IT has been a tale of two contests for Labour.

Its UK leadership battle has become one of the great political slugfests of our times.

The candidate of the left, Jeremy Corbyn, and the break with Blairism and New Labour he represents, have generated genuine debate and popular interest.

Labour has dominated the headlines, membership has surged, and the party has become interesting again, though critics would note people also feel compelled to watch car crashes.

Way down the bill in Scotland, however, Dugdale v Macintosh has been a niche event.

The search for a new leader of Scottish Labour has conspicuously failed to stir the passions and arguments unleashed by Corbyn’s challenge to the Westminster consensus.

The protagonists were too similar, for one thing: modest centrists with nothing radical to say.

The stakes were also smaller.

The UK contest is about Labour finding an alternative Prime Minister for 2020.

But the new Scottish leader is never going to be First Minister come May.

With the party shell-shocked by the general election, and the SNP still rising in the polls, Kezia Dugdale’s main role will be to nurse the party through its next defeat.

To her credit, she has been honest about Scottish Labour’s predicament.

Not for her the unhinged optimism and policy overspill that made Jim Murphy's tenure in the role so ridiculous.

The party is “down but not out,” she said yesterday, concentrating on managing low expectations.

She will stick to a few, solid, totemic themes to demonstrate Labour’s purpose.

Education, and giving all a chance in life regardless of background, will be the cornerstone of her leadership in the run up to the election.

If people simply “take another look at the Scottish Labour Party” it will be success of a sort.

Dugdale was blunt about the party’s urgent need for new talent at Holyrood.

That means a clear-out of stubborn, deadwood MSPs and fresh candidates in 2016.

She would also do well to heed Macintosh’s advice during the contest that Labour should end its kneejerk criticism of everything done by the Scottish Government.

The party has become too “loud, shouty and angry”, as he put it last week.

That will be harder for Dugdale to achieve, as it has frequently been her own approach in parliament at First Minister’s Questions.

Her insistence on using every subject she can find as a weapon with which to ram home her 'SNP bad' message has come in for ridicule on social media.

Macintosh is right when he argues that Labour needs to stop being unremittingly negative and she should acknowledge it.

If the tone of Dugdale's political message has shown her to be out of step with the country, her attitude to Corbyn has shown her to be out of step too with the wider mood of her own party.

After warning that a victory for Corbyn would leave Labour “carping from the sidelines”, she has now been forced to dilute that criticism to salvage some hope of a useful working relationship should he win.

Dugdale and Corbyn do have something in common, however a profound disinterest in radically changing the relationship between Labour in Scotland – infamously described as a branch office by departing leader Johann Lamont - and the party in the UK.

For all Corbyn's message of change, he has defined certain limits. Not only has he set his face against Scottish independence, and indeed another referendum, he has shown no great interest in improving devolution and absolutely none in delivering greater autonomy to Labour in Scotland.

During his visits to Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow last week he made no mention of the changes the referendum has made to our political landscape, and in Glasgow avoided a question and answer session, fuelling suspicions that he preferred to sidestep the matter of independence.

Corbyn may offer hope to disillusioned former Labour supporters in England but there is nothing yet to suggest he understands Scotland and has anything to offer it.

Any problems Dugdale may have with a victorious Corbyn will, however, pale into insignificance compared to those she is likely to face from her deputy, Alex Rowley, who she did not want in the job, and who advocates an autonomous Scottish Labour party and far greater devolution.

Further to the left than Dudgale, a Corbyn victory could embolden Rowley to push for Dudgale’s job in the wake of the next Scottish elections.

Dugdale’s fight to lead Scottish Labour may have been dull, but her struggle to stay leader could be a thriller.