Sarah Boyack becomes first candidate in Scottish Labour leadership contest

Sarah Boyack has announced that she is to stand for the Scottish Labour leadership. Despite her name not appearing in many potential candidate lists over the weekend (including ours), rumours surfaced this morning that she was preparing to throw her hat in the ring. She is the first person to officially announce their intention to succeed Johann Lamont.

Sources say Boyack hopes to be seen as a “unifier” candidate – as the two other likely candidates, Jim Murphy and Neil Findlay, represent the right and left wings of the Labour Party.

Boyack has links to both Murphy and Findlay. In 2011, Ed Miliband appointed her as co-chair of the review into the Scottish Labour Party following the defeat in that May’s Scottish Parliament elections. This gave her a big role in reforming Scottish Labour – expect her to focus on her reputation as a reformer between now and December.

Boyack and Neil Findlay, meanwhile, are both MSPs elected on the PR list system for the Lothian constituency. Previous to that, Boyack was the MSP for Edinburgh Central since 1999.

She told the Guardian:

“I want to make sure we take the opportunity to have a constructive conversation about the country and taking Labour forward; we had a huge democratic debate in this country over the last few months and we have to continue that debate.

“People are looking for ambition and vision, and I think that is what the Scottish Labour party is about. We need to look at not only where power lies, but how we use that power for everybody.”