Tom Gordon

KEN Macintosh is raging against the machine. The Scottish Labour hierarchy is out to get him, reckons the 53-year-old Eastwood MSP, because he would dismantle it and take the party in a fresh direction if he became its next leader. So the powerbrokers and "union barons" are trying to stymie him and advance his rival, Kezia Dugdale, he says.

Or maybe he's just getting his excuses in early. After all, the former BBC producer is the huge underdog in the race to replace Jim Murphy, with a tiny fraction of Dugdale's support.

Yet over the course of an hour in his Holyrood office, it's the closest he comes to anger. And Macintosh, who has an innocent, Sunday school manner to match his boyish face, famously doesn't do angry. Even Dugdale describes him as "probably the nicest man I've ever met".

There's an ambitious streak, though - this is the second time he's chased the leadership.

In 2011, he stood against Johann Lamont and won the party membership vote under the old electoral college system, but lost because the unions and parliamentarians backed Lamont.

"The party machine, which I want to break up, defeated me. That's what annoys me."

After the carnage of the general election, does that party machine still exist? "Of course. It's there at every turn." Still trying to block you? "Yes." And promoting Kez? "Yes." Why? "It would take against me because they can't control me. I don't know why they support Kez."

He refuses to name the "movers and shakers" barring his path to greatness, but the Unite union, which screwed up Labour's candidate selection in Falkirk, gets a few mentions.

His old friend Murphy, with whom he shared an office for 16 years, was a vehement critic of Unite's general secretary, Len McCluskey. What does he make of McCluskey?

"I think generally the union barons, the union chiefs, have too much influence," he says.

"I've got a very clear agenda about that, and it doesn't help me in this race, I can tell you.

"Jim should have continued as leader. It's just not right that happened the way it did."

You mean carry on after that shocking result? "I think that if you vote for a leader you give him a chance." So he should still be leader now? "I would have preferred that, yes."

However now that there is a pesky contest, Macintosh has a solid pitch to party and country.

"I want to remind people of what Labour stands for. Social mobility, the power of work, the opportunity offered by education, the right to a decent life, not to be in poverty, a home.

"We also need to speak to people who want to get on. We want you to own your own home. We want you to have a car, have a nice life. That's the bit we need to remind people of more."

The reason Scottish Labour is at "this terrible low ebb", is that it's stuck in a rut, he says.

"We're too obsessed with other parties and our own past. We don't exist to oppose referendums, or the Tories or the SNP. We exist to make people's lives better.

"We've been too negative, too oppositional. We seem to be against change. People think we've become the establishment. That we're the 'them' and not the 'us' anymore."

But even if he's right, is he the answer? He's something of a loner in the party, whereas you'd expect a future leader to be a good networker.

"Lots of people in this party have obligations to one person or another, favours and the rest of it. I'm not one of those people. That's why I'm in the position I'm in," he says revealingly.

Then there are the gruelling demands of being a dad to six school-age children.

"It dominates you from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed," he says.

So is there room in his life to lead or hold high office? "Only just. But in the end, are you saying nobody with a family can be a leader or First Minister?"

And isn't he just too damn nice for gladiatorial politics? Watching his first FMQs against Nicola Sturgeon would be like watching a puppy bounding up to play with a combine harvester.

Are you too nice? "Possibly." It would be you against Sturgeon and the SNP machine. "Yes." You'd be steamrollered. "The idea that the SNP would bowl over me! I've never regarded the SNP as my enemy." But they'd see you as an enemy - you're going to bring a spoon to a knife fight. "Absolutely not. If somebody comes at you and they're overly aggressive and tribal, and their politics are too adversarial, you don't respond by shouting back.

"If you believe in a compassionate, decent society, you've got to treat everybody with compassion. "The idea that because you're decent and compassionate you're weak is so wrong. It's such a misguided view of politics. You can be stubborn, principled, strong."

So it's Sturgeon v Gandhi, is it? "No. I've never pretended to be an angel or a saint. I'm just a normal person. I still find it difficult to see myself really as a politician in the sense that I see the way some politicians behave, and I've never behaved like that."

How will Labour do at the 2016 election? "Better than people are talking about." MSP numbers up or down? "I'm not giving a number. What's the point of giving a hostage to fortune?"

A year from now, who's going to be First Minister? "I'm not going to predict. Can you tell me?" Nicola Sturgeon. "You reckon?" You disagree? "Well, things have changed so much. Who'd have said we'd go through seven leaders?"

It's not going to be you, is it? "I'm going into the election to win every single Labour seat," he insists, his voice rising. "I'm going to try and win more seats." It's really not going to be you, is it? "The voters of Scotland will decide." The party machine may survive the scrap yard yet.