Formidable figure takes the driving seat

Mention "Wendy" and everyone at Holyrood, and indeed in Scottish public life, knows you are talking about Wendy Alexander.

This has given rise to the term "You've been Wendied" which, roughly translated, means that you have been harangued and verbally assaulted by the former enterprise minister, usually on a matter of policy and often for many minutes.

Ms Alexander is extremely well-known, passionate about her politics, fiercely intelligent and not afraid of anyone.

She is also a close ally of Gordon Brown and one of the best-connected figures in the Labour Party with her brother, Douglas, the International Development Secretary.

With all this in her favour, it is no surprise that she is a virtual certainty for the Scottish Labour leadership.

But it is not quite as simple as that.

She has her critics in the Scottish party - mostly, it has to be said, people who are too scared of her to speak of their reservations to her face.

Some believe she is not grounded enough and does not have the common touch needed to be a Labour leader.

But all that is yet to be tested and what is in Ms Alexander's favour is that she is not expected to do well against Alex Salmond at First Minister's questions. This puts her at a considerable advantage.

Every good performance will be unexpected as she does not have high expectations to meet.

The daughter of a Church of Scotland minister and a haematologist, she chose to study medicine at Glasgow University, but switched to economics and history after voluntary work in Malawi persuaded her that what Africa needed was not another white doctor, but an entirely new political system.

Her father took her with him from the age of eight when he doorstepped in Renfrew on behalf of Labour. Her maternal grandparents were missionaries in China and the Alexander children grew up convinced of their social responsibility.

Ms Alexander followed her first-class degree with a postgraduate stint at Warwick, before going, aged 25, to work for Donald Dewar, then Labour's Scottish spokesman.

Then, in 1992, she applied to Harvard for a management course but ultimately decided to go to Paris, to the prestigious INSEAD business school.

This brought her an 80,000-a-year globetrotting job for the US management consultants Booz Allen Hamilton, where her boss had helped to get Bill Clinton elected. There she stayed for three years, then in 1997 Mr Dewar, the new Scottish Secretary, called her to say she had already missed her first meeting as his special adviser.

The next 18 months were spent making plans for Scotland's parliament, after which she decided to practise what she had been preaching and resigned to stand as an MSP for Paisley North.

She suffered from a bruising battle over the repeal of Section 28 and another clash, this time with Jack McConnell, in the first term of the parliament.

Since then, she has taken time out to get married to Professor Brian Ashcroft, the 60-year-old director of the Fraser of Allander Institute for Research on the Scottish Economy, and have twins.

Now, she is back and ready to take Mr Salmond on. It should be quite a fight.

So what does she have to do now? These ten things for a start ...

1. Change the brand

Wendy Alexander needs to re-brand her party as a real Scottish Labour Party to take on the Scottish National Party. She should look at the way New Labour was marketed as a break with tired Old Labour: maybe something similar for the Scottish Labour Party, stressing its Scottish credentials - made in Scotland, for Scots.

2. Drop the jargon

Ms Alexander is an economics expert. Unfortunately for her, the voters do not share her passion for the subject. She needs to drop her economic jargon and adopt a more easy and understandable way of communicating her ideas.

3. Assert her authority

One of Jack McConnell's problems was that he was seen as Tony Blair's lieutenant in Scotland. Although Ms Alexander may well be Gordon Brown's lieutenant in Scotland, she has to be seen as the Scottish Labour leader, not Labour's leader in Scotland.

4. Slow down

Ms Alexander operates at 100mph, particularly when she is speaking, and she expects everyone to follow her lead. She needs to slow down when she is speaking, deal with one idea at a time and learn to talk in soundbites.

5. Find new policies

With the exception of plans for skills academies, Labour's policy cupboard if pretty bare at the moment. The party needs some radical new ideas if it is going to start challenging the SNP and the policy-review process should start now.

6. Build alliances

The three opposition unionist parties have a clear majority in the parliament yet they have only rarely managed to get themselves sorted into a coherent unit to take on the Government. The opposition could not only start defeating the government, but it could start driving through popular initiatives of its own - if the parties started working together.

7. Start at the bottom

Labour has been losing the battle for new members to the SNP. That has to stop and the new leader has to find a way of bringing in new people and luring back those the party has lost. The party is nothing without its membership - and that cannot just be from the trade unions.

8. Be inclusive

Ms Alexander has to break with the traditions espoused by her predecessor and invite both friends and enemies into her shadow Cabinet. She really will need a shadow ministry of all the talents if she is going to keep her party together and have a chance of taking on the SNP government.

9. Out-think the SNP

Alex Salmond has left the other parties trailing with his approach to government. Labour needs to be able to fight back and the only way to do that is to come up with a long-term, cogent and effective strategy to win the next election.

10. Reactivate the activists

The number of Labour members willing to participate in local politics has fallen. Ms Alexander has to find some way of turning these people back into activists to knock on doors, deliver leaflets and answer phones. If the party does not have a strong, local campaigning base, it will lose again.