Born                          June 30 1960

Constituency          Motherwell and Wishaw

Party                          Labour

Majority                     9259 in the 2003 Scottish Parliament Elections

Jack McConnell was  educated at Arran High School and  at the University of Stirling where he graduated with a BSc Dip Ed. He was elected as the President of Stirling University's Student Union. Following University he began work as a Maths teacher.

In 1984 he was elected to Stirling District Council aged 24 and was appointed to the position of Treasurer from 1988-92 before becoming the Council's leader in 1990, a post he kept until he became General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party in 1992.

His role as General Secretary offered him a high profile within the Party and in 1999 he was given the role of co-ordinator of the Devolution Referendum Campaign for Labour by Donald Dewar.

He was elected MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw in the 1999 Scottish Parliament elections and took on the role of Finance Minister in the Executive taking plaudits for reforms but also criticism for the on going costs of the new Parliament building.

McConnell's first attempt at winning the top job in the Executive failed when he lost out to Henry McLeish by 8 votes in the 2000 leadership ballot but won a year later following McLeish's resignation when. as the sole candidate, his candidacy was passed by a vote of the Scottish Labour Party.

At the end of November 2001 he was elected by the Scottish Parliament as the First Minister after facing opponents such as John Swinney, the SNP leader, Tory Leader David McLetchie and Independent MSP Dennis Canavan. McConnell was the third First Minister since the Parliament first met in 1999 and the first not to have been a Westminster MP before entering the Parliament.

In 2003 McConnell led his party into the second Scottish Parliament elections which resulted with Labour remaining the biggest party with 46 MSPs - 6 down on the 1999 result