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As a middle-aged man in a suit, Scotland’s Labour leader, ­Richard Leonard, struggles to stand out in the political arena.

The Tory leader here is a lesbian mother-to-be, his Labour predecessor is a reality star, and he is pitted against the first woman to lead the country.

Accomplished politicians with ­headline potential get noticed in a media-driven politics.

But Leonard has to his advantage a left-wing resurgence to secure a place in to the electorate’s psyche.

Thanks to Jeremy Corbyn and austerity fatigue, “socialism”, “principle” and “idealism”, are once more a championed lexicon of change.

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This is Leonard’s language, although he is “too long in the tooth to be a Corbynista” and he is not far left but a purveyor of “ethical socialism”.

We meet in the party’s Glasgow office where Leonard is wearing a red tie, sitting in a red chair, talking the Red Flag days of Labour before former PM Tony Blair replaced it with a reddish rose.

He is well versed in political history, refining key periods to specific days, conscious the past is integral to shaping the future.

To understand 56-year-old Leonard is also to look back and a starting point of a ­childhood in the 70s, the power cuts and strife of the three-day week and Tory prime minister Ted Heath pitted against the miners.

Raised in the Yorkshire market town of Malton, his Labour-supporting father Derek was a tailor in a clothing factory where he became manager.

When his son won a scholarship to Pocklington private school, it opened his eyes to society’s preordained status.

Leonard said: “It was an introduction to the class system.

“The kids from similar backgrounds hung out together. It helped form my world view.”

It could have paved the way to ­privilege, a rise through social ranks, but he wasn’t tempted.

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He said: “That was never what motivated me. I was never ­motivated by money.

“Even then, I had certain political awareness, a sense of what seemed unfair.”

After watching veteran Labour MP Tony Benn on TV, he bought the leftist grandee’s book, Arguments for Socialism, from the local Woolworths.

Years later, in 1988, when Leonard was working for the Mid Scotland and Fife MEP Alex Falconer, he drove Benn around Scotland on the campaign trail for his ill-fated Labour ­leadership campaign against Neil Kinnock.

Benn didn’t disappoint.

Leonard said: “He took me by surprise.

“There was this great guy, a font of wisdom with a whole life of political experience and he was asking me what I thought about things.

“He was very influential, he was ­charismatic, a fantastic orator and he could explain complex ideas in simple language.”

Eight years earlier, in 1980, Leonard took up the offer of a place at Stirling University largely because he wanted to venture, “a long way from home”.

His father lost his job the same year Margaret Thatcher had swept into power in 1979 as a wrecking ball, and set about ploughing through the mining and steel industry, manufacturing, ­shipbuilding and engineering.

His father and wife Janet were forced to uproot Leonard’s sister and move 400 miles south to Suffolk for work, leaving behind another daughter and elderly parents.

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Leonard said: “There was a feeling a lot was at stake at that time.

“For me, politics was no longer about theories or something I had read in a book by Tony Benn.

“My family was living the experience of the impact of Thatcherism. There was a lot of strife and emotional upheaval for families who went through that.

“It was a class issue. What she was doing was anti-working class, she was stripping the trade unions of power, abolishing local government, privatising our utilities. It was a very turbulent time.”

The turbulence was compounded by the rise of the National Front, and racism so fervent even a drunken Eric Clapton demanded from a stage in 1976 to “Keep Britain white”.

It lit a fire in Leonard and he joined the rallying cry against the pernicious rise of the right.

It was a time of outdoor Rock Against Racism concerts and anti-racist and anti-apartheid marches and Leonard still has the pin badges to show he was there.

After university, he was president of the Students’ Association, campaigning against cuts and the threat of student loans.

Nearby was the Polmaise colliery in Stirlingshire, one of the major flash points triggering the miners’ strike of 1984.

He joined marches and ­demonstrations in support of the pit men and the travelled to picket lines at Bilston Glen mine in Midlothian.

Leonard said: “It was solidarity support organised through the trade union movement.

