Does Miss Nash cut a dash?

In his Saturday post over at Political Betting, David Herdson has pointed out that the new 'Baby of the House' Pamela Nash achieved almost exactly the same share of the vote in Airdrie and Shotts that her predecessor John Reid managed in 2005 as a senior Cabinet minister. Herdson's suggestion is that if the public are demonstrably prepared to put their faith in such an untried young candidate, perhaps political parties should do so more often as well. Now, I have no particular axe to grind against Ms Nash (yet) as I literally know nothing about her other than what she looks like, and it may well be that the public would have every reason to put their faith in her. But one thing I'm almost certain of is that they didn't, or at least not in any meaningful sense. It's the classic 'monkey in a red rosette' scenario - if anything, the result told us more about John Reid's lack of a distinctively personal vote.