Michael Marra: ‘Small’ Scottish Labour faces systemic problems

Scottish Labour has “become small” and fixated on internal disputes, leadership hopeful Michael Marra has said.

Speaking in Glasgow, Marra said public dissatisfaction with Keir Starmer’s government was “a storm for which the Scottish Labour Party had failed to make itself weatherproof” ahead of the Holyrood election.

And he said the party had turned inwards during the devolution era and failed to recognise that it has become “marginal” in terms of seats won in Holyrood.

Marra, who disclosed that the party’s membership has fallen to around 11,000, said: “Our party has shrunk. So too has our politics. We have become small when the challenges we face demand that we be big.”

Pitching for the leadership of the party, Marra said that “the same people” had “carried more responsibility”, listening to “familiar voices” with “internal disagreements” taking up more of its attention.

He said: “Our problem is not just a leader or a rule book, the organisation, the message or the policies, it's all of those things interacting with each other. It is systemic.

“Devolution created a new national political arena and Scotland changed. Works changed, communities changed, old loyalties weakened. Scotland's understanding of itself changed, but we didn't. Scottish Labour kept going round in the same old loop.”

Comparing the party to the circular route of Glasgow’s Subway, which dates back to the 19th century, he said his party must “reroute ourselves and move to where the country is now, not to where it used to be”.

Labour’s membership of around 11,000 Scottish members will choose between Marra and Joe Fagan MSP for the top job.

It was vacated by Anas Sarwar after he accepted a role as trade minister in Andy Burnham’s government, resigning his Scottish Parliament seat to take up a place in the House of Lords.

Both candidates have said the party must change after diminishing electoral returns.

Marra said he is standing to lead a “moral cause” against child poverty and called on his partymates to “rediscover our moral purpose”.

He said the Scottish Labour leader is in a “unique position” to negotiate with the Scottish and UK governments for greater devolution for the country’s regions and said he would not consider Burnham to be his boss.

Both Marra and Fagan – a former leader of South Lanarkshire Council – have said they would scrap Sarwar’s bar on pacts and coalitions with rival parties ahead of next year’s council elections. However, each has said this would not apply to Reform UK.

Marra called Malcolm Offord’s party “a gateway to something much darker” and he would not work with those who “challenge the very soul of the country that we seek to represent”.