RICHARD Leonard was last night fighting to stay on as Scottish Labour chief after rebel MSPs attempted to stage a coup against him.
The embattled leader insisted he would lead his party into the Holyrood elections hours after what seemed a highly co-ordinated plot to force him to go.
He turned on rebel MSPs, threatening them with de-selection ahead of polling day next spring.
The day of high drama began when James Kelly, the party’s justice spokesman, resigned from his frontbench role as he called on Leonard to quit for the good of the party and to avoid “a catastrophic result” in the election.
His intervention came as parliamentary colleague Jenny Marra gave a newspaper interview also pleading with Leonard to step down.
A third Labour MSP, Daniel Johnson, then backed Kelly and Marra’s demands and said that he too believed it was time for Leonard to resign.
By the afternoon, a fourth Labour MSP, Mark Griffin, had joined the revolt, resigning from his frontbench role as social security spokesman in protest over Leonard’s leadership.
As the civil war intensified, Leonard turned on the rebels, threatening them with de-selection at the 2021 election.
“We want some new candidates coming through so that the Scottish Labour Party is represented by people who understand just what a privilege it is to be a Labour member of the Scottish Parliament,” he told STV’s Colin Mackay.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon hits back at Richard Leonard over green jobs fund
Pressed whether he thought the people who had spoken out against his leadership had forgotten this, he replied: “Well, I think perhaps they have.”
Mackay then asked what should happen to the rebels.
Leonard replied: “There is a selection process which the Labour Party undertakes. We are about to enter a selection process to see who is on our regional lists, and party members will have to make a decision about whether they want to return people who have got some faith in the party’s ability to win votes and win seats next year, or whether they want to see people returned who perhaps don’t share that view.”
Asked if that meant he didn’t want Kelly, Marra, or others back, he said: “That will be for the membership to decide and people will take a view about whether their decision to mount an internal war at this time is serving the best interests of the Labour Party, and serving the best interests of the people we are seeking to represent.”
Leonard went on to say he would fight against any prospective leadership challenge.
He said: “Yes I would, absolutely I would fight on. Because I believe that I do have the confidence and the faith and the support of members of the Scottish Labour Party across the country.”
Leonard allies turned on the rebels.
MSP Neil Findlay wrote on Twitter: “The same people who are demanding @LabourRichard resigns are the ones who told us that Better Together was a huge success story for Labour and that Jim Murphy was the salvation of the party – they have been repeatedly wrong and are wrong again – it’s treachery with a snarl.”
He added: “Anyone who believes all the plotting and front stabbing of @LabourRichard is about anything other than list selections placings is on cloud cuckoo land – it is the only thing that matters to the paranoid plotters – pathetic.”
The revolt came after poor election results for Labour at last year’s European Parliament election and the General Election, where the party won just a single seat in Scotland.
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