The dust is settling following the brutal ousting of hopeless Scottish Labour Leader Richard Leonard at the end of last week. Even as questions swirl around Leonard’s donor-engineered resignation, two leading candidates have emerged.

• Anas Sarwar (Constitution spokesman)
  • Blairite candidate. Multi-millionaire. Sends kids to private school. Runner up in the last leadership election. Despite attracting the most MSP nominations, Sarwar lost the membership vote to Richard Leonard by 9,516 to 12,469. Now the man who couldn’t beat the man who resigned for being too unpopular seeks to re-popularise his party…
  • Readers may remember Sarwar as the man who touched his microphone while pleading for others to not touch their microphones. He also once sent out an email saying “we should redistribute wealth from the many to the few”. Oops.
• Monica Lennon (Health and Sport Spokesperson)
  • Left-wing candidate. Abstained on independence referendum vote. Successfully campaigned for councils to be obligated to provide tax funded menstrual hygiene products. Close to Richard Leonard. Definitely the left of the SNP. Lennon suffers from ailurophobia, an irrational fear of cats.
  • Once said she would “like to go back to the 1960s.” No relation to John.

And there’s another name that keeps floating around…

• Gordon Brown (Former Prime Minister)
  • Dark horse. Some in Scottish Labour have been urging Brown to step up as the party’s only big beast left. He won’t. Though he has been stepping back into the fray with his new think tank “Our Scottish Future”, which has pointed out failures in the SNP’s coronavirus response. Not another Scottish Labour leader, yet perhaps he is gearing up to be a less partisan figure in the constitutional debate…