Alexander Andrew Penman Rowley (born 30 November 1963) is a Scottish politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2015 to 2017 and acting leader of the party from August to November 2017. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) since 2014, firstly for the Cowdenbeath constituency and the Mid Scotland and Fife region since 2016. He has been described as being on the political left of the party.

Born in Dunfermline, Rowley studied community education at the University of Edinburgh before serving as General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party and on Fife Council. First elected to the Scottish Parliament at a by-election in January 2014, he lost Cowdenbeath to Annabelle Ewing of the SNP at the 2016 election. However, he was returned as an additional member for Mid Scotland and Fife.

Following the resignation of Kezia Dugdale, he served as acting Leader of the Scottish Labour Party during the 2017 Scottish Labour leadership election. He served as Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government from 2018 to 2019 and Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Brexit and Constitutional Relations from 2019 to 2020. He is currently Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity.

Born in Dunfermline and raised in Kelty, Rowley was educated at St Columba's High School in Dunfermline.^[1] He studied for an MA Honours in sociology and politics at Newbattle Abbey College in Dalkeith and the University of Edinburgh and later for an MSc in community education at Edinburgh.^[2]

Rowley was General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party for one year, from May 1998 to May 1999. He was first elected to Fife Regional Council in 1990 when he was Chairman of Finance, and he later became the first leader of the new Fife Council, a position he returned to in 2012 until his election to the Scottish Parliament in 2014.^{[citation needed]}

Prior to his election to the Scottish Parliament, Rowley was a Fife Council member (re-elected in 2007) and Labour Council Group Leader.^[3] He worked as an education official with the TUC and worked for five years as an assistant, election agent and constituency manager to Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Despite being on the political left-wing of the party, he was considered Brown's right-hand man and protégé (Brown was one of Tony Blair's key partners during the New Labour era).^[4][5][6] He stood in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election as a Labour candidate for Dunfermline.

Rowley has three adult children, a granddaughter, and a grandson. He is the father of Danielle Rowley, who served as MP for Midlothian from the 2017 general election until the 2019 general election.

On 15 November 2017, Rowley resigned as deputy leader and referred himself to an internal investigation after a former partner took to the Scottish Sun to accuse him of sending her disrespectful text messages four years previously.^[16] Former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and leadership candidate Anas Sarwar called for Rowley to be suspended from the party while the investigation was carried out.^[17][18] Rowley claimed there was a determined attempt to use the media to damage him and his family for political purposes. The investigation concluded there was no case to answer as the party had not received a formal complaint. A party spokesperson added: "The party was approached by newspapers with unsubstantiated claims, with no evidence shared with the Labour party prior to publication in the Sun newspaper."^[19]