“We got a sense then of the ­importance of that dispute but it is only with ­hindsight that the full enormity of it has been fully understood.

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"When the miners went back, it was sad but people who had been out for a year could hold their head high. Those who couldn’t had broken the strike.”

The Labour Party he joined were led by Michael Foot and were rooted in the left but he railed against the “bullying” Militant movement of the time.

After university, he had a five-year stint working for Falconer, a committed trade unionist and “peoples’ champion”.

With him, Leonard spent more time in Cowdenbeath High Street than the wine bars of Brussels and Falconer taught him the value of old fashioned, shoe-leather campaigning.

Leonard said: “The Labour Party’s job is to organise not just inside but outside parliament, to connect with ­communities, work with trade unions and be seen to be credible and relevant.”

So today he takes to the streets, shakes hands, knocks doors and he insists the welcome has been warm.

He said: “I think if people have got bad things to say about me, they confine themselves to social media.

“The people who come to me tend to have nice things to say but maybe that’s just my honeymoon period.”

He admitted reading negative social media, “a little bit”, but added: “It doesn’t get to me in the sense that I don’t set a lot of stall by it.”

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He added, laughing: “It tells me to go back to Yorkshire and things like that.”

He plays down any anti-English ­sentiment. After all, he is married to a Scot, Karen, who he met while she was working at the GMB, and they raised both children here.

He said: “She has always been supportive, which is hard. I am out a lot. I work a lot of weekends.”

He worked for the STUC under ­Campbell Christie and campaigned for the Scottish Parliament, to build a rampart against the Tories in the south.

But, he said: “The Scottish Parliament is not being used as fully as it was designed to be.

“It should be a bulwark against Tory policies but the SNP are stagnant and timid.”

After five years at the STUC, he moved to the GMB union as an organiser and found himself back in clothing factories, with memories of his father.

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He said: “It was poignant because I hadn’t been in clothing factories since my dad worked in them. There was the same noise, the same smells.”

He had campaigned for Blair to become Labour prime minister, desperate to oust the Tory ­government of John Major, but found himself “out of fashion” as New Labour redirected the party’s agenda and took us to war.

He was chair of Scottish Labour when he marched against the invasion of Iraq.

The party met in the days after the invasion, convening in Dundee on the Thursday night.

He said: “I turned on the TV on the Friday morning to see pictures of Baghdad being bombed and going up in flames. It was an awful time.

“I felt badly let down. I think it was decision which has cast a shadow over the Labour Party for quite some time but I think we are coming out of it.

“Ed Miliband’s apology was the start of the reparation.”

He grew tired of being on the ­sidelines after 25 years as a union ­organiser and stood for the Scottish Parliament in 2011.

He stood for the leadership after Kezia Dugdale’s surprise resignation, before her ­controversial stint on I’m a Celebrity.

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On November 18 last year, Leonard was announced as Scottish Labour leader, receiving 56.7 per cent of the vote.

He said: “I had to weigh up the ­direction of the party, act as a bridge to those estranged from the party, reforge alliance with unions and bring a track record and principled approach.”

He admits that First Minister’s ­Questions requires a certain skill and his performance is a “work in progress” but he has set out his stall.

His mission, he said, is to “fundamentally change” the economic system.

He supports public ownership, wants to reform the private rented sector and build council housing, get rid of zero-hour contracts and bring care back into local authority control.

In the meantime, the party have been dogged by allegations of racism and accusers say he has paid the issue little more than lip service.

But he insisted, he wants the ­disciplinary process streamlined to ensure racists can be ousted.

Each morning at 6am, he takes Copper, his “demanding” Hungarian vizsla, for a walk and clears his head.

He insists he sleeps through the night and doesn’t let the pressure take hold.

He said: “If I was waiting at a bus stop at 6am to go work in a factory for 10 hours, then I might get stressed.”

Before he goes to sleep, he follows Benn’s advice and writes a diary, to offload and find perspective.

He is confident a Labour victory in Scotland will eventually feature but that is certainly a blank page for now.