Labour plays into the Scottish Nationalists’ hands by making the Scottish party answer to WestminsterA former leading light in Scottish Labour, when asked which of his party’s three leadership candidates he preferred, shrugged and said “does it matter?”. To most people in Scotland, Labour or otherwise, it doesn’t.

The party, so damaged by its by-election humiliation 10 days ago, would need a dynamo to fix it and none of the current contenders come remotely close to fitting that description.

Out on the streets, voters shown pictures of Iain Gray struggled to put a name to his face. At the press launch of his campaign on Thursday he played a video of his chief cheerleader, one Margaret Curran, whose loss of Glasgow East (previous Labour majority: 13,500) is still fresh in everyone’s minds. A very strange choice but these are desperate times.

Gray vowed not to indulge in “playground abuse” with the SNP leader Alex Salmond, promising to adopt a more analytical approach in the Holyrood chamber. Perhaps he hopes this will make him sound like the serious and thoughtful candidate, a cut above the desk bangers on the nationalist benches.

But it is exactly what the last doomed incumbent, Wendy Alexander, said on seizing office. Like Alexander, Gray will avoid witty exchanges with Salmond because he knows he can’t win them, not because he is more concerned with “the issues”.

As the most Brownite of the three, he should be able to build a healthier relationship with his London colleagues than the other two contestants. On the other hand, Alexander was a Brownite but that did not stop her bringing him and the party to its knees. And, of course, there have been better moments than now to be in Gordon Brown’s camp.

So what is in Iain Gray’s favour? Well, most obviously, he is not Cathy Jamieson. If Gray’s credentials for political leadership (school teacher, manager for Oxfam) are unimpressive, Jamieson’s are scary. The one-time social worker may have talked down her hard-left background since tasting the trappings of power, but she will never be convincing as a putative first minister trying to, say, attract investment to Scotland, kick-start the economy, or defend the wealth creators.

You could never imagine her wooing the business community and converting the conservative middle classes, both of which Salmond has done, despite being a nationalist.

A former member of the Campaign for Socialism, she spent her pre-devolution years in the kind of public-sector roles that prepared her for a life in the public sector (lower rungs). Some say she performed well as acting leader against Salmond after Alexander resigned but that is more of a comment on Alexander than Jamieson.

If Gray and Jamieson are rubbish what about the third man, Andy Kerr? Can he do it? Does he even want to? The health minister in Jack McConnell’s executive dithered about throwing his hat in the ring, citing concerns for his family. Now he has made the decision, he still appears to be the most reluctant candidate (though the bookies’ favourite), driven not by brainless ambition but by a “someone’s got to do it and it might as well be me” attitude.

This would make him the most endearing candidate if it were not for the fact that he is as unsuitable for greatness as the others. He was an official in the National Union of Students and since then has worked within the sheltered environs of the Labour party and local government.

What does it say about Scottish Labour when its brightest stars are so lacking in sparkle? This country is rich in political talent but it resides in Westminster and eight years of devolution have done nothing to lure it home to Holyrood.