During the 2015 leadership election campaign, Dugdale said she would want to end the
charitable status of
private schools in Scotland which gives them
tax breaks, a policy in her opinion unfair to state schools. In a July 2015 televised leadership debate, she said it was wrong the vast majority of the
232 Labour MPs abstained on the
Conservative government's
Welfare Reform and Work Bill in a
second reading vote in the House of Commons. Following the resignation of
Lord John Sewel on 28 July 2015, she said the
House of Lords should no longer be an unelected chamber and should be moved to Glasgow. After Corbyn had been elected as
Leader of the Labour Party on 13 September, she revealed for the first time, on
BBC Question Time on 30 October, she had voted for
Yvette Cooper. Dugdale led Scottish Labour into the
2016 Scottish Parliament election. Dugdale wanted to re-affirm Scottish Labour's core beliefs and convey to the electorate what the party stood for. She focused her campaign on a proposal to increase income tax to tackle underfunding of services by the
Scottish National Party government, particularly in education. Meanwhile, the
Scottish Conservatives' ambitions were to oppose Scottish independence and push
Ruth Davidson as an effective leader opposed to the SNP's governmental agenda. The results put Scottish Labour behind both the SNP and Scottish Conservatives, with the party falling into third place from second. The party made a net loss of 12 constituency seats, gaining only one and holding another two, but retained 21 of its 22 regional seats which assign additional members to address imbalance in constituency results. Dugdale was once again returned as an additional member for the Lothian region, having failed to win the
Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP by 5,087 votes. On 29 June 2016, Dugdale called for Jeremy Corbyn to resign from his position as Leader of the Labour Party, after 174-to-40 Labour MPs voted no-confidence in his leadership. She said when 80% of his own MPs no longer supported him, Corbyn could not properly function as Labour leader or
Leader of the Opposition in parliament, nor could he form a potential alternative government. On 22 August, she declared her support for
Owen Smith in the
2016 Labour Party leadership election but also said her position would remain tenable were Corbyn to win re-election. After Corbyn won the leadership election, she first said that this made the Labour Party unelectable, then stated the opposite. Dugdale was
Leader of the Scottish Labour Party during the
2017 general election. In the
previous general election in 2015, the party lost 40 of its 41 seats in what was a
landslide victory for the SNP, who won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon based the 2017 SNP campaign on a promise to seek a
second Scottish independence referendum with the aim of keeping an
independent Scotland inside the European Union, a referendum Ruth Davidson and the Scottish Conservatives were opposed to. Dugdale again campaigned on what she saw as the need for an income tax increase to tackle education underfunding by the SNP.
The results gave Scottish Labour seven seats. In their previously sole seat
Edinburgh South,
Ian Murray was returned with a super-majority of over 15,000, and the party gained a further six seats from the SNP. However, the party came in third place behind the SNP with 35 seats and Scottish Conservatives with 13. On 29 August 2017, Dugdale resigned as leader of
Scottish Labour with immediate effect, commenting that it was time to "pass on the baton" to someone else. She opined that her successor needed the "space and time" to prepare for the
next Scottish Parliament election in 2021. == Later career ==