It wasn't meant to be like this. Today Alex Salmond celebrates the first anniversary of his party's historic Scottish election victory. A year on he is still riding the crest of an unprecedented wave of popular support and it seems the mercurial Scottish National party leader can do no wrong.
This week elections in English and Welsh local councils reduced Labour to 24%, its lowest level of the popular vote since 1968. The Tories stormed to victory not just in the south but also through the Midlands and the north of England. Then, to cap a glorious week for David Cameron, London was recaptured by the Conservatives for the first time in 30 years and Boris Johnson was elected mayor.
Thankfully for Scottish labour there were no elections north of the border but opinion polls brought their own grim news. A System Three poll yesterday gave the SNP a record lead on voting intentions for Holyrood. On both the constituency and the list, the SNP polled above 40%, a lead of 14% and 12% in the respective votes, with Wendy Alexander's Labour party down to 29% on the list. If the same results were reproduced at the next Scottish election, Salmond would have 62 seats, 15 more than his current haul and just three short of an overall majority.
Gordon Brown and his Scottish lieutenant, Alexander, are reeling, hoping vainly that some kind of “relaunch” can get Labour back on track. Labour backbenchers remain stunned, most of them unable to consider regicide but muttering warnings that the prime minister and the Scottish Labour leader have until the autumn to prove themselves. None of this was in the Labour script. In the run-up to last year's Scottish elections, nothing short of an apocalypse was envisaged as a result of an SNP victory, according to the UK government. Businesses would lead an exodus south, terrorists would rejoice, and the nationalists would prove a disastrous blip on the democratic chart before a grateful nation begged to return to the warmth of the Labour bosom. It didn't happen, of course, and Labour's scaremongering was exposed.
Instead, to the horror of the opposition at Holyrood and the equally profound satisfaction of the SNP, the first year of Scotland's pioneer nationalist administration has dumbfounded all its critics.
With personal approval ratings 75 points above Alexander, it seems that for Salmond the past year has been less a stroll in the park, and more a walk on water. Far from being ridden down by the four horsemen of the apocalypse, he is snugly ensconced in the winners' enclosure.
With Labour in freefall south of the border, and the Conservatives poised for victory at the next general election, things could not be going better for the SNP leader. The accepted wisdom at Holyrood is that his party alone would not be able to persuade Scotland to back independence. What they need is a fear factor to go alongside the feelgood factor - a bogeyman in the shape of a Tory government at Westminster and with it the ghost of Margaret Thatcher - with which to terrify the doubters into voting for escape from the UK.
Now it seems that after a career-long wait, Salmond's perfect political storm - with all the essential elements necessary to tip Scotland towards independence - may finally be coming together.
“When you look at the poll numbers they're unbelievable. It just goes to show how fundamental the shift has been. It's recast Scottish politics,” says Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster. “The Labour party haven't listened to the people in years, and it's too late to start now.”
Even former critics of Salmond offer, albeit conditional, praise. “He's got an energy that the rest don't seem to have and he's prepared to argue everything,” says Sir David Murray, the chairman of Rangers FC, who accused the SNP leader of bullying businesses ahead of last year's election.
“He'll blame the exchequer for not giving us our tax take, or for not giving us our oil, so he's got a great platform to work off. He's good at that.”
Labour strategists in London woke yesterday with a massive election hangover, wondering how the Tories and Team Boris pulled off such an historic victory. Why did Labour's support slump to levels not seen since the days of Harold Wilson?
Comments from voters in Southampton city centre captured the angry mood. Litter picker Graham Blake, 64, who last week voted Conservative having voted Labour at every election previously, said: “My trust in Labour, and Gordon Brown in particular, is going downhill fast. If he is going to lead the country, he needs to lead by example. I could never stand Margaret Thatcher but at least she made a decision and stood by it.”
Peter Allsworth, 61, a shop assistant, said: “I remember when Labour was backed by the unions and supported the ordinary working man, but no more.”
