On Friday afternoon, Charlie Gordon stumbled into a room in the basement of John Smith House, Scottish Labour’s corporatist headquarters in the centre of Glasgow. Sensing the burning tension within he suddenly felt about as welcome as a dog in a game of skittles.

Inside, with furrowed brows, Labour MSPs David Whitton and Jackie Ballie were using all their powers of persuasion and supplication to try to convince their boss, Wendy Alexander, not to resign.

The previous day the Scottish parliament’s standards committee had delivered its damning verdict upon Alexander’s failure properly to declare a series of donations to her election campaign last year.

In suspending the Scottish Labour leader for a single day, pending ratification of the full parliament on its return from summer recess, it had unleashed a far more dismal prospect than the punishment implied. It promised two months of unremittingly negative press speculation concerning her future in the job.

The accidental appearance of Gordon, Alexander’s former transport spokesman, was not lost on the scowling faces of those present. It was he who solicited an illegal £950 donation that prompted the investigation culminating in last week’s judgment. Sensing ill-feeling, he beat a hasty retreat.

Yesterday Alexander faced the Scottish media to confirm that her loyal supporters had failed to dissuade her to resign. So ended one of the shortest and most ignominious tenures in the job, in which she had sunk Labour to previously unimaginable depths of unpopularity and ridicule.

But this was no hand-wringing mea culpa. True to form, Alexander used her departure to rebuke those whom she accused of a politically driven witch-hunt. From the nationalist supporter whose complaint sparked an initial investigation by Dr Jim Dyer, the standards commissioner, to the SNP members of the standards committee, all had brazenly and immorally plotted her downfall, degrading the political process. “My pursuers have sought the prize of political victory with little thought to the standing of the parliament,” she said. “Some may feel they have achieved a political victory but wiser heads will ask at what price.”

Despite her claims of being hounded from office, Alexander has been contemplating resignation for months. Her husband, economist Brian Ashcroft, and her father, the Reverend Douglas Alexander, had been concerned at the effect the pressures of office were having on her health. A workaholic, blind to her faults, she soldiered on.

Her political star faded in committee room six, the smallest in the parliament, where, for the past 10 days, members of the standards committee had been debating Dyer’s report.

As expected, he concluded she broke the code of conduct for MSPs by failing to register eight donations, worth just under £8,000, on time. This was more than half her total campaign collection of £15,300. All gifts of more than £520 must be registered within 30 days, but Alexander did not register any of hers until three months after the last had been banked.

In her defence, Alexander argued that she had asked the standards committee clerks if registration was necessary, and was told it was not. However after taking legal advice from a QC, Dyer concluded the money — even though it had been paid to a campaign account to which Alexander was not a signatory — was used to her benefit and therefore should have been declared.

Dyer’s full report, due to be published next week, will contain more damaging revelations. It will reveal she accepted almost £6,000 of improper donations before seeking any advice on their legality from parliamentary authorities. Dyer found her campaign accepted four cheques and two bank transfers totalling £5,929 more than a month before she asked clerks whether they should be declared on her register of interests, even though under the code of conduct, MSPs must declare all gifts of more than £520 within 30 days.

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