WITH Hallowe’en approaching, let me share something genuinely frightening. There are still four weeks left in the Scottish Labour leadership contest.

More tasteless trick than tempting treat, the fight between MSPs Anas Sarwar and Richard Leonard has lurched from one undignified moment to another ever since Kezia Dugdale called it quits on August 29.

For her, the horror is over. For the rest us, the bloodletting goes on.

In theory, it made sense to have an extended contest. As was seen with UK Labour’s leadership fights in 2015 and 2016, a lively race can draw in members and supporters, bringing new energy, talent and a horde of hard cash.

It also lets the public see what the candidates are made of, and with luck, persuade them to vote for the party. But it hasn’t worked out that way for Scottish Labour.

There are too many rows to catalogue. But a few include Mr Sarwar sending his children to private school, pay rates and union recognition at the family business in which he had a 23 per cent share, a secret recording of “neutral” interim leader Alex Rowley backing Mr Leonard, accusations of a “plot” to oust Ms Dugdale, innovative recruitment drives by both sides, leaked complaints to Labour HQ, and a leaked email from Labour HQ seething about all these dreadful leaks. It is a model of dysfunction.

Offered a shop window to sell itself, the party has put a brick through it time and again.

But despite the chaos, some things are coming into focus. This week STV’s Scotland Tonight show held a suitably post-watershed hustings which made them sharper still.

Mr Sarwar was the more assured of the two, eerily unflappable, almost automaton-like. Mr Leonard was livelier, but also rougher, tetchier and given to unfortunate finger-jabbing at the audience.

What struck me was that as the show went on, it became harder and harder to see Mr Sarwar for baggage.

Whatever he spoke about seemed to lead to a political trip wire.

He wanted an education system that was “a global standard bearer” - but surely his kids go to Hutcheson’s Grammar?

He criticised Amazon for not paying tax - but didn’t he once hold shares in a firm in a tax haven?

He boasted he was an accredited living wage employers (for all of two weeks) - so why was he happy to have a £5m stake in a family firm that didn’t pay the living wage?

He end up like Gulliver, pinned down by a multitude of his own actions and omissions, an absurdly easy target for future opponents.

Attempts to gloss over his record, including a strange amnesia about being in with the bricks at the outset of Better Together, also failed.

Asked about practices at the family firm, he embarked on a standard digression about how his forebears came to Scotland and worked hard to build a success.

Asked to get on with it, he said he’d never apologise for his family.

But no one had asked him to apologise for his family. He was asked him to account for his own actions. He didn’t, and it showed.

His late conversion to Jeremy Corbyn - he publicly urged him to consider his position last year - also failed to convince.

At one point he said he would work “every living moment to help return Jeremy Corbyn as our next Prime Minister”. Yet immediately before and after,he attacked Mr Leonard for going against the Labour whip at Holyrood.

He was aghast his rival had sinned against the party, and boasted he had never done so.

Yet Mr Corbyn is one of the most infamous rebels in Labour history, breaking the whip more than 400 times. Perhaps Mr Sarwar was too blinded by adoration to notice, and not at all scrabbling for cheap points.

However even this backfired. Mr Leonard said he voted on principle, with the unspoken implication that principle was always secondary to advancement for his rival.

But the toughest moments for Mr Sarwar came when two of Mr Leonard’s supporters told him they wanted a leader who embodied Labour values, demonstrating it in their own lives as well as talking a good game. The charge of inauthenticity is the killer one.

In an era of gut instincts and personality politics, the messenger counts as much as the message.

Picture Holyrood six weeks from now. There sit Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson, Patrick Harvie and Willie Rennie. All good fits for their respective party, they know its history and represent its values.

Now picture the Labour benches. Would the slick, privately-educated millionaire with revolving principles best embody the Corbyn-era Labour party of the many not the few?

Or would the hit-and-miss, speak-it-like-it-is former GMB worker?

It’s not much of a brainteaser. I hear Labour power brokers and senior officials already anticipate a 60 per cent win for Mr Leonard.

That doesn’t mean he would prosper in the job. He could well struggle with the onslaught the SNP will undoubtedly steer his way.

He could also have to contend with a rival unprepared for rejection and the rage of his entourage.

The party now has a month to figure out how to stop the aftermath being as big a mess as the contest.