Has Wendy Alexander changed from an impatient minister, when treatment of staff landed one official in hospital with a suspected heart attack and others complained of hectoring? She laughs and says yes: five years on, life, love, husband and twins have changed her. Some of those who work with her say she is more reasonable in accommodating their family lives, but the Labour spokesman at Holyrood was yesterday saying next to nothing.

A week after Ms Alexander took over the leadership and only a month into his job, Brian Lironi is understood to be on the verge of quitting.

The final straw was one of his MSP employers, Lord George Foulkes, publicly describing him last week as "an idiot". The 34-year old former political journalist would only say yesterday that he has flu and has not resigned. Not yet, anyway.

Losing key staff is not a helpful start to Ms Alexander's reign, though Scottish Labour excels at it. The brutal nature of its internal politicking, particularly at the sharp end of media handling, has seen a succession of similarly swift and bitter departures over recent years.

In any case, Ms Alexander is beefing up her own office staff, with two newcomers announced yesterday. One, Matthew Marr, has been right-hand man to Glasgow City Council boss Steven Purcell, and is now to handle the leader's media.

The other, Michael Elrick, brings experience of working for the late Labour leader John Smith, and John Reid when he was Scotland Secretary.

She first asked the former boss of John Menzies and a fellow Insead business school graduate, Patrick Macdonald, to review the way Scottish Labour operates.

Its shoe-string operation may come as a shock to someone used to major logistical operations. Next came her "virtual think tank", Ideas Scotland. Gregg McClymont, an Oxford history don and hotly tipped to become Labour candidate in Cumbernauld, is to run it, while health spokeswoman Margaret Curran co-ordinates the link to Holyrood and party members.

Edinburgh councillors Ewan Aitken, Andrew Burns and Ian Perry are to report to her on renewing local government, with hints this will include control of budgets at council level and young people taking part in decisions.

Ms Alexander returned to Warwick University to ask Professor John Benington to look at citizen involvement in public services, while Professor Jean Hartley, a health specialist also from Warwick, is to look more broadly at public service improvement.

However, the high-end policy work does not win the low-end weekly battle at Holyrood. Wendy Alexander had set her policy direction before appointing a large team of spokespeople.

Then she faced her first weekly joust with Alex Salmond. Such parliamentary theatre was not likely to be the new leader's strength, yet it was, oddly, the details that let her down.

Next comes Bournemouth, and a Labour conference speech on Monday telling the party what went wrong last May, while putting down a marker that she wants a power shift from the UK party. On that front, she still has a lot of persuading to do with MPs and Downing Street - that will take guile more than brains.