Scottish Labour’s deputy leader has quit after losing her seat in the general election.
Lesley Laird secured the role unopposed in May 2018 after the previous holder, MSP Alex Rowley, resigned over allegations about his private life.
Ms Laird, who won the Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath seat by just 259 votes in 2017, lost on Thursday despite her SNP challenger being suspended by the party over anti-Semitism.
Neale Hanvey, who apologised for social media posts, won by 1243 votes, as it was too late to remove his name from the ballot paper next to the SNP logo.
Ms Laird’s exit triggers an election for Scottish Labour’s next deputy.
She appealed for the party not to tear itself apart in the wake of its defeat.
She said: “I would urge a period of calm reflection and some kindness towards each other.
“Because if we are to convince people of our values and principles then first we must demonstrate them not just in our words but more importantly in our behaviour and actions towards each other.
“I have seen many leaders of the Labour party come and go. Not all were my choice - but I always took the view that they were our elected leader and my role was to serve the Labour party as best I could.
“Sadly there is now a culture where for some people in our party washing our differences in public via the media has become a far too regular self promotional or destabilising tool.
“It’s a behaviour that upsets our members and undermines all the good work our staff and activists do. It needs to stop.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel