Ken Macintosh

At the 2016 election, Macintosh was pushed into third place behind Carlaw and the SNP's Stewart Maxwell. However, he was returned on Labour's regional list for West Scotland.

On 12 May 2016, Ken Macintosh was elected presiding officer with 71 votes on the third round of voting. He beat Murdo Fraser, Johann Lamont, John Scott and Elaine Smith. He suspended his Labour membership upon taking office, per the tradition that the Presiding Officer is strictly nonpartisan. In early November 2018 he created controversy when an MSP was sent out of Holyrood’s chamber for wearing a rainbow tie in support of LGBTI rights. Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Scottish Liberal Democrat, was told to change the garment by Macintosh because it flouted rules against “ostentatious campaign material”.

Following Scottish Labour's near wipeout at the 2015 General Election, Ken Macintosh decided to stand in the 2015 Scottish Labour Party leadership election, triggered by the resignation of Jim Murphy. Macintosh faced a straight two-way contest with previous deputy leader Kezia Dugdale, who won the leadership.

Despite lacking ministerial experience — "having never put a feather on the front bench" — he was widely seen as a frontrunner in the leadership contest; however, UK Labour leader Ed Miliband was unable to recall Ken Macintosh's name during a TV interview with BBC Scotland, during the September 2011 Labour Party Conference. After the interview, Miliband telephoned Macintosh to apologise for his mistake. Later, Macintosh tried to downplay the incident saying "I don't think anyone should read anything into it – half the time I can't even remember the names of my own kids."

At the 2011 parliamentary election he once again defeated Jackson Carlaw with an increased majority of 2,012. The swing was 8.7% from Conservative to Labour. Macintosh had feared losing the constituency following boundary changes (with the removal of Barrhead, Neilston and Uplawmoor) which gave a notional Conservative majority of almost 3,500. After the party's loss to the SNP, Macintosh was made Shadow Culture and External Affairs Secretary. Only a week later, however, he took over the Shadow Education portfolio after MSP Malcolm Chisholm resigned over an internal party disagreement.

Ken Macintosh launched his candidacy for leader of the Scottish Labour Party on 12 September 2011. MSP colleagues who endorsed his leadership bid included his campaign manager Michael McMahon, Claire Baker, Mary Fee, Neil Bibby, Mark Griffin, Kezia Dugdale and Jenny Marra. Macintosh was also supported by East Renfrewshire MP Jim Murphy, the co-author of the Review of the Labour Party in Scotland who went on to lead Scottish Labour. Murphy and Macintosh share the same constituency office in Clarkston, East Renfrewshire.

On 28 October 2011, Macintosh officially launched his leadership campaign at Cumbernauld College in North Lanarkshire. He described the 2011 Holyrood election result as a "disaster", and that the party had been too negative and if it did not change it "will consign ourselves to steady decline and years of opposition. We need to unite as a party and to start talking positively about our values, what Labour stands for and not just what we are against."

Macintosh considered running for the 2008 Scottish Labour leadership election but pulled out and instead backed Andy Kerr's candidacy.

Macintosh was re-elected as MSP for Eastwood at the 2007 election with a narrow majority of 913, where he fought off a strong challenge from the Conservative Party's Jackson Carlaw. Macintosh was appointed Shadow Minister for Schools and Skills.

In 2006 and 2007 Macintosh has proposed a Member's Bill to the Scottish Parliament providing for the tougher regulation of sunbed parlours, which passed successfully. Since his election in 1999 has been a member of the cross-party group on cancer. From February 2007 to April 2007, he was a Ministerial Parliamentary Aide to the First Minister Jack McConnell.

In 2005 Macintosh had to resign from his position as Deputy Convenor on the Standards Committee after it was revealed he had failed to declare £330 of hospitality from McDonald's within the required time.

In February 2002, Macintosh was appointed as a ministerial parliamentary aide (MPA) to Minister for Education and Young People, Cathy Jamieson. He resigned from this role in September 2002 when he voted against the Labour–Liberal Democrat Coalition Scottish Executive over the closure of the A&E department at the Glasgow Victoria Infirmary.

At the 1999 election, he won the Eastwood constituency with a majority of 2,125.

Macintosh was previously employed as a television producer for the BBC, working on its news broadcasts and election coverage between 1987 and 1999.

Before Macintosh became an MSP, he was from 1987 to 1999, a television producer for the BBC News Network. He also worked on Breakfast with Frost, Breakfast News, and the Nine O'Clock News. He was also worked as a researcher on election programmes for both David Dimbleby and Jonathan Dimbleby.

Born in Inverness, Macintosh was educated at the Portree and Oban primary schools before attending the state comprehensive Royal High School, Edinburgh. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an History MA (Hons) in 1984.

Kenneth Donald "Ken" Macintosh (born 15 January 1962) is the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament and an MSP for the West Scotland region. He was first elected in the 1999 Scottish Parliament election as a Scottish Labour Co-operative Party candidate, and retained his seat of Eastwood in the 2003, 2007 and the 2011 elections, but lost it in the 2016 election. In that election, he was returned on the regional list.