Yes, there was the danger that she could be quickly pigeonholed by voters and her opponents as the leftie Valleys republican firebrand.

BBC: State of Play 2 - Plaid Cymru

Clement Attlee, the prime minister, was a reformist but no leftie.

ECONOMIST: Hartley Shawcross

Health was given to Frank Dobson, an old leftie.

ECONOMIST: National Health Service

Small-minded Edinburgh lawyers who disapproved of his campaigns might blackball him from their golf club, and did, but their slightly more sophisticated counterparts in London could hardly dismiss him as a wild leftie: they had known him in the Bullingdon Club and shared his views on hunting.

ECONOMIST: Ludovic Kennedy

And Mr Hatch, for all his conservative bona fides (he has introduced bills in the Senate to amend the constitution to require balanced budgets four times over the years), worked happily with no less a leftie than Edward Kennedy to bring in children's health insurance and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ECONOMIST: The plot against a long-serving Republican