It was a similar scene in Bury, Lancashire, which also turned blue on Thursday. There, voters refused to swallow the Labour line that the rising cost of living was caused by global economic turmoil.
Rachel Atkinson, 28, a trainee physiotherapist, said: “I voted for Tony Blair at the last election but I doubt I'll vote Labour again.”
The collapse in Labour support could not have played better into Salmond's hands. After an expected Tory victory at the next general election, he plans to table a vote at the Scottish parliament proposing a bill on an independence referendum. He knows that the opposition Unionist parties will be obliged to vote the bill down, at which point he will accuse them of denying the public their right of free expression, and trumpet their sins all the way to the next Holyrood election in 2011.
According to his plan, the SNP would then be returned with more seats and would table the referendum bill within months of the new parliament starting.
He does not imagine a chastened opposition voting against their electoral interests twice. The first minister is keen to play down suggestions that antipathy to the Conservative party among Scottish voters could be used as a negative weapon to encourage them to vote for independence.
“I think we have to progress to independence on the basis of what's happening in Scotland, and the performance of the Scottish government, and people's confidence in its ability,” he told The Sunday Times.
“I don't think we can rely on what happens south of the border to enhance the independence cause. I think that's something we do for ourselves. What I'm looking for in Westminster in two years' time, as I expect, is the ability to progress the Scottish cause through having substantial influence in that parliament, and that would be a very interesting position for Scotland to have.”
However, there are those, among Salmond's own supporters, who believe that rushing headlong for independence is a foolish move that will turn voters off the idea, rather than attracting them to the cause.
Writing in today's Sunday Times, Sir Tom Farmer, the first of the SNP's high-profile business donors before the elections, says alleviating poverty is much more important than constitutional wrangling, which should be deferred for a generation or two.
James Mitchell, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said: “I think the SNP know that if independence comes it will come gradually. So Salmond will be able to work with the Tories on delivering more powers.”
During his first year in office, Salmond pursued a strategy of delivering a series of simple, tangible policies that voters would remember and give credit for. Thus there was the abolition of tolls on the Forth and Tay bridges, the scrapping of student tuition fees, the saving of hospital casualty units, a freeze on council tax and cutting prescription charges.
“These are all directly measurable,” he said. “People know they've happened. That's important, because some of the achievements of the Scottish parliament over the last eight years were things that were slightly ambiguous. For example, Free Personal Care was a good thing, but tempered by the fact that it was different in different areas and underfinanced.
“We thought it was important that the things we struck out for were unambiguous and deliverable, and could be done to set a pace in government. It was important to strike a pace and a sense of direction. People regarded us a breath of fresh air.” Salmond hopes that competence will help voters place their trust in the SNP at an independence referendum.
This month he will unveil Scotland Performs, a website that will show whether his government is meeting or missing its targets. Modelled on a system pioneered by the US state of Virginia a decade ago, it will show progress on 46 key indicators of wealth, health, education and the environment.
Salmond can also point to forging a new relationship between central government and councils, as well as the Scottish Trades Union Congress and business organisations, while a quarter of quangos are being axed to eradicate bureaucratic duplication and waste. The whole landscape of how government works is changing. A “seismic shift”, Salmond calls it.
“What I'm saying about the next three years is that you ain't seen anything yet in terms of transforming Scotland. This is not just about a government getting plaudits and popularity and launching individual initiatives, it's not even just about the SNP proceeding to its constitutional objective on an independent Scotland, this is about changing the nature and style of governance in Scotland.
“We will measure ourselves by what's actually happening, not by the number of initiatives we thought might contribute to something happening. We are prepared to measure ourselves against the best, not against the mediocre.
“We've built a reputation for delivery on policies that people can understand and measure. We've changed the way that we do things, we've demonstrated competence and our ability to cope with crises. But underlying all that is a different vision of how we perform and sustain Scotland as a society as we move towards independence.”
