I would first like to thank party members and activists who campaigned for the party in the election: your hard work over the week-long campaign was integral to the election of every one of our MSPs.

Last week Scottish Labour negotiated two deals for forming a government: a deal with the Scottish Conservatives and Forward, and a deal with the Scottish National Party. I would like to thank the leaderships of these parties for negotiating with Scottish Labour in good faith. Both deals were put to a vote of the wider party membership on Sunday along with the option to enter opposition. The party ended up approving both deals but voted to prefer going into government with the SNP over the other options. While the SNP will indeed be forming government, it will be through a confidence-and-supply agreement with Forward instead of a coalition with Scottish Labour.

This means that Scottish Labour will be the largest opposition party in this parliament. As such we will ensure that the new incoming SNP minority administration is properly scrutinised in debates and questions sessions, and that Scottish Labour presents an alternative vision for Scotland by seeking to pass legislation implementing the manifesto our MSPs were elected on.

In our negotiations with the SNP, multiple areas of agreement were identified from housing to the climate crisis, and on such issues where Scottish Labour’s vision for Scotland aligns with the SNP’s, we will seek to work together with the new government.

In our negotiations with the Scottish Conservatives and with Forward we also identified multiple policies supported by all 3 parties on areas including transport and education, and Scottish Labour will seek to work cross-party with the 2 opposition parties on such areas of agreement as well.