Nominations close at 10am on Monday in the contest to succeed Anas Sarwar as leader of Scottish Labour, with two candidates confirmed on the ballot and a third still scrambling for the parliamentary support she needs to join them.
Michael Marra, the party's finance spokesperson and MSP for North East Scotland, and Joe Fagan, the former South Lanarkshire Council leader elected as an MSP for the South of Scotland in May, have both cleared the threshold. Monica Lennon, who lost her Central Scotland seat at the Holyrood election but has returned to Parliament by taking up the list place vacated by Lord Sarwar, has said she intends to stand but has yet to secure sufficient nominations.
Under the rules governing the contest, candidates must be nominated by at least three MSPs and three MPs, alongside affiliate organisations including a minimum of two trade unions. Reports on Sunday suggested Ms Lennon remained one MP short, with her campaign saying it was confident of closing the gap before the deadline. Should she fail, members will face a choice between two male candidates in a party whose only previous female leaders were appointed on an interim or short-lived basis.
The vacancy was created when Lord Sarwar stepped down last month after more than five years in a job he described as the hardest in British politics. He left Holyrood to take a seat in the House of Lords and a ministerial post in Andy Burnham's government, formed after Sir Keir Starmer announced his resignation in June. The timing — just over two months after Scottish Labour recorded its worst Holyrood result since devolution, returning 17 MSPs — has angered sections of the membership, with one party source describing the elevation as rewarding failure.
The candidates who make the ballot face a series of hustings before voting opens on 28 August. Members and affiliated supporters will have until 17 September to return their ballots, with the result declared on Saturday 19 September.
Mr Marra, widely regarded as the frontrunner, has been publicly backed by more than a dozen MPs and a substantial bloc of MSPs. He has argued the party must renew itself and rediscover its moral purpose, telling members the contest should identify whoever is best placed to unify the party and galvanise the wider movement.
"If we don't change, we'll be here again in five years. And how's that going to feel?"
Mr Fagan, who has been endorsed by GMB Scotland and Usdaw, has said Scottish Labour must "change more than the faces at the top" and get "squarely on the side of the working people of this country". Writing at the weekend, he sought to distance himself from the circumstances of Lord Sarwar's departure, saying: "I am not building the kind of career that ends in ermine. You will never see my name on a list for the House of Lords." He has also criticised the outgoing leadership's decision to abstain on the last two SNP budgets.
Ms Lennon, who has secured backing from Unison and Unite, told a hustings last week the defeat had left the party facing its "worst ever crisis" and that members faced a stark choice between continuing with "the old ways that lost election and talented MSPs" or choosing a leader with "the vision, courage and empathy to make it electable". She has separately alleged that the contest "reeks of misogyny and male entitlement", a claim rivals have dismissed as outrageous, with one MSP telling the New Statesman her difficulties reflected her own conduct rather than sexism.
At a Glasgow hustings, all three warned against factional briefing. Mr Marra said anyone who believed votes could be won that way was "dangerously deluded". Validated nomination lists are expected to be published by the party after the deadline passes.
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