Helen Liddell is known around town as a serious toughie. Lounging in her spacious Whitehall office in a bright pink sweater, her shoes kicked away, her stockinged feet on the sofa, she may not look it. But she is a genuine political veteran, a trade union activist in the 1970s, leading supporter of devolution in the Callaghan years, hammer of both the hard left and the Scottish Nationalists.
She survived writing a raunchy thriller and working for Robert Maxwell, and, more seriously, survived the early deaths of her two friends and mentors John Smith and Donald Dewar. So yes, she is a fighter. This is lucky, because she now faces two of the worst threats known to any modern politician: Andrew Neil on the warpath, and a mountain of haggis to consume.
The haggis first: this is the time of year when, as Scottish secretary, Liddell must preside at innumerable Burns nights, devouring Scotland's national dish with public relish. Indeed, she is just back from a Burns supper in Brussels, where she found the "polyglot" audience a bit of an effort.
Then it is off to Dublin for another one where she doing the "Immortal Memory", which she at least finds easier than the "toast to the lassies". She has agreed to speak at another on Saturday in Scotland in a neighbouring constituency, and yet another to come on Tuesday. At least seven Burns nights, and appearances to be put in at a couple more, she groans, but fortunately "I quite enjoy haggis".
It is, in any case, an essential part of Liddell's role today, which is to act as a roving ambassador for Scotland. With between 30 million and 40 million people around the world professing a connection to Scotland (according to Professor Tom Devine of Aberdeen University), Liddell has established "Friends of Scotland", an initiative "to reach out to the Scots around the world who are opinion-formers".
The scope for the organisation is massive - 11 million people in the US alone could claim Scottish nationality, compared with just 5 million in Scotland. So far Liddell has signed up half the Australian government and half the government of New Zealand, including the prime minister, Helen Clark, who, it turns out, hails from Shetland. It is all admirable stuff, but - this is where Andrew Neil comes in - it has won her derision in the Scottish press, who question whether, after devolution, the job of Scottish secretary is needed at all. A few months ago, the Scotsman newspaper, owned by the Barclay brothers but under the direction of Neil, asked: "What is the point of Helen Liddell?", suggesting the Scotland Office was now just "a piece of government flab".
Liddell, who has just completed two years in the job, has been hammered for "filling her diary with exotic trips in the name of promoting Scottish tourism and business", which, according to the Scotsman, has earned her the nickname of "minister for Monarch of the Glen". To read the Scottish press you might conclude her office was a joke, and Liddell an even bigger one. Unsurprisingly, it is a charge she bats off robustly, accusing Neil, who is also a BBC political presenter, of having a hidden agenda: "I think I can say one publication in particular got rather exercised thinking that I had intervened to stop the takeover of the Scottish Media Group's title by the Barclay brothers, which is complete fiction."
SMG were owners of the Scotsman's traditional rival, the Glasgow-based Herald and its sister, the Sunday Herald: the thought of both sets of papers being under the control of the staunchly unionist, right of centre Neil terrified the devolutionary, left-leaning Scottish establishment. In the end, after a savage struggle, the Glasgow-based papers went instead to the US media group Gannett.
Whatever the origins of their dispute, it is clear relations between Liddell and Neil are cooler than icy. As a former journalist herself, Liddell knows exactly the dangers of falling out with the press, and especially with an influential player like Neil, but she seems unperturbed.
Yet, I ask, is not there some truth in the charge that her job is now redundant? Quite the opposite, she says, her job "is actually a fairly critical one". She lists the 20 cabinet committees she sits on, and explains how the office has had to expand from the five people who manned it immediately post-devolution to 118 today.
That has not stopped a House of Lords committee recommending recently that the job of Scottish secretary should be abolished or merged, but Liddell retorts that "the members of the Lords committee involved people like John McGregor and Ian Lang" whom she tartly describes as "retreads, whose enthusiasm for devolution is not particularly marked".
Fashionable cynicism
Nor will she brook any criticism of the new Scottish parliament. It is doing well, she says, despite "the traumas that have been visited upon the parliament, the death of Donald [Dewar], who was the father of devolution and who was also running a sort of masterclass in how to do the job". The resignation of his successor, Henry McLeish, was another blow: "The remarkable thing that has come out of it is great stability and a new way of doing things."
It is that new way of doing things - the pre-legislative committees, the more open attitude to public access - that Liddell would like to see copied at Westminster, in the hope of engaging the public in politics more.
Certainly, she is worried by what she is detecting at present both in Scotland and at Westminster: "I think there is a climate around at the moment which disturbs me, that it is fashionable to be cynical about politics and politicians." One way to cure that is to find "different mediums for talking to people", she says, admitting that "the yah boo politics puts people off". It is also the way politicians are portrayed: "I suspect most Scottish women would be amazed to discover that I, like you, and everybody else, go to Tesco and do the washing."
As part of portraying politicians' humanity, or even their sheer ordinariness, Liddell would like more honest political debate, hinting that some of her perceived toughness is a result of the system, not her personality: "I'm not exactly on the softer and gentler side of the political spectrum, but some of that is because we have a system that doesn't allow people to admit that perhaps they don't have a view on things ... We have a system where we are not allowed to explore some of the philosophical and theoretical arguments around issues, and I think that's a bit stifling."
Having said that, Liddell is not prepared to go out on a limb and admit to doubts. I ask about reports that she had privately warned Tony Blair about war on Iraq, but she insists they are not true. The most she will say is "I think that there is a debate to be had, and I think the situation when we have more information from the weapons inspectors will be very significant." She always was a loyalist.
On the other controversial issue of the day, tuition fees, she is equally circumspect.
In Scotland there are no tuition fees and the Scottish executive has made it clear it does not want them, but there are fears that Scottish academics may be lured to English universities by the promise of higher salaries, and that the free Scottish universities will be deluged with English applicants. Liddell again agrees "there is a debate to be had", but remains vaguely supportive of the package.
Whether or not her job will survive is, she says, "a matter for the prime minister".
She also faces the loss of her Airdrie seat when the number of Scottish MPs at Westminster is cut from 72 to around 59. But she is unfazed: "I've still got a career in front of me, but you know, people who try to build careers around the absolute certainty of being elected often come unstuck."
The CV
Helen Liddell
Born: December 6 1950 in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire; married with two children
Education: St Patrick's High school, Coatbridge; Strathclyde University
Career History: Economist, then assistant secretary, Scottish Trades Union Congress 1971-76; BBC Scotland economics correspondent 1976-77; general secretary Scottish Labour party 1977-88; personnel and public affairs director, Daily Record and Sunday Mail 1988-92; chief executive of Business Programme 1993-94; elected MP for Monklands East 1994; MP for Airdrie and Shotts, 1997-; economic secretary at the Treasury 1997-98; minister of state at the Scottish Office 1998-99; minister for transport 1999; minister for energy and competitiveness in Europe 1999-01; secretary of state for Scotland 2001-
Political career:
High: Becoming first woman secretary of state for Scotland
Low: Working for Robert Maxwell when he owned Daily Record and Sunday Mail; being nicknamed Stalin's Granny