 One of the big electoral events of this year will be May's elections to Hollywood, the Scottish Parliament. That race was put into flux when on Thursday night, Labour's leader in Scotland and candidate to be First Minister Richard Leddard resigned. He explained his decision to BBC Scotland. My leadership was still the subject of speculation and we are about to fight one of the most important elections in the history of the devolution era. And so I think the distraction that speculation about my leadership was causing was harming Labour's chances of getting our message across in those important elections. And so I took the very difficult decision that the best thing that I could do for me and in the interests of the party was to step down. The Scottish Labour Party, like the whole of the Labour Party, is a broad church. It brings together different perspectives and views on the left. But we are at our best when we are pulling together. No party is well served by disunity, especially in the lead up to an election. And you know, one of the reasons why I've made the decision that now is the time for me to go is because I want to see a united party. Richard Leonard sounding very magnanimous there, but there have also been some more controversial reports that his resignation might have been at the best of Labour Party donors. To talk about this story, to talk about both angles, what's going on here. I'm delighted to be joined by Neil Findlay, who is a member of the Scottish Parliament, who backed Richard Leonard to become leader of Scottish Labour. Neil, thank you so much for joining us this evening. Can I get you by explaining your interpretation of what's happened? Richard Leonard there sort of saying he's willingly resigned, but also hinting the only reason he's resigned is because there was going to be speculation about him resigning. Is this a case of him deciding it's time to step down or was he pushed? Well, there's been a war of attrition against Richard Leonard's leadership from day one. And let me say, Richard Leonard made many, many, many mistakes. He made probably every mistake that Jeremy made and some. And the biggest mistake was trying to appease people who would never have been appeased because they were, they defeated, they were the self-entitled, they were the people who think that they have a God-given right to run the Labour Party. And we saw that at Westminster as well with the coups against Jeremy Corbyn. And we've seen it up here. They've been running a war of attrition against Richard's leadership since before he was elected. When it looked as though he was going to be elected, they started then. And they've never let up to the point where we're only a small group in Parliament. There's only 24 members, unlike the PLP, where you've got a couple of hundred members. But we couldn't go into a room of 24 people and have a private conversation without that conversation being leaked to the media before we had even left the room. So, and that went on and on and on and on. And every opportunity they had to undermine them, to attack them, to undermine anyone associated with them, they took that opportunity. And even some of them had employed a journalist who was a part-time worker for them. But also in his spare time, he wrote articles for Scottish newspapers, attacking the Labour Party, and yet he was employed by a Labour MSP. So this is the culmination of a three-year war of attrition. And I suppose some of them will be sitting back, like when the US forces got Saddam and saying, we got him. Do you sense that is the mood among many of your peers, many other MSPs who are now sort of delighted that they've got what they've wanted for a long time, which is for Richard Leonard to stand down. Well, there's good people in that group and people who are hugely respect. But there's a group of people who, frankly, their behaviour is absolutely appalling behaviour in any other workplace they would have been sacked a long time ago for treachery. You know, some of the stuff that they have done, if that was done in a workplace, it would be instant dismissal for what you did. But their behaviour has been extraordinarily awful. And by the way, some of them have a history of it going back 20 years. And if you went and asked any leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, they'll tell you the same people were behind the briefings and the speculation about them. So it's a lifelong crusade for some. And what's your analysis of what Scottish Labour can do? Because I don't want to sound harsh, but it seems almost a bit like a lost cause at the moment. It's difficult to see how the party north of the border is going to get its mojo back. I want to bring up very quickly just a forecast from Britain-Elec. So this is for the upcoming elections to Hollywood. They are projecting that the SNP will get 72 MSPs, which is nine more than in 2016. The Conservatives will get 24, which is seven less than in 2016. And Labour will be down to 19. And it looks from where many people are standing that, I mean, how do you rescue that? Especially when it seems that lots of traditional Labour voters do feel quite well represented by the SNP. What is the way back? I was listening to your previous conversation about how dreadful the Tory's handling of Covid is. And there's this impression, and it's quite a frustration amongst the Scottish left about how the English left views, the SNP and views Nicola Sturgeon. I mean, you really have to open your eyes to what has gone on in Scotland. The fact that she is a more capable communicator than Boris Johnson is not a high bar, I have to say. But she can communicate very well. She's a very capable politician. But Scotland's record on Covid is appalling. We've got almost, you know, the same levels of deaths as we have in England. We have a worse care home crisis than we have. Lots of the indicators are as bad if not worse than in England and Wales. So this idea that Scotland is somehow performing well in Covid is just does not bear up any out with reality. The issue for me and the issue that I have pleaded with the UK leaders, I've pleaded with Scottish leaders to address, is the biggest issue that dominates the entire political discourse in Scotland. And that is the constitution. And we do not have a credible constitutional position. And that is the fundamental problem that Labour has. I do not, I don't want to see Scotland going down the road of independence. I want us to have maximum devolution so that we work on the principle that we devolve all powers to Scotland unless there's an overwhelming reason not to devolve those powers. And let me give you a couple examples. Scotland has the worst drug deaths rate in the developed world. We have three times the rate of drug deaths than you have in England, which is an extraordinarily appalling situation. So why would we not devolve all powers over drugs to Scotland to address our problems here? So that to me is an obvious one. But let me take the example of, say, the border. Why would we on a tiny or a relatively small island nation create an internal border within that country? That to me does not make sense. That doesn't mean that you can have flexibility within the migration system, the immigration system, sorry. We can. But why would you devolve the border in a small island nation and border control and all of that? So these are just two examples. We could go through all the policy areas and I could make an argument for them either being devolved or UK held. And that's the position I believe we should be in. And we should be advocating that positively and vigorously. Instead of saying no to a referendum. If the people want a referendum, so be it, so be it. You cannot stop democracy. If that's what people want, we should be engaging positively in that. What do you see as the most likely next step for Scottish Labour? It seems to me there is probably the favourites to take over now are people who are towards the rise of the party who want to double down on a unionist strategy, which is obviously what Keir Starmer is doing from Westminster. So do you see that basically it's almost inevitable now that there's going to be a return to that fairly right wing basically version of Scottish Labour that we saw before Richard Lendl? Do you think there is a chance for sort of the left of the Scottish party to still make an attempt to get the leadership or at least have some influence in the party going forward? If they take a hard unionist position, then I think they're heading for the iceberg. Whoever leads the Labour Party will be the conductor of the orchestra on the Titanic, because I think that's a disastrous position. When I was in the Shadow Cabinet up here, and we were taking some advice from pollsters, they were telling us that we were, I think it was something like three or four times more likely to attract back working class voters who were yes voters in the referendum who had gone over from Labour to the S&P. We were four times more likely to get them back than we were people who had gone from the Labour Party to the Tory Party because of the independence issue. And yet those who I think will seek to lead the party believe that our future is more rosy if we will go after those Tory voters who have gone from Labour. I think that is lunacy and it's delusion.