Council Tax, which had been frozen since the SNP came to power in 2007, and suggested the existing eight tax bands should be redrawn. She would allow local authorities to raise a tourism tax, while environmentally friendly power firms and bus companies would be created to raise public funds. She supported establishing a consensus on whether or not to have full tax devolution, but had "reservations" about the prospect of devolving further taxes to Holyrood. She told STV's Stephen Daisley that she wished "to make Scottish Labour a force in Scottish politics again". Policy options raised by Findlay included increasing the minimum wage, reintroduction of council house building, reduction in the use of the private sector in
NHS Scotland, and allowing councils to set their own taxes to help reverse job losses within local government. He described himself as "no machine politician", He said that if elected as leader, his 2016 election campaign would focus on tackling youth unemployment, the introduction of a
living wage, and improvements to health and social care. Among his plans for devolution was for Holyrood to have power over employment regulations to enable the creation of a Scottish Health and Safety Executive and the introduction of corporate culpable homicide legislation. and that he wanted to
renationalise the railways in Scotland, bring an end to
public-private partnerships, and commit the party to
full employment. He supported introducing a 50 per cent tax band "to tackle poverty and youth unemployment", He said there would be "no privatisation of the NHS under my leadership". If elected he promised to "hit the ground running", and said he would be ready to take on SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon at the next session of First Minister's Questions. She quickly ruled herself out of running for the leadership, but told the
Edinburgh Evening News that she would consider entering a deputy leadership contest, describing herself as a "sidekick, not a superhero". She was also endorsed by the Scottish Co-Operative Party. Many of the parliamentarians who nominated Dugdale for deputy leader also endorsed Murphy's leadership bid, but she ruled out standing with Murphy on a joint ticket.
Katy Clark Clark, a former solicitor with UNISON, joined the Labour Party at the age of 17. She was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for
North Ayrshire and Arran in the
2005 general election. Among the policies she supported were renationalisation of the railways, introducing free childcare for children over the age of twelve months, introducing a living wage, and the abolition of both the Trident programme and student tuition fees. She also claimed that Labour in Scotland had "been taken to the political abyss" by "New Labour and its architects". She claimed that Labour would find it harder to be re-elected unless she was chosen as its deputy leader.
Controversy While Labour distributed ballot packs to its members, the trade unions were responsible for sending out literature relating to the contest to their members, leading to concerns from each side about the content of the other's election material. On 30 November,
Sunday Herald journalist Paul Hutcheon reported that along with voting packs, Unite had also sent its members a "mock ballot paper" instructing them to vote for Findlay and Clark, while the GMB union had also included material endorsing Findlay and Clark as their preferred candidates. Hutcheon quoted an unnamed senior Labour Party source, who described the actions as "absolutely desperate stuff from Unite". Following a
Sunday Herald article in which the Labour MP
Tom Watson suggested Murphy's election would be "disastrous" for the party, he and
Ivan Lewis, the
Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, engaged in a heated exchange on
Twitter during which Lewis accused Watson of manipulating past UK Labour leadership contests and of wanting to influence the election of the party's next Scottish leader. Watson, who had resigned as a defence minister in 2006 after suggesting that
Tony Blair should step down as Prime Minister, rejected claims that he had sought to manipulate previous Labour leadership contests. On 10 December, David Robertson, the moderator-elect of the
Free Church of Scotland, expressed concerns that Murphy had been subject to religious discrimination after Gary Otton, leader of the
Scottish Secular Society, posted several threads on
Facebook commenting on the leadership candidate's
Roman Catholic faith and his support for denominational schools. Robertson said that Murphy "should be judged on his political views and abilities, not what church he belongs to". ==Results==