Lesley Brennan


Lesley Brennan is a Scottish Labour Party politician serving as Chief of Staff to Leader of the Scottish Labour Party Richard Leonard since November 2017. She was formerly a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the North East Scotland region for 70 days in early 2016 and a councillor in Dundee from 2012 until 2016. She has also worked as an economist and as a parliamentary assistant.

Early life

Brennan was educated at Lawside Academy in Dundee. She graduated from Abertay University in 1999 with a first-class honours degree in economics, then studied at the University of Edinburgh where she gained a master's degree in economics in 2001.

Political career

Brennan was elected to the East End ward of Dundee City Council in 2012. In October 2013, she was selected by Scottish Labour to contest Dundee East at the 2015 general election. However, she lost to the incumbent Stewart Hosie.
When Richard Baker resigned from the Scottish Parliament in January 2016, Labour nominated Brennan as his replacement as she had been next on their regional list. Brennan was sworn in on 13 January 2016, and served until the Parliament's dissolution two months later March. She stood in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election where Labour had placed her third on their regional list for the North East, but she was not re-elected. As a former MSP who had not been re-elected, she received a resettlement package of more than £30,000. In October 2016 she announced that she would not seek re-election when her term as councillor finished in 2017.
Brennan was selected by Labour to contest Dundee East again in the 2017 United Kingdom general election. She received 2,000 more votes than in 2015 but finished in third place behind Hosie and the Conservative candidate.
From 2016 until 2017, Brennan served as parliamentary assistant to Neil Findlay. In November 2017, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard appointed her as his Chief of Staff. She is a member of Campaign for Socialism.