23AUG

Lennon is off the Scottish Labour ballot

3 min read

19:09UTC

Michael Marra and Joe Fagan will go to Scottish Labour's members on 28 August. Monica Lennon fell short of the parliamentary nominations and is off the paper.

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PoliticsAssessed

Key takeaway

Scottish Labour members will choose between two men, after a nomination rule removed the third candidate.

Scottish Labour's leadership field closed to two candidates on Monday 17 August. Michael Marra and Joe Fagan reached the members' ballot and Monica Lennon did not, having fallen short of the parliamentary nominations the party requires, according to Holyrood magazine and LabourList⁠¹⁠².

Scottish Labour published the nomination return⁠⁴. Marra took 24 MP nominations and 7 from MSPs, Fagan 7 and 5, and Lennon 2 and 3, against a threshold of three of each, so she cleared the MSP bar exactly and finished one MP short. Marra sits for North East Scotland as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP); Fagan is the MSP for South Scotland and previously led South Lanarkshire Council. Members vote from Friday 28 August to Thursday 17 September, with the result on Saturday 19 September⁠³.

The two parliamentary limbs of the threshold do not bite equally. Backing from the party's MSPs at Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, can be worked for face to face over a fortnight. Backing from Scottish Labour's members of Parliament (MPs) at Westminster has to come from a body nobody in Edinburgh manages, and Marra's 24 nominations left little of it uncommitted. Scottish Labour holds dozens of Westminster seats, so the bind was not scarcity but concentration: once the front-runner had banked that many, a third candidate had no realistic pool to draw three from.

All three candidates declared on Sunday 2 August, the day Lennon called the party a "private members' club" and said the contest "reeks of misogyny and male entitlement". Nominations opened the following day. Fifteen days after those declarations she was off the paper, and the two names going to the membership are both men.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Most UK parties require would-be leadership candidates to collect nominations from sitting politicians before members ever get a ballot paper, a step meant to weed out candidates with no realistic base of support. Scottish Labour's version requires three sitting MSPs, members of the Scottish Parliament, and three MPs, members of the UK Parliament at Westminster, plus backing from party-affiliated organisations. The party's published return shows Michael Marra took 24 MP nominations and Joe Fagan 7, while Monica Lennon matched the MSP bar exactly with 3 but managed only 2 of the 3 MPs she needed, so she never reached the stage where ordinary party members would have had a say. Marra and Fagan will now go to a members' ballot running from 28 August to 17 September, with the winner announced on 19 September.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Scottish Labour's published nomination return shows the mechanism at work rather than only implied by it. Lennon secured exactly 3 MSP nominations, meeting that half of the threshold, but only 2 of the 3 MPs she needed, while Marra took 24 MPs and Fagan 7.

Scottish Labour holds dozens of Westminster seats, so a shortage of MPs to ask was not the constraint. The contest turned on how concentrated their support already was: Marra's 24 MPs left barely any pool for Lennon to draw a third from, so the threshold's practical effect depended on how early and how heavily one candidate had locked down parliamentary backing, not on the size of the party's Westminster group.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Marra's 24-7-2 lead among MPs means Westminster support had already consolidated behind one candidate before nominations closed, well before members get any say.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: UK Labour's own leadership rules use a parliamentary nomination threshold for a similar reason, and it has bitten hard before. Jeremy Corbyn scraped onto the 2015 ballot only because several MPs who did not support him lent their nominations to widen the field, an admission that the threshold could otherwise have excluded a candidate with genuine grassroots support.

Counter-parallel: Not every party gatekeeps this way. Several smaller UK parties select leaders through a member-only ballot with no requirement for a fixed number of parliamentarians to nominate first. Labour's approach, at UK level and in Scotland, is a design choice rather than a universal feature of party democracy.

Consensus view: Parliamentary nomination thresholds in leadership contests exist to filter for a candidate who can command confidence among sitting parliamentarians, not popularity with members alone.

Scottish Labour's rule, requiring three MPs and three MSPs, applies that logic across both parliaments a Scottish Labour leader must work with. The party's published nomination return shows exactly how that filter worked: Marra took 24 of the party's MPs, Fagan 7, and Lennon just 2, against a threshold of 3.

Counter-view: Requiring MP backing for what is fundamentally a Holyrood role imports a Westminster veto into a devolved contest. Lennon matched the Holyrood side of the threshold exactly, with 3 MSP nominations, and was stopped only at Westminster, where MPs had already concentrated almost unanimously behind Marra.

Key tension: Whether a rule that let 24 of Scottish Labour's MPs settle who Holyrood does not get to vote on is a safeguard, or a veto one Parliament holds over the other.

Sources:Scottish Labour·LabourList·Scottish Labour

Mentions:Michael Marra →Joe Fagan →Monica Lennon →Scottish Labour →Parliament →LabourList →Holyrood →Jeremy Corbyn →Westminster →Scotland →South Lanarkshire Council →Labour Party →Scottish Parliament →

First Reported In

Update #16 · Reform loses three wards, wins Clacton

Scottish Labour· 23 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Three run for Scottish Labour leader

Marra, Fagan and Lennon's 2 August declarations opened the contest that the 17 August nomination deadline settled.

Occurred 2 Aug 2026

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Lennon accuses her party of misogyny

Lennon's 2 August complaint about the nomination process preceded her own failure to clear its threshold.

Occurred 2 Aug 2026

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Scottish Labour opens a contest Sarwar left early

Nominations opening on 3 August began the window that closed on 17 August with two candidates through.

Occurred 3 Aug 2026

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This Event

Lennon is off the Scottish Labour ballot

Scottish Labour's next leader will take office having beaten one opponent, in a field settled before any member voted.

Led to

Marra's MSPs vote for right to decide

The two-candidate ballot set in August produced Marra's win on 19 September.

Occurred 22 Sept 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Rhun ap Iorwerth / Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru)

Ap Iorwerth presented six priorities to the Senedd on 22 September without numeric targets or a named partner party, promising to work across the chamber where there is common ground. He says his government will be judged on results.

Michael Marra / Scottish Labour

Marra won the leadership on 19 September, and three days later his 17 MSPs backed Swinney's right-to-decide motion once their child-poverty amendment was written in. He says Scottish Labour's task is to tell voters what it stands for.

Andy Burnham / Labour Party

Burnham told conference in Liverpool on 29 September that Labour's next manifesto will commit to changing the electoral system, and invited every party into a National Commission on Electoral Reform. He has not named a replacement system, and no chair or remit has been published.

Conservative Party (frontbench peers and Kemi Badenoch)

Conservative frontbench peers argued against retrospective rules at the Lords Second Reading on 14 September, a position that protects gifts made before any cap. Kemi Badenoch rejected Burnham's electoral reform commission on 2 October, accusing him of using it to entrench the left.

Reform UK

Reform denied wrongdoing after the Channel 4 News programme, called the sting a hoax by climate activists and said it would cooperate with the Metropolitan Police. In the same month it announced £36m gifts from Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

Steff Aquarone / Liberal Democrats (North Norfolk)

Aquarone told Rayner in the Commons on 7 September that North Norfolk District Council had spent money preparing for a reorganisation the Government has now withdrawn. He puts the cost of the cancelled merger on districts in the four areas.