Richard Leonard, a former union staffer, is strong favourite to beat centrist Anas Sarwar when result is announced

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Scottish Labour is expected to elect a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader, further cementing Corbyn’s grip on the party.

Bookmakers have made Richard Leonard, a former GMB union political officer, the firm favourite to succeed Kezia Dugdale after a fractious contest that has pitted the left against Labour’s centrist parliamentary group.

An outsider first elected to Holyrood in 2016, Leonard has had strong union backing in his battle with Anas Sarwar, a former Scottish Labour deputy leader. Initially the favourite, Sarwar has been dogged by criticism over his multimillion-pound shareholding in the family retail business and for sending his children to a private school.

Campaign sources believe the result, due to be declared at 11am on Saturday in Glasgow, will be far closer than the odds being offered by Ladbrokes, which on Friday put Leonard in at 1/16 to win against 7/1 for Sarwar.

Sarwar’s team believe he may score a narrow victory among the party’s 25,000 full members, a majority of whom backed Owen Smith’s challenge to Jeremy Corbyn last year.

Leonard’s supporters disagree. They believe the Corbyn surge has converted thousands of party members who previously backed centrist candidates such as Jim Murphy into supporting Leonard.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anas Sarwar’s campaign has suffered from criticism of his decision to educate his children privately. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Both camps agree Leonard is expected to take the lion’s share of 10,000 affiliate membership votes after a concerted registration and voting drive by the Unite union.

Leonard’s immediate challenge will be to reunite the Scottish party, support for which sat at about 25% in recent polls, particularly at Holyrood. There were a series of bruising factional disputes in the contest, underpinned by the battle for influence between Corbyn’s grouping and the party’s centrist groups.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, plans to exploit Labour’s drift to the left to build support among blue collar voters, many of whom switched from Labour to the Tories in the June general election because of her staunchly pro-UK stance.

Davidson will tell the Scottish Tories’ autumn conference, also taking place on Saturday, that Labour is too divided to be credible. It has had nine leaders over the past 18 years. “It doesn’t matter who the captain is, the ship is holed below the waterline. And so it doesn’t matter who takes over today, Labour is marooned on the rocks,” she will say.

Leonard will also have to deal with a crisis over the Scottish party’s deputy leader and former interim leader, Alex Rowley, who was suspended on Wednesday after a former partner made allegations of abusive behaviour.

Rowley strenuously denies the claims. However, Labour disclosed on Thursday that he had not told them he had been in contact with police about the allegations on 10 October. That spurred claims Labour had failed to act on the harassment accusations, despite inquiries by several newspapers.

Rowley’s unpopularity among Sarwar’s supporters deepened after he openly backed Leonard’s candidacy while holding the officially neutral role as interim leader. His daughter Danielle Rowley, a new Labour MP, chaired Leonard’s campaign.

Sarwar and Leonard made firm commitments to increasing gender balance in the party’s leadership team, adding to pressure for a deputy leadership contest. Some suggest Rowley may step down voluntarily in the new year.

Female activists in Scottish Labour, faced with the prospect of another all-male leadership team, have called for a gender balance in the two posts. Sarwar has suggested having two deputies, with at least one of those posts filled by a woman.