{"id":489327,"date":"2026-03-22T13:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T13:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/489327\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T13:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T13:31:15","slug":"outgoing-msps-leave-holyrood-with-relief-regret-and-unfinished-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/489327\/","title":{"rendered":"Outgoing MSPs leave Holyrood with relief, regret and unfinished business"},"content":{"rendered":"

MSPs like Pam Duncan-Glancy<\/a>, Colin Smyth, Foysol Choudhury<\/a> and John Mason<\/a> have had their party whip removed and won’t return to Holyrood. <\/p>\n

Others are leaving for health reasons, like the SNP’s Ruth Maguire<\/a>, who is living with cancer.<\/p>\n

Two former party leaders are standing down. <\/p>\n

Richard Leonard<\/a>, who led Scottish Labour between 2017 and 2021, will continue to campaign for a “more democratic, more equal, socialist society” from outside parliament.<\/p>\n

Douglas Ross<\/a>, who resigned as Conservative leader during the last Westminster election campaign, is seeking a return to the House of Commons. <\/p>\n

He has enjoyed ruffling feathers during his time at Holyrood.<\/p>\n

“Part of the role of an opposition politician is not to make it easy for the government.”<\/p>\n

The Highlands and Islands MSP has spent 18 months as convener of Holyrood’s education committee, where he led scrutiny of Dundee University’s financial woes.<\/p>\n

“I completely understand and accept that my style is not universally popular, but I think it has shown some people that you can have committees that are robust and agile to emerging issues. <\/p>\n

“I think our committees here need to up their game a bit.”<\/p>\n

Scottish Parliament Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone has also confirmed that she is among the third of MSPs who will not run for another term.<\/p>\n

Many more could be voted out by the electorate on 7 May. <\/p>\n

But Johnstone remains in office until her successor is elected and will be in the chair as the new cohort of MSPs are sworn in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MSPs like Pam Duncan-Glancy, Colin Smyth, Foysol Choudhury and John Mason have had their party whip removed and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-489327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}