Anas Sarwar elected new leader of Scottish Labour party
Anas Sarwar has this morning been announced as the new leader of the Scottish Labour party after defeating Monica Lennon in a snap election.
The vote was triggered when former leader Richard Leonard stepped down in January, saying it was in the best interests of the party.
Sarwar’s election comes just three months before elections for the Scottish parliament in May.
After decades as the dominant force in Scottish politics, the Labour party is now languishing as the third largest party in Holyrood.
It has lost every election since 2007 to the Scottish National Party.
Sarwar, the party’s eighth leader in the period since 2007, will be tasked with attempting to break the SNP’s stranglehold on politics north of the order.
The Glasgow MSP, the first leader of a major political party in the UK from a minority ethnic background, got 57.6 per cent of the vote, while Lennon got 42.4 per cent.
In his acceptance speech, he said: “I want to say directly to the people of Scotland, I know Labour has a lot of work to do to win back your trust.
“Because if we’re brutally honest, you haven’t had the Scottish Labour Party you deserve. With rising injustice, inequality and division, I’m sorry we haven’t been good enough.
“And I will work day and night to change that, so we can build the country we all need.”