Iain Gray

Gray was educated at the state comprehensive Inverness Royal Academy and briefly privately at George Watson's College, Edinburgh.[2] He studied physics at the University of Edinburgh before training as a teacher at Moray House College of Education.[2][3] After graduation, he worked as a mathematics and physics teacher at Gracemount High School in Edinburgh before a teaching stint in Mozambique.[4] He then spent twelve years as the campaigns director for the Scottish arm of the aid charity Oxfam.

Gray as a government minister

Having previously stood as a candidate in Lothian Regional Council elections, Gray was first elected to the devolved Scottish Parliament at the 1999 Scottish Parliament election.[5] Immediately after his election to Holyrood, he was made a deputy minister in the first Scottish Executive under Donald Dewar.

Following Jack McConnell becoming First Minister in 2001, Gray was promoted to Minister for Social Justice. After the sudden resignation of Wendy Alexander (following disagreements with McConnell) in 2002,[6] Gray took over her role as Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning, where he was responsible for overseeing changes to Scottish higher education.

At the 2003 Scottish Parliament election, Gray was defeated by Scottish Conservative leader David McLetchie, who he had stood against in 1999. Leaving Holyrood, he went to work in London as a special adviser to Alistair Darling, who was Under-Secretary of State at the Scotland Office, and initially announced that he would not be seeking re-election.[7]

Having subsequently a change of mind, he was selected as the official Labour candidate for East Lothian for the 2007 election and subsequently won. Gray was appointed as Scottish Labour's Shadow spokesman for enterprise, energy and tourism upon his return to Holyrood.

Following the resignation of Wendy Alexander over a foreign donation scandal,[8] Gray announced in July 2008 that he would stand in the contest to find the next Leader of the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament, and was elected to this post in September 2008.[9]

In December 2010, Iain Gray sparked a diplomatic row when he appeared to claim in parliament that Montenegro had been involved in ethnic cleansing and war crimes during the 1990s Balkans Conflict.[10]

On 7 April 2011, whilst campaigning at Glasgow Central station for the Scottish Parliament election, Gray was forced to cancel an event due to disruption by a group protesting against public spending cuts.[11] He quickly left the station and ran into a nearby Subway outlet to escape the protesters, who followed him into the shop and continued to heckle him.[11] Gray later stated that he had not been unsettled by the incident as "I spent two years working in the civil war in Mozambique, I've been to Rwanda two months after the genocide, I walked the killing fields in Cambodia and I was in Chile three days after Pinochet was demitted from office".[12]

At the 2011 election, Labour suffered a net loss of seven seats, with many of their leading figures being defeated. Labour took a particularly severe beating in its Central Belt heartland, having to rely on regional lists in many cases. It was Labour's worst electoral performance in Scotland in eighty years. Gray himself was re-elected as MSP for East Lothian by the narrowest margin of his political career; with just 151 votes over the SNP candidate, making the Holyrood seat for the first time ever a Labour–SNP marginal. He announced on 6 May that he would stand down as party leader in the autumn.

Official parliamentary portrait, 2011

Gray was reappointed to the post of Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Finance in the Scottish Labour Shadow Cabinet on 29 June 2013. After the 2014 leadership election, he was made Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.

On 13 June 2015, Gray was appointed Acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party whilst a leadership and a deputy leadership election were simultaneously held, on account of deputy leader Kezia Dugdale resigning to run for the leadership.[13] At the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, while several Labour MSPs lost their seats, Gray retained his seat with an increased majority compared to 2011.

Gray nominated Anas Sarwar in the 2021 Scottish Labour leadership election.[14]

Gray has been married twice.[15] His first wife, Linda Malloch, divorced him and later married Gray's long-time friend Kevin Dunion, the Scottish Information Commissioner.[16] Gray married his second wife Gill (a part-time constituency secretary to Labour MSP Mary Mulligan) in 1997, with whom he has two step-daughters.[17] He is a lifelong fan of Edinburgh football club Hibernian,[18] and enjoys reading, music and hill walking. He is a member of the Church of Scotland.[19]

• Iain Gray biography at the Scottish Parliament website
• Scottish Government biography
• Gray becomes Scots Labour leader BBC News
• Labour frontline team announced BBC News