Politician

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

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

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.

There is a circus around politics. But if you think it is a game, then you forget what the purpose of politics actually is.

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.

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.

I used to go to a Gaelic class on a Saturday morning, but I never felt myself that I could speak it properly.

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

I don't agree with the Tories on most things.

Our politics is about people not flags.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time as an activist and volunteer and was a teacher for 20 years.

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

The Scottish Labour Party should work as equal partners with the U.K. party, just as Scotland is an equal partner in the United Kingdom. Scotland has chosen home rule - not London rule.

The instinct of the Labour Party is if there's a problem, change the leader, then sit back, fold your arms and wait to be disappointed because they're sure it's not going to deliver.

I remember going to see Billy Graham in a cinema in Glasgow, and he was down in London. I used to go and hear preachers, and then we always went to church and Sunday school. That mattered a lot to me.

The idea that an independent Scotland - having separated assets and liabilities from the rest of the U.K. - would expect the rest of the U.K. to be a lender of last resort, and of course be kind to them, doesn't make any sense.

I'd always step up to the mark to serve the people of the country.

With the emergence of the Internet, it has become possible for creative and bold people with focus and determination to establish businesses in some of our remotest communities. But these will not work if they do not have reliable transport routes responding to the impatient modern customer.

We need to find a way of having a conversation across the parties on how you fund local government.

My granny would come out and stay with us in the winter, and we would listen to the reports from the coastal stations and have a discussion in the middle of Glasgow about what the weather was like in Tiree.