Wendy Alexander has pledged to use her leadership to renew the Scottish Labour Party.

The recently elected leader apologised to delegates at Labour's conference in Bournemouth for "our defeat" in May's Holyrood elections.

She said the people of Scotland felt that Labour had "lost touch" and that Alex Salmond's SNP "was the beneficiary of that disillusionment".

Refusing to speculate about the date of a possible general election, Alexander emphasised that Labour's new leadership - both north and south of the border - "is about shouldering responsibility" and "not passing the buck".

She said the SNP won in May because "they persuaded people, quite disingenuously, that they too could deliver Labour's agenda of hope and aspiration".

"Well I'm here to tell you that we're going to seize that agenda back," she said.

Alexander accused the SNP of having decided on "breaking up Britain".

Warning that Salmond had an ally in Conservative leader David Cameron, she said he "plans to break up our country with the help of the Tories" and that it was the job of Labour "to stop them both".

"The politics of both the Tories and the nationalists are the politics of division; the politics of envy; the politics of 'I'm alright, who cares about you'," she argued.

"Both are putting their own parties' priorities before the people's priorities."

"We will be a party of principle and energy," she added. "A party proud of its past but confident of its future. A party fit to fight, determined to win and ready to serve."