Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra has said the party is a “long way” from being able to win the next Holyrood election, despite setting victory in 2031 as his aim.
Mr Marra, who has led Labour in Scotland for less than two weeks, said John Swinney’s SNP secured a “handsome victory” in May’s Holyrood election. He described Labour’s result as “very poor” and said the “collapse in popularity” of then-prime minister Sir Keir Starmer had been a “big factor”.
Asked whether Labour could win the next Scottish Parliament election, Mr Marra said: “Of course it is the aim, we are going to fight for every vote in every seat – but where we are at the moment we are a long way from that.”
Speaking at an event hosted by Politico at the Labour conference in Liverpool, he also accepted that a strategy focused on winning constituency seats had been “the wrong strategy in the end”.
The approach followed Labour’s success in ousting SNP MPs in parts of Scotland, including many central-belt seats, at the 2024 general election. Mr Marra said Labour had “probably won fewer seats than we could have won if we had taken a different approach, but not by that many”.
He said the political “headwinds were so strong” because of the rate at which Sir Keir lost popularity.
Mr Marra described Andy Burnham’s start as Prime Minister as “brilliant” and said he was rebuilding Labour’s connection with voters. He called Mr Burnham “the most popular politician in Scotland by a distance” but said that popularity needed to be translated into support for the party.
Mr Burnham has visited Scotland twice since becoming Prime Minister. Mr Marra said there would be “an awful lot more” visits in the coming months.
