Scottish Labour

Jackie Baillie.

Presiding Officer, before I begin, can I put on record my condolences and the condolences of the Scottish Labour Party on the death of former MSP Cathy Craigie.

Cathy was a much-loved colleague.

She was a woman of great determination and tenacity, and she was the first woman to pass a member's bill in this parliament protecting mortgage holders.

Scotland.Alex Cole-Hamilton.

Thank you very much, uh, Presiding Officer.

And Presiding Officer, may t- I, too, extend the heartfelt condolences of the Scottish Liberal Democrats to the Labour Party and the family of Cathy Craigie, and everybody who loved her.

She was a towering force in our politics, and she will be much missed.

Dougie Alexander's hands.

On the subject of Indyref 2 because I'm sure this is an issue that whoever wins will get asked about almost immediately is this Saturday it's the big one it's the announcement that we've all been waiting for is who will win the contest to become the next leader of Scottish Labour will be saturday morning i believe and it will of course either be michael mara or joe fagan and now their predecessor anna sarwa he said in august when he was appearing at a fringe show that i happened to be at it was a chat show i stress he wasn't doing startup comedy but he he described the the job of scottish labour leader as the hardest role in scottish politics do you agree with that Dan firstly and secondly do you you know I mean what would your advice be to Michael Marra or Joe Fagan you know what should they be doing first you know whoever wins it

First of all, I imagine being leader of Scottish Labour is one of the hardest jobs in Scottish politics when you're losing really badly in an election.

Most of the other sort of five years of a parliamentary term, you probably just coast through because no one's listening to you anyway.

being slightly flippant there, but obviously we've talked before, many people have talked at quite a lot of length about how Labour has sort of collapsed in relevance, it's collapsed in popularity in Scotland, you know, it's been losing votes in seats at every election since 2007, I'm guessing, in Scotland.

We interviewed him and he seems like a serious guy.

He's obviously brand new to the Parliament, but he used to lead South Lanarkshire Council.

But I'm just left with the impression on both of them is which one of them is going to decisively move the needle for Scottish Labour? Where is the inspiration? Where is anything for the party membership to get excited about, never mind the wider electorate? I don't see much changing for the party and whatever happens on Saturday.

And in terms of our democracy and political parties, donations to parties or candidates, we actually want the transparency of knowing who is doing, uh, that, uh, donation, who is making those donations.

A Labor peer, Lady Hodge, described the two 36 million pound donations to Reform UK as astonishing and staggering.

But she said it wasn't just Reform, other parties had received large sums.

We must not, my Lords, allow c- money to capture and dictate our politics.

She wanted ministers...

To cap the donations of individuals, to cap the anu- annual campaigning expenditure of parties, and to bring down the cap on what parties can spend during the election campaign.

Another Labor peer, Lord Wills, said he'd written his speech before the news of the Reform donations came to light, and stressed he wasn't referring to them.

He argued the number of big donations was growing.

We've also got Paul Sweeney with us.

Paul is a member of the Scottish Parliament for the Glasgow region, representing the Scottish Labour and Co-op Party.

Dave, welcome along.

Paul, welcome too.

I remember seeing, I saw Scotland Office for that matter.

I know that's quite a lot of, I think I saw, some reporting about a lot of Scottish Labour MPs getting in touch, saying they're dissatisfied with the response that he gave.

Make of that what you will.

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