A former Holyrood minister, a local MSP for nine years and the bookmakers' favourite - Margaret Curran could hardly be a more experienced candidate for Glasgow East.

A former Holyrood minister, a local MSP for nine years and the bookmakers' favourite - Margaret Curran could hardly be a more experienced candidate for Glasgow East.

She's not looking too nervous beyond her normal enthusiastic self, but her handlers are protecting her like a campaign trail novice.

Ms Curran, so media savvy that she was nicknamed the Minister for Newsnight, has more top-flight political experience than all of the other eight candidates put together, and yet Labour's campaign is edgy and gaffe-prone.

The reason can only be that the stakes are very high indeed. There is interest from media across the world, not because foreign journalists care much for Barlanark or Carmyle, but because of speculation - and it is only speculation - that if Labour lost one of its safest seats in the UK to the Scottish Nationalists then it could precipitate the resignation of the prime minister.

"My message is resonating on the doorsteps," she said yesterday, after visiting a pensioner in Shettleston Road who was said to be shifting her allegiance back to Labour after dallying with an SNP vote.

Ms Curran is saying most of the right things most of the time. Her talk is of not taking constituents for granted, because the accusation is that Labour have been doing that in their heartlands, and of fighting for every vote, because with a majority of more than 13,000 the loss of the seat is politically unthinkable.

So the MSP for Baillieston, which is a big part of the Westminster constituency, has a series of defaults: that she will fight hard for the East of Glasgow; that she will be a radical, dissenting voice to that end if need be; and that while much has been done to improve the area, much more needs to be done.

And therein lies her problem. If much still needs to be done, people have the right to ask whether Labour has already had long enough in charge at every elected level, including Ms Curran as a Holyrood minister.

Last year the SNP message "It's Time" worked at a Scottish level, and the danger for Labour is that it will resonate now here in their heartland.

This explains why Ms Curran has been speaking and acting almost as if she is an underdog. She has turned a lot of the ill-informed attacks on the constituency from London commentators to her advantage, putting her on side with the locals.

"There is a real level of frustration about the way the East End has been characterised as if it is all total devastation here," she said yesterday.

Ms Curran has been credited by some MPs as someone who will save the party from a devastating defeat in the seat, and come next Thursday that may be true, but it has required some nifty footwork from the candidate.

On the key issues in this campaign - fuel taxation, retail prices, knife crime - she has developed a tactic of absorbing criticism of the government, accepting that something must be done, and then stopping short of agreeing that wholesale change is necessary.

Ms Curran is a seasoned operator, speaks the language of the area, and exemplifies a gallus, fast-talking energy that will probably carry her through to victory next week.

But questions remain. For example, can it really be true, as she said on Thursday night, that she did not know about the controversial home-based office arrangements that fuelled criticism of David Marshall's Westminster expenses? It is hard to see how an MSP co-operating regularly with the local MP could fail to be aware of this.

Was she really fifth choice candidate for the seat? What about the suggestion she accepted the nomination to save her career because she faced losing out in a selection battle come Holyrood boundary changes in three years' time?

Then there have been those campaign glitches. Her claim that she had lived and worked in the constituency all her life when she has lived for many years in Glasgow's South Side was of her own doing, but other gaffes have not been.There were the Westminster cabinet ministers coming and going without announcement, giving the impression that their presence would hinder rather then help.

Then there was the campaign letter seeking support addressed to her Nationalist opponent, and the Second World War veteran on her website who turned out to be no such thing because of a captioning error.

And, of course, there was her "superstar" supporter, the actor from Taggart, who turned out to be an independence supporter.

Ms Curran deserves better than that.