STATEMENT: 

I am standing to lead Scottish Labour because our party needs to be bold again and because working people need a party that is firmly on their side. 

We have to learn from where we have lost. But we also have to learn from where Labour has won. 

We win when we are rooted in communities, when we respect work and when we prove that Labour can use power to change lives. 

Too often Scottish politics has become trapped in the Holyrood bubble. Members, trade unionists, councillors and working-class communities have been talked at rather than listened to. 

I want to change that. 

Before entering Holyrood, I led one of Scotland’s largest councils, managing a billion-pound budget and delivering the services people depend on every day. I know what it means to make decisions, work with trade unions and turn Labour values into practical change. 

If you elect me leader these are my promises to you about how we’ll change our party.  

• A new approach to politics. I’ll shake up Holyrood with more accountability and more power shared fairly with councils and communities. I’ll build a team that gets things done, delivering for working people from opposition and building for a new government. 

• Resist austerity and put power in the hands of working people. Scotland cannot rebuild public services by cutting jobs, hollowing out councils or asking working people to carry the cost of failure. 

• Bold ideas to change Scotland. Our ideas should inspire. I’ll work for a Scotland where we use our collective power and wealth to change lives – bringing buses back under public control and investing more of our pension wealth locally in housing, energy and infrastructure.  

• Give working people control of the future. We should invest in skills, technology and a new generation of good jobs, and make sure the benefits of growth reach the places and people too often left behind. 

• Give our party back to the grassroots. I’ll draw on talent from across our party with a Commission to Strengthen Scottish Labour and I’ll help build support for activists nationwide. Our movement cannot be run from the political bubble, we need more support to organise in communities and workplaces.  

This is not just a campaign about what Labour got wrong. 

It is about what Labour does next. 

It is about rebuilding trust, putting our movement back at the heart of our politics and making Scotland’s future belong to the people who work, care, build, teach and keep our country going. 

Scottish Labour needs to be bold again. Scottish Labour needs to be Labour again. 

I am asking for your support to rebuild our party as the party of the working people of Scotland. 

Yours in solidarity, 

Joe Fagan MSP