PM - Scotland's Greatest Hope for Victory

While Gordon Brown was the SNP's biggest electoral asset, Alex Salmond deserves his share of the credit
Despite European elections rarely predicting Westminster votes accurately, the voters who flocked to Alex Salmond's SNP have the party counting the days to a general election, writes Alan Cochrane.

Alan Cochrane

In the end the SNP's European election win was predictable, but even if they did not break through the 30 per cent barrier the size of the win is still remarkable.
To have beaten Labour so handsomely - the margin was not quite 10 per cent, but close enough at 8.3 - and to have missed out on taking a Labour seat by a mere 7,000 votes out of more than one million cast is good going indeed.

Labour powerless as Alex Salmond's SNP takes a European election that has nothing to do with Europe

Alex Salmond was fully entitled to crow about his party's triumph and it will surprise no one to learn that that is precisely what he did yesterday. He claimed, on the basis of last Thursday's vote, that the Nats would win 27 seats - an extra 20 - at the next Westminster election. They won in 22 of Scotland's 32 local authority areas into the bargain.
European elections seldom give an accurate foretaste of what will happen in a general election. However, all the signs of a looming disaster are there for the party that assumed it would "rule" Scotland for ever and reckoned the Nat win in 2007 was nothing more than a blip.
There will be a new army of Labour MPs with nothing to look forward to except defeat and electoral oblivion. Whether Thursday's figures will make them more or less likely to join those who want Gordon Brown to step aside is open to question.
For what it's worth, my own view is that most Scottish Labour MPs are of the "easy life" brigade and will be content to postpone their date with destiny and defeat for as long as possible.
While he didn't take all the credit - at least not within my hearing - there is little doubt that Mr Salmond is entitled to much of it. The massive and continuing unpopularity of Mr Brown is the principal reason for Labour's nosedive, but the First Minister is fast cementing a role and position for himself in the national psyche that is proving to be a big electoral asset.
The SNP share of the popular vote has increased by 10 per cent since the last European elections. On top of his success in the Holyrood elections two years ago, it confirms the view that it is to Mr Salmond that Scottish voters increasingly turn as their first-choice alternative to Gordon Brown and Labour.
It also shows that attacks by the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat parties are having hardly any effect on the SNP and none whatsoever in denting Mr Salmond's popularity.
Attacking the SNP's policies on independence and their numerous broken manifesto pledges appears to have had little impact with the public, who seem to be saying that they don't really care about these issues so long as a Salmond-led SNP looks like a respectable alternative to Labour.
A change of tactics from all of Scotland's opposition parties would appear to be on the cards - with more focus, perhaps, on the personal qualities of the First Minister.
Of the other parties, the Tories can be reasonably satisfied with their numbers. Although they lost their second Euro-seat because Scotland as a whole lost one, they managed nearly 17 per cent of the vote, roughly the same as last time. But Ukip took five per cent and if that all goes back to the Tories for a general election, they will be content.
The Tory vote in key target seats suggested that they might win up to seven MPs, compared to their present singleton, but, as must be stressed repeatedly, Euro-elections are not accurate predictors of Westminster votes. Still, an advance is an advance.
The Lib Dems clung to their one seat, which is about as much as they could have hoped for.
At 20 per cent, Scottish Labour did better than in the rest of the UK. But across their heartlands, their traditional supporters are either plumping for the Nationalists or staying at home. Their prospects are dire indeed.
Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, and Iain Gray, the Holyrood Labour leader, posed for pictures yesterday with David Martin and Catherine Stihler, their "successful" Euro-candidates, but in spite of their smiles, they had precious little to celebrate.
Mr Murphy is a professed Brown loyalist but will be aware that his Eastwood seat, on the basis of Thursday's figures, looks even more vulnerable. For his part, Mr Gray must find a way through Alex Salmond's formidable armour if Labour in Scotland is not to simply stand back helplessly and watch the onward march of the Nats.
As for the returned MEPs, David Martin is a tireless campaigner, even if few people are aware of his good works. By way of contrast, his colleague, Ms Stihler, is totally unknown to the voters and is extremely fortunate to be still in a job, and a well-paid job at that. She has fewer than one per cent of the voters to thank for that. Lucky lady!