Wendy Alexander has been taken aback at the strength of feeling about affordable housing, in her tour of Scotland listening to Labour Party activists.
Ahead of a meeting with more than 100 members in Glasgow last night, the leader-elect said the housing issue had surprised her most in feedback from the party, and that Scotland had fallen behind England in finding solutions to the housing crisis.
"You can't miss the significance of the housing issue," she said. "In the old days, it was about rental versus buying.
"It's now about affordable home ownership, either for rent or sale, and people's desire or anxieties that their children will not have the same opportunities they've had, because they can't afford to get on the housing ladder.
"That's borne out by statistics that show in the last five years in Scotland, home starts have risen by 7% whereas in England they have risen by 18%."
The Glasgow meeting was the fourth of seven around Scotland, which are intended to show how Ms Alexander wants to return Labour to having national appeal. She said she had found party members, willing to be radical in their approach to change in the party and in policy, and that at the Inverness event, housing was "the huge issue".
"One of the challenges in Glasgow is to talk about how we become an all-Scotland party again. In Aberdeen and Dundee, it is with a degree of humility as to why we have been in retreat recently.
There is another meeting in Ayr this evening.
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