Margaret Curran is mulling a bid for the Labour deputy leadership at Holyrood, after her unsuccessful bid to win the Glasgow East by-election.

Margaret Curran is mulling a bid for the Labour deputy leadership at Holyrood, after her unsuccessful bid to win the Glasgow East by-election.

The Glasgow Baillieston MSP is said by friends to be unlikely to stand for the leadership, but is considering a bid for the deputy's post being vacated by Cathy Jamieson. Ms Curran was in the frame to replace Wendy Alexander in the week after the Paisley MSP stood down over a fund-raising controversy. But then Ms Curran accepted the party's call to help it out of a candidate crisis.

Her new national profile as an effective street campaigner could help her win an internal party election. Her friends say her by-election experience has shown her there is "profound thinking for Labour to do", and that she wants to contribute to that.

The former Parliament Minister is also mulling another contest for the Westminster seat of Glasgow East at the next General Election in a bid to overturn the SNP's 365 vote majority last week. The shape of the Labour contest at Holyrood becomes clearer today, as nominations open and senior party officials finalise the timetable.

Two front-runners yesterday began the debate in newspaper articles. Iain Gray, the finance spokesman and former enterprise minister, wrote Labour has failed to persuade voters it understands their lives, shares their concerns or that it cares. He warned the party has to resolve the differences between Labour MPs, its MSPs, councillors and unelected party members, which he says have "bedevilled recent years". The East Lothian MSP said Labour is "losing the argument on aspiration and who will best run Scotland".

He hinted he wants to get the party away from its split over handling an independence referendum, after Wendy Alexander said in May the SNP should "bring it on". That is echoed in the positions taken by leadership candidates Andy Kerr and Cathy Jamieson, distancing themselves from the Holyrood Labour group's decision in May to support a referendum.

Mr Kerr wrote yesterday the SNP leader Alex Salmond wants to use fear to "shatter Scots' confidence".

The public services spokesman and East Kilbride MSP made his attack in provocative language: "Mr Salmond wants Scots to believe the English are conning us, stealing from us. He ignores all that unites us as he tries to create division. Like a poisonous gossip, he whispers the neighbours are out to get us."

Charlie Gordon, the Glasgow Cathcart MSP who is an outsider in the contest, used a Sunday Herald interview to distance himself from the fund-raising debacle that led to Wendy Alexander's downfall.

Responding to the opening salvoes of the Labour leadership campaign, SNP business convener Angus Robertson warned his rivals would "pay a heavy price" if they reversed their support for an independence vote.

"The more Labour say no' to Scotland, the more people will say no' to Labour and sweep them away," he said.