The many boasts of competence, however, are double-edged. By claiming that the SNP can make devolution work much better than Labour and the LibDems, Salmond undermines his own demands for change, showing that things can improve hugely within the current settlement.
“I'm aware of Unionists who regard him at the moment as a capable steward of a devolved Scotland,” says Annabel Goldie, leader of the Scottish Tories. “Of course, if he seems to discharge that role responsibly it cuts right across his ambition to seek independence. People say he's a class act, but don't want him as prime minister of an independent Scotland. That's a tension he has to resolve.”
Meanwhile Alexander seems increasingly like the northern rep for a party of confirmed losers. Against a backdrop of Labour meltdown south of the border, it is difficult to imagine her ever getting back on the front foot at Holyrood. She is also more than capable of generating her own bad weather. On Thursday, she showed that Salmond does not even have to turn up at first minister's questions to guarantee humiliation, because she was comprehensively drubbed by his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon. It has been an extraordinary year in Scotland.
Events that might have threatened the reputation or stability of the government, for example, the terrorism attack at Glasgow Airport, a foot and mouth outbreak and a fuel strike at Grangemouth, have come and gone, at least for now - while the SNP's ratings have soared on the back of popular policies, apparently impervious to a rash of broken manifesto promises on class sizes, scrapping student debt, £2,000 grants for homebuyers, and 1,000 new police officers.
Academic rumblings about the shoddy, ill-prepared state of the government's plans for a local income tax (LIT) and a Scottish Futures Trust also seem not to have seeped into the public's consciousness. Rows over planning developments and improper access by Donald Trump, the tycoon, and Donald MacDonald, the SNP donor, have run into the sand.
For this Salmond owes much to a team of fiercely loyal lieutenants. Kevin Pringle, the spin doctor who has effortlessly greased relations with the media while Alexander has burned her way through press officers like nitric acid, had toiled for 15 years for the SNP before becoming one of the most powerful people in the administration. Likewise Bruce Crawford, the party's business manager, who has pulled off seemingly impossible feats for a minority government.
Barely a month after the SNP came to power, he avoided two defeats in one day on Tory motions that would have blocked LIT and a Scottish Olympic team, managing to convert the former to pro-LIT and engineering the collapse of the latter in a morass of contradictory amendments. “It was then that I realised we might not be as bad off as I feared,” said a senior SNP source.
What errors have been made, appear to have stayed secret. “I accept the existence of mistakes but I reserve my right not to discuss them,” said Salmond coyly. Brown and Alexander are now effectively on probation. Both have until the party conference to show that they have listened to the criticism of their performance and learned from mistakes - otherwise a leadership challenge will become a real threat.
Greg Pope, MP for Hyndburn and former minster, summed up the mood among the parliamentary party. “This is not the time for Labour MPs to destabilise the leadership. But Gordon is going to have to get his act together, otherwise things could be very different by the autumn,” he said.
Bob Marshall-Andrews, the MP for Medway, went much further, saying Labour was finished, whatever Brown or the party now does.
“We were smashed. The only thing we're clinging on to now is the chance that ‘events, dear boy, events' might just give Gordon the platform he needs to shine. It's a desperate state of affairs to be clinging to the possibility of some cataclysmic crisis to rescue the party's fortunes,” he said. “I think we're resigned to a Tory victory at the next election. It's a genuine Shakespearian tragedy because Brown has done more to fight poverty than any leader.”
Even ministers were delivering veiled barbs at Brown. “Too often we speak as if we are in a new elite. We are not sufficiently in touch,” said Ivan Lewis, the health minister and MP for Bury, where Labour last week lost its council majority.
Salmond also has more to do to achieve his dream. This week a YouGov poll found only 19% support for independence, albeit by asking a loaded question about Scotland becoming utterly separate from the rest of the United Kingdom.
But even more measured questioning has only ever managed to draw out 40% support for Salmond's plans for fundamental constitutional change.
So he faces the challenge of persuading the electorate to trust the SNP through its astonishing competence, while not looking so super-human that more change seems pointless.
