Kezia Dugdale

Kezia Alexandra Ross Dugdale (born 28 August 1981) is a Scottish former politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2015 to 2017.

Dugdale was born in Aberdeen on 28 August 1981.

She attended secondary school at Harris Academy in Dundee, where she was Head Girl.

She studied law at the University of Aberdeen from 1999 until 2003, and completed a master's degree in policy studies from 2004 until 2006 at the University of Edinburgh.

Whilst attending university, she worked as campaigns and welfare adviser for Edinburgh University Students' Association and as public affairs officer at the National Union of Students Scotland.

Dugdale sat on Scottish Labour's Policy Forum from 2006 until 2008, as well as serving as an election agent to both Sarah Boyack MSP and Sheila Gilmore MP.

She had also volunteered as a researcher in the parliamentary office of Pauline McNeill MSP.

She worked from 2007 to 2011 for the Labour Lothian regional MSP George Foulkes, by then also a Labour life peer, as his parliamentary office manager and political adviser.

A former member of the Scottish Labour Party and Co-operative Party, she was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region from 2011 to 2019.

Born in Aberdeen and raised in Dundee, Dugdale studied law at the University of Aberdeen and Policy Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she was a campaigns and welfare adviser.

After leaving university, she worked as an election agent, political researcher and parliamentary officer.

She was elected at the 2011 Scottish Parliament election on the Lothian regional list and became Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in 2014.

In the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Dugdale was elected to the Scottish Parliament as Scottish Labour's second candidate on their list for the Lothian region.

She served as a Scottish Labour and Co-operative Party member and sat on the Local Government and Regeneration and Subordinate Legislation Committees.

Dugdale was appointed as Scottish Labour's Spokesperson for Education and Lifelong Learning on 29 June 2013.

Dugdale won the 2014 Scottish Labour deputy leadership election, succeeding Anas Sarwar, and defeating Katy Clark.

As Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy did not have a seat in the Scottish Parliament, she stood in for him at First Minister's Questions.

Dugdale was elected Leader of the Scottish Labour Party in the 2015 Scottish Labour leadership election.

On 13 June 2015, she resigned from the deputy leadership in order to contest the 2015 Scottish Labour leadership election.

She was succeeded by Alex Rowley after the leadership election.

During the 2015 leadership election campaign, Dugdale said she would want to end the charitable status of private schools in Scotland which gives them tax breaks, a policy in her opinion unfair to state schools.

In a July 2015 televised leadership debate, she said it was wrong the vast majority of the 232 Labour MPs abstained on the Conservative government's Welfare Reform and Work Bill in a second reading vote in the House of Commons.

Following the resignation of Lord John Sewel on 28 July 2015, she said the House of Lords should no longer be an unelected chamber and should be moved to Glasgow.

She won the leadership on 15 August, defeating Ken Macintosh.

During an August 2015 interview with The Guardian, Dugdale refused to publicly say who out of the four candidates in the UK Labour Party leadership election she supported, but did express serious doubts as to whether Jeremy Corbyn could ever become Prime Minister.

After Corbyn had been elected as Leader of the Labour Party on 13 September, she revealed for the first time, on BBC Question Time on 30 October, she had voted for Yvette Cooper.

She led the party into the 2016 Scottish Parliament election; where it finished third behind the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scottish Conservatives; Dugdale failed to be elected to the Edinburgh Eastern constituency, once again being elected on the Lothian regional list.

Dugdale led Scottish Labour into the 2016 Scottish Parliament election.

Dugdale wanted to re-affirm Scottish Labour's core beliefs and convey to the electorate what the party stood for.

She focused her campaign on a proposal to increase income tax to tackle underfunding of services by the Scottish National Party government, particularly in education.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Conservatives' ambitions were to oppose Scottish independence and push Ruth Davidson as an effective leader opposed to the SNP's governmental agenda.

The results put Scottish Labour behind both the SNP and Scottish Conservatives, with the party falling into third place from second.

The party made a net loss of 12 constituency seats, gaining only one and holding another two, but retained 21 of its 22 regional seats which assign additional members to address imbalance in constituency results.

Dugdale was once again returned as an additional member for the Lothian region, having failed to win the Edinburgh Eastern constituency from the SNP by 5,087 votes.

On 29 June 2016, Dugdale called for Jeremy Corbyn to resign from his position as Leader of the Labour Party, after 174-to-40 Labour MPs voted no-confidence in his leadership.

She said when 80% of his own MPs no longer supported him, Corbyn could not properly function as Labour leader or Leader of the Opposition in parliament, nor could he form a potential alternative government.

During the 2017 general election, the party held their previously sole seat and gained a further six seats from the SNP.

She resigned as leader in August 2017 to "pass on the baton" to a successor who would lead the party into the 2021 Scottish Parliament election.

After leaving frontbench politics, Dugdale worked as a columnist and appeared as a contestant on the seventeenth series of ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in November 2017.

She later resigned her seat and Scottish Labour membership in July 2019 and accepted the role of director of the John Smith Centre for Public Service at the University of Glasgow.