Just 18 months after being elected to the Scottish Parliament, Richard Leonard has become the new Scottish Labour leader.
But while he may be a relative newcomer to elected office, he joined the Labour Party 35 years ago when he was a politics student at Stirling University.
Like his rival for the Scottish Labour leadership post, MSP Anas Sarwar, Mr Leonard went to private school – although the Yorkshireman won a scholarship to study at Pocklington School in east Yorkshire.
His career has been built in Scotland, with Mr Leonard working as an organiser for the GMB trade union and also as an economist for the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC).
He is a member of both the GMB and Unite trade unions, as well as the environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth Scotland and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In addition, Mr Leonard is co-founder and secretary of the Keir Hardie Society – an organisation which was set up in 2010 to promote the life and work of the Labour Party’s founder.
He ran for the Scottish Parliament in 2011, but failed to get elected, becoming an MSP for the Central Scotland region five years later.
While he is seen as a left-winger, he has dismissed claims that he is a Corbynista, insisting he is “too long in the tooth” for that.