SOCIALIST MSP Richard Leonard has announced he will stand down at next year’s Holyrood elections, but vowed: “I will not be standing down from the causes I believe in.”

Mr Leonard was elected to the Scottish Parliament on the Central Scotland list in 2016, after a journey that took him from aide to left-wing MEP Alex Falconer, to the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), and on to more than two decades as an industrial organiser at the GMB.

Just one year later he won the Scottish Labour Party leadership, taking it on a leftward shift until he was deposed by disgruntled party rightwingers in 2021. 

Announcing his decision, Mr Leonard said: “While I will be standing down from the Scottish Parliament, I will not be standing down from the causes I believe in and that I have spent my entire adult life fighting for.

“That drive for democracy, for international peace and disarmament, to end poverty and inequality, that burning flame of socialism.

“That is what I will continue to campaign for, for as long as I have got breath in my body.

“I remain convinced that we can and we will build a better, a more equal, a more democratic, a socialist society.”

Paying tribute, Keir Hardie Society and Red Paper Collective comrade, Pauline Bryan said: “Richard ensured that the Keir Hardie Society was more than just a historical society but a means of keeping Keir Hardie’s politics alive with it aim of ‘making socialists.’

“He and John Foster tracked the ownership of the Scottish economy and contributed to the Red Paper books, including the new 50th anniversary Red Paper on Scotland 2025 to be published next month.

“Hopefully his retirement from the Scottish Parliament will not be a retirement from political thinking and writing.”