What I will say will not always please you, but what I say will always be honest and true and how I genuinely see it..

The government don't want to talk about the consequences of the choices they make. They pretend there aren't any consequences..

Scotland cannot be the only 'something for nothing' country in the world..

My working life has always been wrapped up in doing my job to the best of my abilities and doing the best for my family. It is not a contest between ….

Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause..

I'm pretty proud of having completed a marathon myself, so I can only imagine the pride that real athletes feel when they are picked for the Olympic ….

We shall seek debate without division or rancour..

I got a very strong sense from my mother, in particular, that we are all equal in the sight of God..

Telling the truth, and confronting the challenge, is what politics is about..

We do students a great disservice by implying that one set of students is more important than another..

Separation and devolution are two completely different concepts which cannot be mixed together. One is not a stop on the way to the other..

Scotland is my country, the nation that shaped me, that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me, a community whose f….

I've got a very deep and abiding passion about education being far more than buildings and textbooks; it's what children bring into school with them..

The Scottish Labour Party, while I have breath in my body, will listen to the views of trade unionists..

The test is can you do something, rather than have a theoretical argument - can you make a difference?.

If I have learned one thing in life, it is never to take any man's own estimate of himself. He could very well be mistaken..

My Scottish Labour Party is a crusade - to fight poverty, inequality and injustice..

I love hard political debate and I love beating somebody on a political point but what I'm more frustrated by is the politics where you play the man ….

While I'm leader, nothing will be off limits - there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed..

My biggest ambition is to bring together what happens in the real world with what politicians talk about..

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race..