In appointing Kezia Dugdale as director of the John Smith Centre at Glasgow University they set out a bold mission: "to rebuild trust and faith in the political process that has become discredited and disrespected in recent years".

Throughout those recent years Kezia Dugdale has been an MSP, deputy then leader of Labour in Scotland and at the forefront of two referendum campaigns. That suggests that she should know what they are talking about.

In terms of "discredited and disrespected", her critics might argue that taking a month off work in the Scottish Parliament for I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here didn't do much for her political credibility. Kezia Dugdale counters that it gave her a much bigger media platform to spread her political message. The Lothian MSP says it helps break the ice at meetings with constituents and makes her much more approachable.

In terms of "trust and faith in politics", there have been times where it's looked like she might have lost her own trust and faith, not just in politics, but in her party and Jeremy Corbyn following a series of rows, some of them leading to her quitting as leader in August 2017 without even telling some of her closest supporters.

She denied that when I asked her today, eventually saying she even had faith in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, but it's hard not to feel that Labour's move to the left and splits over Brexit have helped push her out. She didn't leave with the TiGgers to form Change UK, but I wasn't the only journalist who asked if she would.

When I first met Kezia Dugdale more than a decade ago, she was a parliamentary researcher for Lord Foulkes. She was tipped for great things in the Labour party. Her star rose rapidly becoming an MSP in 2011, then deputy leader and Leader in 2015, after the independence referendum.

By then though, Labour's own star was on the wane. She took over from Jim Murphy after a disastrous 2015 General Election and led the party through the 2016 Scottish Parliament election with Labour dropping from second to third place.

That shows just how hard it is to rebuild trust and faith with the voters, as Kezia Dugdale has found out in politics, so I wish her luck in trying through the John Smith Centre.