New Scottish Labour leader Michael Marra has said his aim is for the party to win next Holyrood election in five years time, but he conceded they are a “long way from that” at the moment.
Mr Marra, who has been in charge of Labour in Scotland for less than two weeks, said John Swinney’s SNP had secured a “handsome victory” in May’s Holyrood election.
While the SNP has won five successive Scottish Parliament elections, Mr Marra added that Labour got a “very poor result” in May.
The “collapse in popularity” of the then-prime minister Sir Keir Starmer was a “big factor” in that, the North East Scotland MSP said.
After taking over as Scottish Labour leader, Mr Marra insisted he was “not blind” to the challenges facing the party – but insisted his aim was to win the next Holyrood election in 2031.
Asked if he could do so, he said: “Of course it is the aim, we are going to fight for every vote in every seat – but where we are at the moment we are a long way from that.
Senior figures in Scottish Labour, including Mr Marra’s predecessor Anas Sarwar, have come under fire for an election strategy which saw the party focus on winning constituency seats.
That was deployed after Labour ousted SNP MPs in parts of Scotland, including many in the central belt, in the 2024 general election.
But Mr Marra accepted it was “the wrong strategy in the end”.
Speaking at an event hosted by Politico at the Labour conference in Liverpool, he said that the party “probably won fewer seats than we could have won if we had taken a different approach, but not by that many”.
With Sir Keir becoming increasingly unpopular as leader, Mr Marra said that the “headwinds were so strong”.
He added: “I don’t think there is any prime minister in history that has lost popularity at the rate the previous prime minister did, and the rate at which that happened was particularly challenging.”
However he said that Andy Burnham had made a “brilliant start” since taking over as Prime Minister this summer.
Adding that Mr Burnham is “rebuilding” Labour’s “connection” with voters, Mr Marra said: “He is the most popular politician in Scotland by a distance, the most popular politician since Nicola Sturgeon, but we need to translate that into party support.
“I think the more Andy is in Scotland talking about Scottish issues, and that we are doing that with him, the better it will be.”
Mr Burnham has been to Scotland twice since becoming Prime Minister, but Mr Marra said: “We will be seeing an awful lot more of him in the months to come in Scotland.”
