MS Isobel Lindsay, the veteran campaigner for Scottish home rule and a

former leading light in the Scottish National Party, announced last

night that she is to join the Labour Party.

Five years after she let her SNP membership lapse, in protest at the

party's refusal to take part in the Scottish Constitutional Convention,

she is poised to jump the political fence.

Ms Lindsay, whose husband, Mr Tom McAlpine, is an SNP councillor in

Clydesdale District, said last night that she believed Labour

represented the most effective vehicle for delivering a Scottish

parliament.

''I came to the conclusion that a Labour government was the best hope

of progressing Scotland's interests. We cannot bypass Westminster.''

Ms Lindsay joined the SNP in 1967 and served in a number of senior

posts, including vice-president, before their political divorce in 1989.

She is convener of the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament, the

cross-political lobby group, and said she remained firmly committed to

that role.

Labour's Scottish hierarchy, which may have previously regarded Ms

Lindsay as something of a thorn in the party's side, is expected to view

her imminent membership as an important coup at a time when interest in

home rule has been reawakened by the Labour leadership contest and the

continued failings of the Tories -- both in Scotland, and at UK level.