SCOTTISH Labour are taking applications for candidates in the 2026 Holyrood elections.
With Anas Sarwar locking one eye on Bute House and the other on his London bosses to make sure they don’t mess things up for him too much, the party are looking for plenty of new bums to put in seats in the Scottish Parliament.
Off the back of the announcement, we’ve drawn up what is hopefully a helpful guide to getting yourself selected as a Scottish Labour candidate.
Be related to Sue Gray
It will really help your application if you are related to Sue Gray. If you don’t think you are, check. You might be.
If you’re not lucky enough to be related to Sue Gray (below), who got her son into the House of Commons earlier this year, have you considered being related to Chancellor Rachel Reeves?
It may also help if you are engaged to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, or a member of the Kinnock family, the Benns, the McFaddens, the Falconers, Goulds, the list goes on really. Your local library should help you draw up a family tree.
Be mobile
The ideal Labour candidate will be like Robert De Niro’s character in Heat: “Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.”
It doesn’t matter that you’ve lived your whole life in Inverness, when that Glasgow Anniesland constituency comes calling, you better believe you’re taking back Donald Dewar’s turf for Labour.
Maybe you’re coming from further afield; say, London to Kirkaldy.
Here Melanie Ward sets a fine example: First, you make a half-hearted run at a nearby seat a few years earlier, then when you lose out on the seat when you actually want in London to Sue Gray’s son, swoop in when the candidate in Scottish seat you’ll settle for gets the bag for racist tweets. Bada bing bada boom.
Do not have a mind of your own
Do not, and this really cannot be stressed enough, have a mind of your own. Rookies attempting to get selected for the Labour Party with a mind of their own will be dead in the water, instantly.
Maybe once you’ve got a seat you can have a go at critical thinking or having principles again, but consider the examples made of John McDonnell or Zarah Sultana. This too can prove fatal.
Better to leave your values at the door. Scotland Office minister Kirsty McNeill (above) provides us with our example here.
Before the election, she worked as the head of advocacy at Save the Children. After, she was voting to keep the two-child benefit cap. Intellect, beliefs and principles: These are the three evils you must defeat to thrive in the Labour Party.
Take any freebie you can get
More of a good luck charm than anything else. We handle our data responsibly here, but it certainly seems there is a strong correlation between hoovering up as much free stuff as is humanly possible and getting elected as a Labour politician.
You can literally live like a Franciscan monk during the campaign and still live the high life.
If the example of MPs down south is anything to go by, you can expect trips to the football and Israel if either of those take your fancy. If you’re really lucky, a philanthropic billionaire friend might also want to buy you glasses or dresses for your wife, for some reason.
So there you have it. With those four guiding principles, you should be well on your way to sitting in the Holyrood chamber on the branch office benches.
