Scotland's likely leader exudes decency, honesty and rudeness

Donald Dewar's is a face etched with Scottish contrasts - at one moment eager-eyed enthusiasm and a hearty, snorting laugh, then shifting instantly into a grim frown, its jowls aquiver with worry and pessimism, squinting awkwardly through his bifocals at an uncertain future.

In an age of slick, media-savvy politicians, it makes no sense that Mr Dewar has survived at all, let alone emerged as the man heavily favoured to take charge of the Scottish government being elected next Thursday.

He is eccentric, gawky, geeky, chaotic, with a unique, staccato voice, an archaic turn of phrase and a specialism in gauche rudeness. His nickname at Glasgow University was The Gannet, in recognition of his immense appetite.

An ideal evening still involves a hearty Indian meal out with friends, though his solitary nature is also likely to see him at home amid a noted collection of 20th-century Scottish art, plundering his vast library to read about 19th-century church legislation.

He used to own a coat but lost it on a visit to Scandinavia and has not bothered to buy a new one. He does not like holidays, finding them pointless to go on alone.

It is hard to get out of one's mind the image of him as a schoolboy in a private boys' school in Glasgow, roving the corridors and flashing Labour Party leaflets at Tory-supporting pupils from under his blazer. He could as easily do it at the age of 61.

But on the credit side of the balance sheet, he is also extraordinarily good company, intelligent, immensely hard-working, witty, self-deprecating, gregarious and fiercely loyal to his friends. His enjoyment of politics is infectious.

He is almost impossible to dislike. The style is so bizarre that it clearly lacks artifice. He exudes decency and integrity, tempered only with a devious defence lawyer-politician's debating skills. And he is a highly-accomplished politician.

After 18 years cajoling his party through the wilderness, opposition years, the historic accomplishment has been the setting up of the new Scottish parliament. He was appointed to run the administrative devolution of the 114-year-old Scottish Office when Labour won the election two years ago today.

There was surprise at the time, as he seemed too wise, experienced and trusted an adviser for Mr Tony Blair to send north to run a quasi-colony.

His great strength was that, in a Labour Party noted for its reluctant conversion to the Scottish home rule cause, he had always been a true believer, arguing for it enthusiastically when it was least helpful to his career.

Although it may not have been quite as speedy as constitutional change in Northern Ireland a year ago, the pace at which the new Edinburgh parliament has been delivered is impressive. Indeed, the attention to administrative detail may have been one reason Mr Dewar lacked attention for what was happening in his party and in the country.

While he was legislating, the Scottish National Party had wrapped itself in the St Andrew's Cross, branding itself as "Scotland's Party", and surged ahead in the polls.

Scottish Labour was showing suicidal impulses in its internal disciplinary hearings, candidate selection battles and reluctance to accept Mr Blair's decisive shift to the centre.

Mr Dewar somehow avoided the flak, surrounding himself with a small team of advisers whom he picked more for their intellect than their political skills. He is not tolerant of those whose minds do not keep up, of whom there is no shortage among Scottish Labour ranks.

Yet the campaign he now appears to lead shows impressive strategic skill. The extent to which Mr Dewar can take the credit for its design is debatable, however, as it looks more likely that Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and also a Scottish MP with ambitions eventually to replace Mr Blair, has thrown his considerable political weight into it, putting his people in charge and sending Donald out in his campaign bus to specialise in being Donald.

So who is Donald Dewar? The only son of a Glasgow doctor, sent away to boarding school at an early age while both his parents were ill.

His political debating skills were honed in Glasgow University's renowned debating chamber, alongside the late John Smith, Mr Blair's predecessor as Labour leader, who was a close friend of Mr Dewar, and Mr Menzies Campbell, a front-runner to become next leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Dewar met Marion, his wife, there and they had two children. But another fellow student active in Labour politics was Mr Derry Irvine, for whom she later left Mr Dewar, taking the children to live in London as Mr Irvine rose from humble Highland origins up the barrister's greasy poll. Mr Dewar never remarried.

Two of Mr Irvine's trainees were Mr Tony Blair and Ms Cherie Booth, later to get married and to be his passport into the cabinet as a controversially arrogant Lord Chancellor and chief mentor to the Prime Minister, charged with steering the constitutional reform agenda. That meant that Mr Dewar had to sit through prolonged, intense and tough negotiations on the home rule legislation with Mr Irvine in the cabinet committee chair.

Mr Dewar is a Glaswegian at heart, and Glaswegians pride themselves on being different from other Scots. Such a presence at the heart of Edinburgh government has created interesting tensions.

The new parliament building, for instance, was long expected to have been, in typical Edinburgh style, an adaptation of a 180-year old neo-classical building. But Glasgow's approach is not to adapt incrementally, but to demolish and rebuild.

And that is what is happening now to an office building at the foot of the historic Royal Mile, opposite the official Scottish residence of the Queen, Holyrood house, where Mr Dewar's monument will be a futuristic, curvaceous parliament designed by Catalan architect Enric Miralles.

It is doubtful, however, that Mr Dewar will take a similar, bulldozer approach to the politics of the new parliament and its administration. He is cautious to an extent that frustrates his advisers.

Labour's manifesto is full of continuations of policies already begun in London. The task Mr Dewar now has is to show that the parliament can deliver more than that, taking its own path, being different and making a difference. He still has to prove that he can lead a distinct party distinctly, rather than providing merely a Scottish flavour to a UK movement, with Mr Gordon Brown and Mr Tony Blair sending orders north.

The challenge for Mr Dewar is to be a bold visionary as well as a canny technocrat. The mantle of "Father of the Nation" could come to rest on this most unlikely figure. But over the four years of the first parliament he still has to earn it.