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 or the Paralympic Games.

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

I will not promise what I cannot deliver. And I will never hide the cost of what I propose.

I’ve taught fifth-year Christmas leavers last thing on a Friday afternoon. Basically, if you can face that you can face anything.

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.

It’s true across the U.K. that those who had least to do with causing the economic crisis are carrying the heaviest burden. That’s unacceptable.

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

Schools are not exam factories for the rat race.

Maybe I was just born to argue with men.

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

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

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

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

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 not the politics.

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

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

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 failings drive me – drive my overwhelming desire to fight...

We must listen and learn, show humility and seek again to talk for and to people’s ambitions and concerns.

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

We shall seek debate without division or rancour.

We will renew our party, to rebuild our land – and we will do it by being a better Labour, real Labour, Scottish Labour.

Our task is a great one, not just because of how far we have fallen. Our task is a great one because of the challenges facing the people we seek to serve.

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 the two.

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.

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

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.

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.