It has been a huge honour for me to serve you as your Councillor since 2017, but I now must resign.

As you may know, I stood in the July 2024 General Election in Edinburgh South West and was elected to serve that constituency. This means our Ward is now actually covered by two Scottish Labour MPs – myself and Ian Murray MP (now also the Secretary of State for Scotland).

Being elected as an MP has been truly humbling. Despite an awful inheritance, Labour is driving change.  An early step we have taken is to give an estimated 200,000 Scots a pay rise with changes we are making to the Living Wage. We have asked that setting the Living Wage takes into account the cost-of-living crisis, and that we end the nonsense of paying people less simply because of their age. The House of Commons Library tells me that this simple change could benefit over 6000 of the lowest paid workers in Edinburgh.

Whilst I absolutely love being your Councillor, I don’t feel I can continue to do this job to an acceptable standard whilst also being an MP.  I therefore submitted my resignation on the 9th of September 2024, and my last day will be the 16th (Monday).

My resignation will trigger a by-election, and myself and Ian Murray MP will join forces with Sarah Boyack MSP to do all we can to get a Labour Councillor elected here so we can all work together to stand up for the area.

We have a real chance of holding the seat. In 2022 I won with 33.4% of the first preference votes, with the Tories coming second with 29.9%. The SNP were third (17.2%), and the Lib-Dems came a distant fourth (12.4%). Of course, politics has changed since 2022, the recent general election saw Labour taking every SNP seat in Edinburgh, and the Tories come 3rd in Edinburgh South West (12.2%) and 4th in Edinburgh South (8.5%) – the SNP came second in both seats.

Once I stand down as your Councillor, I will no longer be able to accept casework from you in that capacity. Until the election result is known, however, both Ian Murray MP and I can help in our capacity as MPs – no issue is too small. You can check which of us is you MP here.

Many thanks for all your support and encouragement since 2017, and I look forward to speaking with you when the by-election campaign starts.

Note – PS – You can see my maiden speech in Parliament here.