So Labour leader Kezia Dugdale once applied for work experience with the SNP we were told this week.

She explained she was a 21 year-old law student at the time and said she had no recollection but didn’t deny it.

Does it mean she was secretly an SNP supporter? No, of course not.

Holyrood is full of interns from all over the world working for MSPs all with the same intention of gaining valuable experience for when they are looking to enter the world of work.

To suggest for example an international relations student from Ontario working for an SNP MSP for Fife for reasons of personal development backs the party would be ludicrous.

So why should it apply to a law student from Aberdeen.

There is no suggestion Kezia Dudgale has changed her political leanings and even if she had she wouldn’t be alone.   

Alex Neil, SNP heavyweight, leadership challenger, scourge of Labour, quick to skewer his opponents with barb and wit in and out of Holyrood. And a former Labour Party member and official.

No-one questions Alex Neil’s SNP credentials.

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, SNP MP currently making Scotland’s, and her own, voice heard at Westminster.

SNP media darling and would-be rising star and former Tory candidate, standing against Nicola Sturgeon no less, in 1999.

Chic Brodie, SNP MSP for South Scotland for the last five years and seven times LibDem candidate as recently as 2001.

John Wilson, standing for the Greens in West of Scotland and SNP MSP since 2007.

These people have all changed their political allegiance while there is no evidence the Labour leader has been anything other than Labour for her entire political or adult life.

So why did the SNP leak this 13 year old revelation now, during an election campaign it is expected to win at a canter.

Where is the need to attempt to discredit Kezia Dugdale in this negative way if there is no serious threat?

Perhaps the current Labour leader is privately seen as more capable than her recent predecessors and is considered more likely to improve the party’s fortunes than either Jim Murphy or Johann Lamont was.

In her first election as leader she is already showing signs of being more effective than her predecessors in debates and on the campaign trail.

Perhaps some people want to take the focus way from policies like the 50p tax rate and on to personalities.

Perhaps that is what the so called dirty-tricks operation is about and the SNP want to nip any revival in the bud

Or maybe someone has simply been watching too many episodes of House of Cards.