Two Labour MSPs who are considered rising stars in the party have become the latest to rule themselves out of the running to replace Johann Lamont as leader.
Jenny Marra and Kezia Dugdale have confirmed that they will not be standing in the leadership election sparked by Ms Lamont’s resignation on Friday.
Deputy leader Anas Sarwar, who has taken the helm in the interim, has removed himself from the race.
Jackie Baillie MSP, the party’s welfare spokeswoman at Holyrood, has also confirmed she will not be a candidate.
Meanwhile, former Labour home secretary David Blunkett has dismissed suggestions that former prime minister Gordon Brown would want the job.
Ms Marra scored a recent party success when her human trafficking Member’s Bill was adopted by the Scottish Government, while Ms Dugdale made an articulate defence of the Union during the referendum campaign.
Possible remaining contenders include shadow international development secretary Jim Murphy, who took a prominent referendum role with his 100 towns tour, and Holyrood health spokesman Neil Findlay, who has criticised Labour’s limited devolution proposals as a member of the left-wing Red Paper Collective.
Mr Sarwar said: “I can confirm that I am not seeking nomination to be leader of the Scottish Labour Party.
“There is a crucial job to be done in this interim period. For the last three years it has been my priority to keep the UK family together; in this coming period I am clear that we will keep the Scottish Labour family together.”
Ms Lamont launched a parting attack on senior colleagues at Westminster, who she accused of treating Scotland as a “branch office”.
Her complaints were today endorsed by North Ayrshire MP Katy Clark, who said Scottish Labour now needs “a significant move to the left”.
“I think she’s right as I think the Scottish party needed to campaign on issues like the bedroom tax and on issues like Trident where the views in Scotland are very different than down here (at Westminster),” she told BBC Daily Politics.
She added: “The Scottish Labour Party already has a different policy, for example, on Trident.
“We vote against Trident at our conferences and we can’t ignore that because that’s where the Scottish people are, and in every opinion poll since the 1950s the Scottish people said they don’t want nuclear weapons.”
But Mr Blunkett, a Sheffield MP, insisted Scotland cannot have a separate policy on Trident and dismissed suggestions that Ms Lamont was prevented from campaigning against the “bedroom tax”.
“I’ve had no problem at all in arguing against the bedroom tax; it took some time for the Labour Party nationally to simply say we will reverse it as opposed to we are opposed to it,” he said.