The Scottish Labour Party (SLP) was a socialist party in Scotland that was active between 1976 and 1981. It formed as a breakaway from the UK Labour Party. It won three council seats in 1977 but lost its MPs at the 1979 election and was dissolved two years later.
James Sillars is a Scottish politician and campaigner for Scottish independence. Sillars served as a Labour Party MP for South Ayrshire from 1970 to 1976. He founded and led the pro-Scottish Home Rule Scottish Labour Party in 1976, continuing as MP for South Ayrshire until he lost the seat in 1979.
Margo Symington MacDonald was a Scottish politician, teacher and broadcaster. She was the Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Govan from 1973 to 1974 and was Depute Leader of the Scottish National Party from 1974 to 1979. She later served as an SNP and then Independent Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Lothian from 1999 until her death.
Kenneth Wright MacAskill is a Scottish politician who was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Lothian from 2019 to 2024. He previously served as Cabinet Secretary for Justice from 2007 to 2014 and was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2016. A former member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he defected to the Alba Party in 2021 and currently serves as the party's depute leader.
George Foulkes, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock PC is a British politician and life peer who served as Minister of State for Scotland from 2001 to 2002. A member of Scottish Labour and the Co-operative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, formerly South Ayrshire, from 1979 to 2005. He was later a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), as one of the additional members for the Lothians region, from 2007 to 2011.
Robert Gordon Wilson was a Scottish politician and solicitor. He was the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 1979 to 1990, and was SNP Member of Parliament (MP) for Dundee East from 1974 to 1987. He was Rector of the University of Dundee from 1983 to 1986.
Chris Bambery is a Scottish political activist, socialist, author, journalist, TV presenter and producer, most recently with the Islam Channel where he hosts their current affairs programme The Report.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is a left social democratic political party which campaigns for Scottish independence. The SNP has controlled Scotland's devolved legislature since the 2007 election as a minority government, and were a majority government from the 2011 election and have been a minority government, since the 2016 election.
Lothian East is a constituency in Scotland which returns one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.
Livingston is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, to which it returns one Member of Parliament (MP). Elections are held using the first-past-the-post voting system.
Scottish Labour, officially the Scottish Labour Party, is the part of the UK Labour Party active in Scotland. Ideologically social democratic and unionist, it holds 22 of 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament and 37 of 57 Scottish seats in the House of Commons. It is represented by 262 of the 1,227 local councillors across Scotland. The Scottish Labour party has no separate Chief Whip at Westminster.
Iain Cumming Gray is a Scottish politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2008 to 2011. He was the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the East Lothian constituency from 2007 to 2021, having previously represented Edinburgh Pentlands from 1999 to 2003. A former aid worker and teacher of mathematics and physics, Gray was first elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 as MSP for the Edinburgh Pentlands constituency, which he lost to Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party David McLetchie in 2003. Gray was returned to Holyrood in 2007 as MSP for East Lothian. Following Wendy Alexander's resignation as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2008, Gray stood at the subsequent leadership election, and was elected with a 57.8% share of the vote in the second round.
The 2007 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday 3 May 2007 to elect members to the Scottish Parliament. It was the third general election to the devolved Scottish Parliament since it was created in 1999. Local elections in Scotland fell on the same day.
The 1978 Berwick and East Lothian by-election was a by-election held for the House of Commons constituency of Berwick and East Lothian in Scotland on 26 October 1978. It was one of two UK parliamentary by-elections held on that day, and was won by the Labour Party candidate John Home Robertson.
Sheila Gilmore is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh East from 2010 to 2015. Gilmore stood for the seat following the decision of Gavin Strang to stand down; she is a former councillor at the City of Edinburgh Council.
Graeme Morrice is a Scottish Labour politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Livingston from 2010 to 2015. Prior to his election to Parliament, he served as the Leader of West Lothian Council from 1995 to 2007.
Kezia Alexandra Ross Dugdale is a Scottish former politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2015 to 2017. A former member of the Scottish Labour Party and Co-operative Party, she was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region from 2011 to 2019.
A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2015 and all 59 seats in Scotland were contested under the first-past-the-post, single-member district electoral system. Unlike the 2010 general election, where no seats changed party, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won all but three seats in Scotland in an unprecedented landslide victory, gaining a total of 56 seats. The SNP received what remains the largest number of votes gained by a single political party in a United Kingdom general election in Scotland in British history, breaking the previous record set by the Labour Party in 1964 and taking the largest share of the Scottish vote in sixty years, at approximately 50 per cent.
Martin David Whitfield is a Scottish Labour politician and former lawyer and primary school teacher who has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the South Scotland region and the Convener of the Standards and Procedures and Public Appointments Committee since 2021.
The Alba Party is a Scottish nationalist and pro-independence political party in Scotland, founded in February 2021. Having split from the Scottish National Party (SNP), it is led by former first minister of Scotland and SNP leader Alex Salmond. Salmond launched the party's 2021 Scottish Parliament election campaign in March 2021, with the party standing list-only candidates, after having being forced out of the SNP due to a sexual misconduct and assault scandal he was partially acquitted of. Two members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK House of Commons defected from the Scottish National Party (SNP) to the Alba Party on 27 March 2021, and member of the Scottish parliament Ash Regan defected on 28 October 2023. Several former SNP MPs also joined the Alba Party, which has only gained elected officials though defections.
