In the December 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, the Scottish Progressives won 19 seats under the co-leadership of me and /u/Muffin5136; while the SNP, under the leadership of /u/LeftyWalrus, won 22. Following the election, I entered talks with all parties which won seats in the election to seek to form a progressive, centre-left government to deliver the renewal of Scotland the Scottish Progressives had campaigned for during the election. Unfortunately, the talks were ultimately unsuccessful as the Scottish Liberal Democrats and New Britain sought to form a coalition government together. Following this, /u/LeftyWalrus, leader of the SNP (which was then the largest opposition party), offered me the opportunity for our parties to form an opposition coalition and thus present ourselves as a united front against the Scottish Government. Following talks with my MSPs, the party decided to accept this offer.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Workers’ Party merged into the Labour Party. As a consequence of this, the Scottish Labour Party demerged from the Scottish National Party, and the Scottish Progressives merged into the new Scottish Labour Party, which was from then onwards led by me until my resignation in April. As part of the merger, 3 Labour SNP MSPs joined the new Scottish Labour group, giving the Scottish Labour Party 22 seats and the SNP 19. As I now led the largest opposition party, I now had a choice to make: do I continue with the plans for an opposition coalition with the SNP, or do I instead scrap the plans so that Labour has all seats within the shadow cabinet, to the benefit of the party? I chose the first option, and both parties approved the opposition coalition deal.

Following this year’s Scottish Parliament elections in May, the party again sought to open talks with all potentially viable coalition partners, with Labour eventually negotiating a deal with the SNP, and a deal with the Scottish Liberal Democrats. The deal with the Scottish Liberal Democrats would have rewarded us with the post of First Minister, whereas under the deal with the SNP, the SNP would have gained that reward. I believed that the deal with the SNP would have been the best for delivering the progressive change which voters had endorsed at the election, with the party agreeing with me. The Starburst Coalition between the SNP and Scottish Labour thus formed.

The recent decision of the party to withdraw from the Starburst Coalition has been blamed by the SNP on being due to a desire to hold the post of First Minister. If this is true, then why did the party not seek the role of First Minister at the beginning of the term by choosing to coalition with the Scottish Liberal Democrats? If the party is one which is hungry for power, then why did we choose to give away seats in the shadow cabinet to the SNP? It is because the Scottish Labour Party isn’t one which is hungry for power and wants to wear the fancy hat of First Minister at all costs. Instead, what we desire is the opportunity to enact genuine progressive change to benefit the people of Scotland and to enact the manifesto promises upon which we were elected.

The truth is, the Starburst Coalition was actively blocking this. While /u/model-willem was hard at work drafting legislation to strengthen animal welfare standards and to tackle plastic pollution, while /u/Muffin5136 was hard at work negotiating the devolution of welfare powers with the Secretary of State for Scotland, and while my department was hard at work drafting legislation to reform public transport fares, the SNP was missing in action again. The Finance Secretary was missing in action rather than working to negotiate the devolution of welfare powers, and to draft a progressive budget. The Education Secretary was missing in action rather than working to repeal the regressive tuition fees regime introduced by the previous government. If you have cabinet ministers missing in action whose sections of the programme for government include policies integral to the government’s goals to enact genuine progressive change, then the government is quite simply failing to enact the progressive policies it promised to the Scottish people.

The leader of the Scottish Workers’ Party /u/EvasiveBrotherhood said our withdrawal from government “makes transformative policies such as rail and energy nationalisation less likely to occur”. I support the nationalisation of energy as I do not believe that vital utilities should be run for profit. However, energy is a matter reserved to Westminster and thus our withdrawal from government has no effect on efforts to nationalise the energy industry. As for rail nationalisation, recently debate closed on the Railways Bill 2022 authored by the Labour Party which would nationalise Scotrail and integrate it into publicly-owned British Rail. The Scottish Labour Party fully supports this legislation and will be moving the necessary Legislative Consent Motion to bring it into force once the bill is passed into law.

The status of the Scottish Labour Party as a progressive left-of-centre party formed to represent the labour movement continues to be true, and the party will continue to enact and support left-wing progressive policies during the remainder of this term of the Scottish Parliament.

The SNP leader /u/NicolasBroaddus said he was presented with an “An ultimatum without negotiation, with no reason”. As someone who was party to talks with the SNP leadership, I can confirm that this is demonstrably false. /u/Muffin5136 had informed /u/NicolasBroaddus that the party isn’t prepared to support him to be First Minister, including the reasons why, unless he proves to us that he is suitable for the role and is able to command the trust of the Scottish Labour Party (Meta note: Nic wrote a now-decanonized anonymous article in which he made unsubstantiated attacks against the Labour Party. We asked him to admit that he wrote the article and to denounce it else we can’t support him as First Minister). The SNP leadership was not prepared to do so, and wasn’t willing to entertain any other options which would have led to the Starburst Coalition continuing, including the SNP nominating someone else for First Minister. Therefore, we were faced with the SNP nominating someone for First Minister who didn’t command the trust of the Scottish Labour Party and who the party didn’t view as suitable for First Minister. I did not wish for Scottish Labour to need to withdraw from the government; but I don’t think we had another choice to ensure proper governance of Scotland.

LightningMinion is the MSP for Kirkcaldy and is a former leader of Scottish Labour.