Johann Lamont
Johann Lamont
Johann MacDougall Lamontis a Scottish politician, who was leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2011 to 2014. She served as a junior minister in the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition Scottish Executive from 2004 until the coalition's defeat by the Scottish National Partyin 2007. She was subsequently elected deputy leader of the opposition Labour group of MSPs in 2008, and was elected to lead the Labour Party in December 2011. She announced her resignation in October 2014, and following a leadership...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth11 July 1957
As a youngster, I travelled every year across the sea to Tiree. On occasion, we ventured to Skye on the Kyleakin-Kyle of Lochalsh ferry, where there is now a bridge.
If you don't accept there is a problem, then it is hard to debate things.
That's a really healthy thing - family will always protect you from yourself.
The Labour Party in 2011 was in an exceptionally bad place. We'd been hammered in an election. We didn't see the scale of it coming.
I guess it feels to me that the political argument that has been lost in my lifetime is taxation. How do you engage in that debate when people don't trust politicians at all? It is almost impossible to start a conversation about taxation.
I made a different decision to send my children to the local state school.
In my mind, the CalMac ferry is linked with the joy of arrival, the sadness of departure, the loss of loved ones brought home by ferry to rest in island soil. It is friendships made and a working life begun.
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 often thought having a politician for a parent must be like having a constantly embarrassing uncle.
I didn't particularly want to go to Westminster - not that there were many seats available or chances for women to get elected. In 1987, Labour sent down 50 MPs, and only one of them was a woman.
The big issues, the things that scar Scotland - the least of them is whether we should have a border at Gretna Green or not.
There is a danger of Scottish politics being between two sets of dinosaurs... the Nationalists who can't accept they were rejected by the people, and some colleagues at Westminster who think nothing has changed.
Telling the truth, and confronting the challenge, is what politics is about.
Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause.