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WE'RE sure Karen Whitefield is a fine woman.

She must be personally engaging and politically engaged or she would not have been selected to fight Falkirk for Labour.

It was, you’d like to think, after all that has gone before, a free and fair selection process where the local party members freely and fairly chose their shortlist and then their candidate.

You could, if you like, quibble about the need for all-women shortlists but you would have to be a special kind of masochist to seriously argue that Westminster needs more men.

Bring on the women, the minorities, the people with disabilities, the young, the old.

Bring on anyone really with some smarts, gumption and gung-ho spirit, who isn’t male, middle-aged and steeped in the party-political argy-bargy that too often makes our parliament such an arid place.

We have enough party hacks cluttering up the backbenches and committee rooms. They are men and women who are well-meaning and competent. Most of them anyway.

But we really deserve better than that.

And, notwithstanding all of Ms Whitefield’s undoubted qualities, she is out of the mould.

Is an MSP who spent 12 years at Holyrood without making a ripple, never mind a splash, really the best Labour have got?

Eighteen months after being routed by the SNP – when Labour promised to review, reorganise and rebuild – has the People’s Party really not found any new people?

After her stint at Holyrood, Ms Whitefield wants to go to Westminster but both parliaments and all parties share the same problem.

However clumsily and arrogantly Unite tried to parachute their candidates into Falkirk and their other specially-selected safe seats, the union were, and are, absolutely right to insist we need a greater diversity among MPs.

In particular, we need more politicians from what was once called the working class.

Last week, a report revealed that the number of MPs from working class backgrounds fell from 98 to 25 between 1979 and 2010.

Of course, Unite’s idea of working class candidates appear to be those working for Labour or Unite or both.

There is really no danger of the net being flung too widely but the message, if not the method, is still right.

The party leaders need to open the doors to the most able people they can find, to headhunt and recruit the best, not the most loyal.

There is too much emphasis on people paying their dues but there will always be less able candidates who have paid more dues.

The timing of a proposed 11 per cent pay rise for MPs is laughably inappropriate but no one would grudge our politicians an executive salary if they perform at an executive level.

But currently, too many are, without wishing to cause offence, in out of the rain.

Hopefully, if Ms Whitefield wins her new seat at Westminster, she will seize the opportunity to show she is not one of them.