Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont has resigned with immediate effect after accusing the UK party of treating Scotland like a "branch office". The 56-year-old MSP indicated that she had "had enough". Ms Lamont was also angry that key decisions, including the removal of Scottish Labour general secretary Ian Price, were made without her input. MP Anas Sarwar has become interim leader of the party north of the border while a successor is being chosen. In a statement, he thanked Ms Lamont and said he and his colleagues would continue to hold both the government at Holyrood and the government at Westminster to account. Labour has 41 MPs in Scotland who will fight for their Westminster seats at next May's General Election. The party also has 38 MSPs in Edinburgh's Holyrood parliament and they will seek re-election in 2016. Former Scottish Labour first ministers, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, spoke to the BBC about the big problems that now faced their party. Lord McConnell said he was "very, very angry" and insisted that the UK leadership had serious questions to answer. Mr McLeish said Scottish Labour was facing a crisis following a decade of decline. In an interview with the Daily Record, Ms Lamont described some Labour MPs as "dinosaurs" who failed to recognise that "Scotland has changed forever" after September's referendum. She told the newspaper: "Scotland has chosen to remain in partnership with our neighbours in the UK. But Scotland is distinct and colleagues must recognise that. "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." Ms Lamont, who became leader in December 2011, went on: "Party members up and down the country, voters on the doors, have spoken to me about the change they want. And that's a Scottish Labour Party which reflects their views. That's what I have been trying to build. "However, some wanted me to become the issue. The Scottish Labour Party and its renewal are more important than me. That's why I am standing down - so that debate our country demands can take place." In her resignation letter to Jamie Glackin, chair of the Scottish Labour Party, she said: "In order that we can have the real discussion about how we take Scottish Labour forward, I believe it would be best if I took myself out of the equation and stepped down as leader." Mr McLeish, who was Labour first minister between 2000 and 2001, told the BBC that the resignation was evidence of his party in crisis. Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, he said: "This crisis in Labour didn't happen yesterday - this has been a decade now of decline. "We've seen that they [Labour] have failed to match the other parties in terms of devolution commission reports and of course we have had this suffocating control of Westminster during this period. And this leads to the need for a very different modern Labour Party as we go ahead." Lord McConnell, who was leader of Scottish Labour between from 2001 to 2007, echoed Mr McLeish's words adding that Mr Miliband had questions to answer. He told BBC Radio Scotland: "She [Ms Lamont] clearly blames today publicly Ed Miliband and those around him and that's a very serious accusation that requires answers, and it requires answers not just from him but from those closest to him. "I have had my concerns for some time about the way in which the Scottish Labour Party was struggling to set out a vision for the 21st century and a positive vision that would take us from opposition back into power." Ms Lamont had wanted more autonomy for the party in Scotland and significant new powers for the Scottish Parliament. But she felt both of those objectives were being thwarted by some of her Westminster colleagues, and accused them of putting their own interests ahead of those of Scotland. Ms Lamont's Daily Record interview said: "Any leader whose general secretary can be removed by London without any consultation is in an untenable position. That has to change." The timetable for choosing a new leader will be set out soon. In the meantime Mr Sarwar is in charge and an MSP will be chosen to stand in for Ms Lamont at Holyrood. Former teacher Whoever replaces her will become Scottish Labour's seventh leader since the Scottish Parliament was established 15 years ago. Ms Lamont, a former English teacher who joined the Labour Party as a teenager, has represented the Glasgow Pollok constituency at Holyrood since 1999. She took over as the party's Scottish leader in the aftermath of the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, when Labour suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the SNP. In the weeks after the independence referendum, she said she wanted to lead Labour to victory in the next Holyrood election in 2016 and become first minister.

• published: 25 Oct 2014
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