Beware the fury of a Labour woman scorned. Margaret Curran’s speech when she actually won an election, to Holyrood last year, was as sour as a grape blighted by a sudden frost. Miffed at her reduced majority, she subjected thousands watching live on television to an ill-tempered rant about her determination “not to be intimidated” and to fight on and on.

This ability to pitch herself as a victim also coloured her unsuccessful attempt to retain the Glasgow East Westminster seat for Labour. Although the result reflected national concerns, the local campaign deserves scrutiny. Political analysts complimented Curran’s success in playing the role of doughty defender of local people. But the voters were less convinced. They opted for her nationalist opponent, John Mason, who sometimes seemed too passive for the bear-pit of a Scottish by-election. A committed Christian, he regularly turned the other cheek in television debates with the vocal and pugnacious lady in red.

Perhaps there was method in Mason’s mildness. Curran was damned by her own self-delusion. She might sound like an east end “windy-hinger” calling the weans in for their tea. But geographically and politically, Curran was miles away. She was in the middle-class surburb of Newlands to be exact. That’s no sin. But dishonesty plays badly at the polls.

Not that Curran is alone. Many Labour politicians in Scotland suffer from a ‘working class hero’ complex that clouds their sense of themselves and their party. They no longer know what they stand for, so take refuge in inappropriate stereotypes from the glory days of socialism.

Curran powered through Glasgow’s East End like Jimmy Maxton in drag. If she had paraphrased that saintly Red Clydesider’s famous 1922 poster to Vote Margaret and Save the Children! nobody would have been surprised. Instead, she had to contend with another firebrand of yesteryear — Upper Clyde shipbuilders legend Jimmy Reid — backing the SNP on a postcard that pictures Gordon Brown welcoming Lady Thatcher into Downing Street. Brown, incidently, is Maxton’s biographer — the delusion goes straight to the top.

Curran launched her “Standing Up for the East End” campaign by declaring that the Labour fightback had started. Excuse me? The party was defending a mountainous majority in a seat it had controlled for more than 80 years. And what was she fighting? Her own party’s poor record?

Curran behaved more like the challenger than a sitting MSP defending one of Labour’s safest seats. It was like a distorted mirror image of by-elections in which a colourful, SNP outsider harangues the bland Labour candidate. Except that Jim Sillars, Margo Macdonald and even Winnie Ewing,were radicals determined to shake politics to its core. Margaret Curran, for all her celebrated feistiness, was unconvincing in the rebel role.

Power has rotted what Labour thinks it stands for in Scotland and now the public smell it. The expenses scandal looming over David Marshall, who stood down from the seat on the grounds of ill-health, was not used by the SNP in the campaign. But people queuing for their rolls and sausage on the Gallowgate talked about it all the same. Marshall is said to have claimed more than half a million pounds to run an office from home, though the rumours are as yet unconfirmed. But you cannot stop gossip. The voters will connect the Marshall stories to the fact that Scottish Labour is leaderless because Wendy Alexander had to resign over fund-raising discrepancies (albeit of a less serious nature) and they are unlikely to discriminate. Some people will have reminded their neighbours that Wendy’s “dodgy donation” was made by a Channel Islands based property developer who builds malls in Glasgow. They will all roll their eyes knowingly.

Curran tried to play the street fighter, but the word on the street was that her party is complacent and corrupt. She spoke of her mission to end poverty — unwise when your party has been in power for 11 years and you are a former social justice minister. Promising to bring the chancellor, Alastair Darling, to the east end of Glasgow to see for himself the effects of rising fuel and food bills just strengthened the perception that the Labour party in Westminster is out of touch, despite being run by Scots.

Curran’s effort to distance herself from London failed to impress Shettleston. But so does the contrary argument — that being part of the ruling party gives Labour MPs and their Scottish constituents more say over London decisions. The Holyrood administration in which Curran served seldom influenced Downing Street and was often humiliated - attendance allowance was withheld by Westminster because Scotland introduced free personal care for the elderly.

Curran’s visceral hatred of the SNP meant that her attacks on Salmond were ill-judged and failed to connect with voters who are happy to see a First Minister pick fights on their behalf. Besides, she had promised to pick fights with London herself. It was very confusing, but Scottish Labour has an identity crisis reflected in Curran’s campaign.

Her bellicose victor’s speech last year was posted by an opponent on YouTube under the words “How will they behave when they lose?” Curran last week took to the podium as the loser and declared that Labour was a cause, not a career and that cause was tackling inequality. There was none of the righteous anger. The game was up.

joan.mcalpine@sunday-times.co.uk

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