Michael Marra gets off to a promising start as Labour leader - Susan Dalgety
Who is Michael Marra? Is he the saviour of the Scottish Labour Party, which once ruled over us in the days before the SNP found the way to enough hearts to spend 20 years and counting in charge?
Or is he another in a long line of immediately forgettable Labour leaders who will hang around for a few years before being forced to resign and replaced by another equally nondescript politician? The jury is out.
There are those who think Marra is “likeable, serious, thoughtful and intelligent”; others think he is “insipid” and won’t make a difference to Labour’s poor standing in Scotland.
Before I go any further, I should declare an interest. I like Michael Marra. He is one of the few Labour MSPs in recent years who was prepared to back women when they argued against the ill-fated gender reform bill.
His career to date suggests a man who rolls up his sleeves and gets things done.
He worked for Oxfam Scotland, spending time in Malawi. He was a councillor in his home city of Dundee. He plays football, runs marathons and is a father of three children.
Before being elected an MSP in 2021, he led national and international research projects for the University of Dundee, securing millions in investment to create jobs in the local area. And he is still only in his forties.
He has had a good first week in his new job, offering to work with the SNP government to tackle child poverty, but holding the First Minister to account on the terrible drug deaths crisis.
Figures out last week show that 1133 people died of causes related to illicit drugs last year, making more than 11,000 deaths in the last decade. The death rates are highest in Scotland’s poorest communities, fifteen times that in our wealthiest areas.
At his first First Minister’s Questions as Labour leader last Thursday, Marra challenged John Swinney with barely controlled anger.
“If this was a middle class epidemic we would have locked down, legislated, found the money, educated widely…” he said. But he also promised to support the First Minister if he was prepared to “change course” and came to the parliament with a new plan to tackle the deadly crisis.
There will be some Labour diehards who find Marra’s strategy of working with the SNP on serious social issues to be beyond the pale.
But by extending a helping hand to a government clearly out of its depth, Marra displays a mature and commonsense approach to his new job.
People are past the point of caring about party politics, they simply want things to work. They want their children to have a decent education, the health service to work when they need it and they want an end to the widespread drug culture that infects so many of our communities.
Marra has five years to prove that Scottish Labour is back in business. It won’t be easy. The party may be in power in Westminster, but here in Scotland, Labour is in the ignominious position of sharing the official opposition benches with Reform.
Only time will tell if Michael Marra is the man to save Scottish Labour from oblivion.