Dennis Canavan is the Scottish Ken Livingstone. Though he no longer sports what used to be the prickliest of the "wild man of the left" beards, his whole being still bristles - with wounded pride, slighted self-regard, outraged dignity and explosive indignation.
The Labour Party really should have known better than to prick his balloon. But it did, with unnecessary offensiveness, and now it must pay the price in electoral embarrassment. Canavan, expelled from the party last year, has resigned his Falkirk West seat, thus triggering a Westminster by-election at exactly the moment and in exactly the place Labour would wish to avoid one.
Taking place within what could be months of a UK general election, the by-election will assume a significance far beyond the nondescript Scottish central-belt burgh whose only claim to fame, until now, has been a First Division football team unable to scrape together enough money to build itself a decent stadium.
Moreover, although Canavan insists it is sheer coincidence, the announcement of his Westminster resignation in his column for the Herald tied in neatly with the paper's latest System Three poll. This showed Labour trailing 14 per cent behind the Scottish Nationalists on the first vote for Holyrood, 13 per cent behind on the second vote and level for Westminster at 33 per cent, a 23-year Labour low. The only consolation for the party is that the poll was taken before the Blair-Brown fightback speeches at the Brighton conference.
The stupidity is that Canavan would have been happy if Labour had let him represent Falkirk West for the party in the Scottish Parliament. Instead, when he made what he thought was a routine application for the candidacy, he was spurned because of his obstinate and outspoken defiance of Blair's leadership.
The snub was administered by a Scottish Labour Party vetting panel, charged with ensuring that the Scottish Parliament was stuffed with biddable new Labour MSPs. The panel did its job with such zeal that its candidates were nicknamed "Donald's Dollies", after the sheep cloned by scientists on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
The former council leader, who had represented the area at Westminster for more than 25 years, was told he was unacceptable as its representative in the Holyrood parliament. Donald Dewar, the First Minister, rubbed it in by saying sniffily: "He wasn't selected because he wasn't good enough."
Apart from the affront to his own esteem, this reflected on an electorate that had sent Canavan to Westminster with increasingly large majorities. They repaid Labour by shunning the official candidate and giving Canavan the biggest majority in the Scottish Parliament.
That election night, he made a first attempt at reconciliation with "the party into which I was virtually born and bred". Later, at the swearing-in ceremony for the new parliament, he surprised everyone by striding across the chamber with his hand outstretched to Dewar.
The glowering First Minister shook hands but Canavan admitted: "His body language did not reflect my message of 'no hard feelings'."
In July, Canavan made an abortive attempt to hold a private meeting with Tony Blair "as leader of the Labour Party, to raise with him the possibility of a by-election in Falkirk West and the timing thereof, as well as perhaps my re-entry into the party". Despite the promise of a reply from the party general secretary, Margaret McDonagh, and of a meeting with the assistant general secretary responsible for elections, David Evans, Canavan has heard nothing. A little more tact and a lot less arrogant disregard for Middle Scotland could have avoided the unwanted by-election.
To be fair, Canavan has not acted like a prodigal son seeking a return to Labour's bosom.
He has harried the Scottish government, called their backbenchers "obedient puppets", ridiculed "rookie" ministers and alleged there is "a subculture of lethargy and cover-up in the Scottish Executive".
So the new SNP leader, John Swinney, sees the chance of starting with a bang. Exactly a year ago, he ran the Nats' campaign that gave Labour a fright in George Robertson's formerly safe seat of Hamilton South.
The swing to the SNP was then 22.5 per cent; 18 per cent would be enough to take Falkirk West.
Labour's problems are compounded by the nature of its candidate, Major Eric Joyce. On the plus side, he sacrificed his military career for a Labour candidacy after attacking the army as class-ridden. But Falkirk is a self-consciously working-class constituency and there must be doubt as to whether the voters will look kindly on a member of the officer class.
Canavan's personal popularity is shown in his 12,192 majority as an independent at Holyrood and his endorsement could swing it, enabling him to take a Livingstone-style vengeance at the polling booths, albeit by proxy.
He insists he will remain neutral in the by-election contest, although the speculation is that sooner or later he will formalise his friendship with Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Socialist Party. Tantalisingly, he says: "I may make some announcement on that at a later stage." To avoid being accused by his own supporters of the ultimate betrayal, he will wait until after the by-election.
Canavan insists: "This was a safe Labour seat and could still be. If anybody has made this seat vulnerable, it is the Labour Party."
Labour's Scottish leadership is doing its best to shrug it all off as another piece of mischief-making by "Dennis the Menace". But privately, party leaders regret that they provoked this prickly personality into such calculated retribution.
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