Siobhan Mathers for Edinburgh Central!

There's no point in pretending that I don't get emotionally involved in election campaigns - in every election, I have close friends standing and I desperately want them to win. So I'm going to use this blog to do a bit of shameless plugging for some of them - starting with my friend Siobhan Mathers in Edinburgh Central. We have a friendship which was forged on the streets of East Dunbartonshire helping Jo Swinson in 2005. Since then we've been through the Livingston by-election, where Siobhan's husband Charles Dundas was the candidate, the Moray by-election, the Dunfermline by-election where she worked on casework with me and the build up to her campaign to win Edinburgh Central.

Don't just take my opinion as to her prospects. The Observer both acknowledges her great personality and her chances of winning. In Edinburgh Central, it's clearly a two horse race between Labour and Liberal Democrat and a vote for anyone else just helps Labour.

I was amazed to find Siobhan all over the front page of the Scotsman on Easter Monday. It's not often you go to get petrol and Tesco and find your friend in the same sort of position usually reserved for supermodels and celebs:-)

Siobhan has tremendous energy and enthusiasm and is very focussed - she's good enough to be a minister in time - and will totally devote herself to getting the best deal for her constituents if elected. She has such a breadth of knowledge on so many issues and, having cut her professional teeth on the BSE Enquiry and in Europe, she certainly knows how to master a complex brief. Her analytical mind will have absorbed and understood a complicated document while I'm still struggling with the introduction.

She and I share a love of food and wine, but she is much more disciplined about it than I am.

She also wins the prize for the best campaign headquarters - I have never, in my life, seen a lace tablecloth on the envelope stuffing table. And flowers in the window too.

I hope she makes it into Holyrood - she will liven it up a bit, bringing flair, energy, humour and knowledge to benefit both the parliamentary party and, most importantly, her constituents. So, if you live in Edinburgh Central, vote for Siobhan.