Scotland wants a Labour authorities now greater than ever earlier than. Our Nationwide Well being Service and public providers are at breaking level below the pressure of an out-of-control pandemic. Covid is rampant, claiming lives, and placing down so a lot of our fellow residents, who’re grievously affected by this terrible virus. Employees’ incomes are being squeezed like by no means earlier than, with job losses rife and companies going bust. Too many staff go to work day-in and day-out, night-in and night-out leaving them susceptible to the virus.
Each governments have mishandled its response to Covid, with devastating penalties not least in our care houses. It’s important now that we have now an accelerated vaccine rollout – 24 hours a day, 7 days per week – to make sure that probably the most susceptible and frontline employees are protected in opposition to Covid, and that the final inhabitants is given better safety as rapidly as doable after that.
I’ve thought lengthy and laborious over the Christmas interval about what this disaster means, and the method Scottish Labour takes to assist sort out it. I’ve additionally thought of what the hypothesis about my management does to our skill to get Labour’s message throughout. This has develop into a distraction.
I’ve come to the conclusion it’s in the perfect pursuits of the social gathering that I step apart as chief of Scottish Labour with speedy impact. This was not a simple determination, however after three years I really feel it’s the proper one for me and for the social gathering.
I wish to thank all these individuals who positioned their hopes in me, and who labored with me in good instances and unhealthy. This expertise and the nice folks I’ve met will dwell with me eternally. I owe an enormous debt particularly to all these social gathering members who work tirelessly for the reason for Labour.
I retain my religion within the Labour social gathering because the social gathering that provides hope to folks and that is still the one car for the realisation of that hope. While I step down from the management as we speak, the work goes on, and I’ll play my constructive half as an MSP in successful assist for Labour’s imaginative and prescient of a greater future in a democratic economic system and a socialist society.