Leader hopeful Ken Macintosh says Scottish Labour has been 'too shouty'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-33861623

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Scottish Labour leadership contender Ken Macintosh said his party had been too "loud, shouty and angry".

He told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that to win back voters it needed to adopt a more positive attitude.

The MSP is fighting fellow parliamentarian Kezia Dugdale for the leadership of Scottish Labour.

Mr Macintosh also believed that despite the SNP's strong poll ratings, he could still be Scotland's first minister.

The Holyrood election takes place in May 2016.

The latest poll by TNS for The Herald suggested the nationalists had the backing of 62% of constituency voters against 20% for Labour.

Mr Macintosh, who has been an MSP in East Renfrewshire since 1999, said he did not want to focus on "blaming the SNP and the Tories" but instead wanted to talk about "what we can put right".

He admitted that during the SNP's eight years in government, his party had failed to "lay a glove on them".

The politician added that despite the SNP copying Labour's "policies and language" it had "failed to deliver" in power.

Mr Macintosh told the BBC: "I think we have been too loud, shouty and angry and I think that people think that we are more concerned about the Labour Party than we are about them - about their lives, about the lives of the people of Scotland.

"So, if every single time we take a policy of something going wrong in Scotland and we try to blame the SNP for it, then people just think we are too political, we are too partisan.

"What we should be doing is putting the issue first, putting the people first and people can work out for themselves whether the SNP are delivering or not."

He added: "It doesn't mean not being critical, but it means being far more positive, always saying what we would do differently, we would improve peoples' lives, building houses, offering opportunities, getting the economy working for them."

Mr Macintosh also said that he "didn't accept that he would not be first minister".

He explained that there was more volatility among the electorate and that he was "depressed" at the number of people who had "given up the ghost" since Scottish Labour lost 40 of its 41 Westminster seats to the SNP in May this year.

The Scottish Labour Party will announce who has won the leadership contest at a gathering in Stirling on Saturday morning.