A Dundee Labour councillor who stood to become the party’s deputy leader has called for a new generation of party leaders to be selected.
Lochee councillor Michael Marra failed to secure enough votes for the next round after nominations from suspended Aberdeen council members were rejected.
The deputy director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science said current crises can only be tackled by Labour if there is change at the top of the party.
Mr Marra was in the running as leader Richard Leonard’s number two after Lesley Laird stood down last month after losing her Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath seat in the General Election to independent Neale Hanvey.
Mr Marra, who had intended to become the first councillor to serve as deputy leader of Scottish Labour since the formation of the Scottish Parliament, pledged to be a “unifying voice” following the party’s disastrous election performance.
However, he has called for all remaining candidates to make the restoration of the suspended Aberdeen group a top priority.
The group of nine Labour council members, dubbed ‘the Aberdeen nine’, were suspended in 2017 after disobeying former leader Kezia Dugdale’s instruction not to form a coalition with Conservative councillors.
He said: “I’m sorry I won’t have the opportunity to make our case for a new generation.
“I was lucky to have the support of a group of Aberdeen Labour councillors who nominated me but whose nominations were rejected. Scotland’s third city is being disenfranchised in our party, as it the whole of the north east.
“The exclusion of these councillors, who have served our party for decades, needs to end. It has dragged on and on in clear breach of party rules.
“I ask the rest of the deputy leadership candidates to make the restoration of Labour in Aberdeen a top priority.”
Mr Marra said a new generation of Labour leadership “has to happen” and called on the remaining candidates to make unity within the party a top priority, stating “we cannot afford any more division and neither can Scotland”.
He said: “I think that the party has seen 20 years of decline in Scotland and it’s time for a new generation to come forward and take up leadership positions.
“In Scotland we have failed to take clear positions on key issues, such as independence.
“Right now we’ve had a dismal decade of SNP misrule in Scotland. The focus on one issue has left many of our important services in crisis.
“We need to focus on some of the crises we can solve now and Labour can only do that with a new generation.”
The councillor believes there should be a focus on issues closer to home and discussed the importance of tackling Dundee’s drugs deaths problem, as well as reducing the stigma around addiction.
He said: “I deal with drug abuse not just as a councillor, but in my professional role as a forensics researcher at Dundee University.
“Growing up in Dundee, I’ve not just lost constituents to drugs but also friends and people I went to school with.
“We’ve had a massive rise in the number of drug deaths in Dundee, and when someone dies from an overdose we don’t just lose a drug addict, we lose a family member, a friend.
“We need to change the way we treat people in terms of addiction and reduce the stigma around it. There’s no reason why Dundee and Scotland should have higher drugs death statistics than anywhere else in the world.”
MSP Jackie Baillie and Glasgow councillor Matt Kerr have progressed to the next round of the deputy leadership contest after Pauline McNeill dropped out, citing an “acutely polarised” atmosphere. Mr Marra has not said who he is supporting.
