 | 'On her best form, there is no doubt that she could be a formidable opponent across the chamber from Jack McConnell and she could do so with complete authority, with no talk of being a puppet run from London.' Robbie Dinwoodie on Roseanna Cunningham MSP, 1 st September 2004. |  |
AS an Aussie-raised Scot who is prone to use "Brit" as a pejorative term, Roseanna Cunningham may not care for the analogy, but is she the Paula Radcliffe of Scottish politics, the front-runner doomed once the bookies make her favourite, prone to mysterious loss of energy?
Stunningly effective in the by-election victory over the Tories in Perth almost a decade ago, the only SNP politician ever to defend such a win, and a scourge of Labour when she first confronted their MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, she was the deputy leader who seemed to disappear.
In this contest, she began brightly and seemed energised once more, promising a new battle across all fronts in which the SNP would reclaim leadership of Scottish radicalism inside and outside parliament at the head of anti-poverty campaigns and opposition to dumping redundant nuclear submarines at Coulport. Then it all fell away.
The campaign that might have been still seems to preoccupy Ms Cunningham. It was to be a feisty campaign between two women, close friends but determined opponents who would battle it out to become leader of the opposition in the parliament and then lead the SNP into the next Holyrood election.
Michael Russell would add to the debate, contributing wit, ideas and intelligence, but it would be either Ms Cunningham or Nicola Sturgeon who would emerge as the new national convener of the SNP, facing Jack McConnell across the Holyrood debating chamber.
Nominations were closing, campaign literature was at the printers, then in a flash it all changed. Alex Salmond had staged a stunning secret coup and Ms Sturgeon had agreed to step down to the contest for deputy as his formal running-mate.
Even after more than a score of hustings the length and breadth of the country, debating the issues night after night on the road, Ms Cunningham still betrays astonishment at the turn of events, haunted by thoughts of what might have been.
"It was going to be an upbeat campaign," she says, "manageable in a very positive way." Mmmm. Possibly.
The first time the two women went head to head on television, Ms Sturgeon more or less called her opponent old, lazy and past it.
"She was a cheeky besom that night," concedes Ms Cunningham.
The next time they clashed, Ms Cunningham more or less accused her opponent of plotting behind John Swinney and stabbing him in the back, so maybe the campaign would not have been that positive or upbeat. We will never know.
"I was looking forward to a debate about ideas. With the advent of Alex, we now have something that is far less about the long term. Between Nicola and me it would have been a debate about strategy for the future, both inside and outside parliament, but it has morphed into a very different debate about headlines which don't add up to much."
She also believes that Mr Salmond's dramatic intervention on the day nominations closed reeked of the kind of political fix which has produced unprecedented voter apathy.
"No-one had time to prepare, to discuss it or to think again about their own position, making for a very difficult set of circumstances," she says. "It sent out a very uncomfortable signal about political conduct. I wanted the SNP to respond to what voters are telling us about wanting a new kind of politics, constructive, responsive. This was anything but."
What about the rumblings against her among parliamentary colleagues that she hasn't been cutting it in recent years? They anger her: "People know about events but that has not stopped them using it as a line of attack and that has been a great disappointment."
The year 2002 had seemed full of hope. Ms Cunningham had turned 50 the previous year.
Her mother, although in her nineties, was fit and active, dancing at her birthday in January.Then her mother suffered a fall at Easter and the damage was more than physical, wrecking her confidence and plunging her into depression. In July, they moved house from Glasgow to Crieff.
Things were looking up but in December her mother had another bad fall, breaking her collarbone.
"When I was at the parliament I felt guilty about not being with my mother in Crieff, and when I was in Crieff I felt guilty about not being in Edinburgh, but if I had taken time off there would have been speculation that I was distancing myself from John Swinney," she recalls
"The day I took her into hospital there was a three-line whip and that night I appeared on Question Time."
The day her mother died was the opening day of last year's Scottish election campaign, but because of the pressure on Mr Swinney, she felt unable to take proper time off because as deputy she had to be seen to be backing the leader. "It has not been the best two years of my life," she says.
There were signs in recent months of a return to form. Aides talk of a day when she was forced at minutes' notice to appear live on television, completely unbriefed, against Margaret Curran, one of the Scottish Executive's most impressive ministers, and performed brilliantly.
But then she appeared on Question Time recently and froze over the simplest of issues.
On her best form, there is no doubt that she could be a formidable opponent across the chamber from Jack McConnell and she could do so with complete authority, with no talk of being a puppet run from London.
Her radical, republican background, shaped by her upbringing in Australia, unsettled the Labour benches in the early years of the parliament, appearing like a standing reproach to the rightward drift of their party.
Whether she will get the chance to show her prowess will be known on Friday.
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