The great delusion that finally did for Wendy

Published on Monday 6 May 2002 01:00

GOODBYE, multi-coloured Wendy. Hello Mr Gray. The words "unassuming", "competent" and "low key" are now the best on offer to describe the more noteworthy members of Jack McConnell’s cabinet.

How are we to tell them apart? Margaret Curran, the new social justice minister and Cathy Jamieson, the minister for education (but not schools) are interchangeable. Iain Gray, a former physics teacher, and Frank McAveety, a former English teacher now back in the cabinet as deputy health minister, are identical.

This may be useful. If Gray, the new Minister for Everything, finds his workload too much, he can get McAveety to deputise and nobody will notice.

Actually, it occurs to me that the whole Alexander saga would have been different had her brother, Douglas, been elected to Holyrood too. With some carefully applied make-up and the aid of a trustworthy hairdresser, the Alexander siblings could have job-shared most happily without anybody being any the wiser and Wendy/Douglas would still be with us today.

However, it is too late for that now. Wendy has kicked her ministerial boxes at Jack McConnell, who has tossed them into Mr Gray’s "safe pair of hands". As I passed Mr Gray in the corridor of the television studios yesterday, he was still upright, even managing to joke about needing two strong men to help him bear the weight of his new responsibilities. I wished him luck.

Going home to my family for Sunday lunch with a good novel in my bag and the mesmerically bad new Forsyte Saga to look forward to, I did not envy Mr Gray his elevation to Linchpin of the Devolved Project. Collecting my coat, I noticed that the table in the television Green Room was covered in piles of paper left unattended by the minister’s minders. I did not read them, since each looked drearier than the last.

But if I do not envy Iain Gray, neither do I envy Wendy. If the gods want to punish you they allow you to get what you want. According to all accounts, Wendy has given up her job because she wants a private life, a proper relationship and a family. But was the job the problem here?

I do not denigrate Wendy’s character. I simply point out that people busier than her find time to go to the gym, get married and have children. She was not uniquely cursed with a heavy workload. Bankers, newspaper editors, doctors, nurses and many other professional people of both sexes juggle three or four important balls in the air, all with meetings and endless paperwork attached. Many manage to combine professional diligence with personal fulfilment. Wendy’s tragedy is that this is not one of her skills. She is cursed by two things: a permanently restless mind and an impatience that does not allow things to move at their own pace.

In many ways these two character traits are estimable. As the overseer of a car assembly-line, Wendy would have been responsible for hugely increased production during a rigid eight-hour working day. But as a minister, the hours are ill-defined. Wendy, so disciplined in many ways, cannot discipline herself where work is concerned and this is what led to ignored dinner invitations, the sidelining of inconvenient non-political friends and a good deal of complaining. She began to behave as if Scotland might collapse should she look the other way.

Giving in to this delusion, plus her natural propensity to become obsessed, did for Wendy. No Jackobite conspiracy to kill her with overwork would have been enough to floor her.

It would be a pity, therefore, if she was sitting somewhere in Amsterdam blaming others for her delightfully female decision to chuck it all in and go shopping or whatever she is currently doing. Some of her famous intellectual rigour is needed if she is not to make the same mistakes again, not only should she choose to return to high politics but in any job.

Who knows what will have happened to Wendy before then? Certainly, when we met at a party on a remote Scottish peninsula one weekend, the papers were full of her decision not to stand for the leadership - a position for which Wendy, who has few "people skills", would have been singularly ill-suited - and she was talking wistfully about the lack of a private life. Even out on the remote edges of civilisation she was instantly recognisable and a target for all kinds of people who had axes to grind. I felt for her.

But if by private life she means she is now preparing the way for a husband - or partner, as I expect she would prefer - and children, does she really imagine these things can be ordered up like a civil servant’s policy paper? Creating space for relationships is a sure-fire way to make sure they never arrive. Marriage and children cannot be viewed as tick-box targets for which room must, occasionally, be made. Relationships and children are messy things that cannot be controlled by your suddenly deciding to fit them into a life-plan.

The most dementing thing about both relationships and children is that they knock all life-plans for six. For a start, they are not time effective and progress is often so slow it can scarcely be measured. How on earth would Wendy, who even goes up and down the swimming pool like a torpedo, cope? I have a vision of her at 42 contemplating murdering her husband as he hogs the newspaper while she mashes banana and minces carrot for wailing twins.

Perhaps the gods, before granting her wish, should remind Wendy that families are not like politics. If, having opted for domesticity, she once more feels overwhelmed by a need for more "space" in her life, a bunch of screaming toddlers are more difficult to hand over than a bunch of red boxes.

Rather like someone who has finished her finals and is watching somebody else just beginning his, Wendy will glance smugly at Iain Gray for the next few weeks. But then what?

If she is wise, she will soon tire of the backbenches from where she will be driven mad watching a grey minister plod where she darted. For her sake, we must hope that transforming herself into the Scottish version of Ally McBeal yields positive results.

If it does not, her grand gesture will have been pointless and Holyrood , which can ill afford it, will have been bereft of her talents for no good purpose.