Never glad confident morning again!” was the rueful comment by a former Conservative minister in 1963, as he surveyed the sea of troubles overwhelming his government in the aftermath of the Profumo crisis. It is a sentiment which finds more than an echo within the administration of Alex Salmond today.

While nothing to match Profumo threatens the SNP government (we hope), the optimism and confidence with which the First Minister and his colleagues, a few short weeks ago, greeted each devolved morning have suddenly dissipated.

On a myriad of issues, they are running into troubles - health board budgets, public sector building works, primary class sizes, free school meals, local income tax. The list goes on. Even the hope of delivering a three-year council tax freeze now looks shaky as local authorities question their funding settlement and realise they gave away too much. Think-tanks, meanwhile, deem the SNP budget a disaster waiting to happen.

Nor, outside the confines of Holyrood, are things going to plan. If the Glenrothes by-election was a blow for the SNP, the demise of the country's two largest financial institutions was a trauma to shake the fabric of their independence construct that will stay long in the Scottish psyche. These days one simply does not mention Iceland when in the company of nationalists.

Labour, meanwhile, at long last and in some measure thanks to the more rational approach of their new leader, Iain Gray, have begun to oppose with some relish. Gordon Brown also is no longer such an easy target for SNP derision.

Even the normal “blame London for everything that goes wrong” approach to government doesn't work for the SNP when Westminster is represented in Scotland by the cunning Jim Murphy. His “hug them close” tactic, shutting down areas of dispute (halting the holding of asylum-seekers' children in Dungavel) and generally appearing ever-anxious to help (the economic downturn), has not only changed the game but robbed the SNP of their usual ball.

Indeed, it is fair to say that the landscape of Scottish politics, transformed when the SNP won power 18 months ago, has changed again. Of course, that is not down to devolved politics alone. The fear of recession and the atmosphere of doom and gloom that pervades high streets up and down the land demands that politicians of whatever stamp ditch their normal language and behaviour and work for the common weal. Those who are seen to be exploiting economic misery and disappointment for their own political ends will surely be punished by the voters.

How Salmond and the SNP react to that changed political scenery will go much of the way to deciding whether they can retain credit with the electorate. The First Minister is a resourceful politician and he has a track record of being able to turn reverses into political opportunities. But he has governed so far by a mixture of grand gesture, soundbite, hype and by promising that all our ills will be miraculously cured once we embrace independence in his promised referendum. That approach is past its use-by date.

How much better, for example, if Mr Salmond was to drop his Scottish Futures Trust, a triumph of hope over reality if ever there was one, and listen to those who say that while PFI is nowhere near perfect as a funding mechanism for public works, it is at least better than the looming vacuum that will merely serve to add to the jobless total?

How much better if Mr Salmond took a leaf out of the book of Steven Purcell, the Glasgow Council leader, who yesterday came forward with a range of innovative and relevant measures to counter the impact of the recession in Scotland's biggest city?

Mr Salmond could go even farther by making the ultimate sacrifice and announcing that his cherished referendum was off the agenda for the foreseeable future in the interests of dealing with the economic emergency that beckons.

Such a move might be anathema to the Anglophobic “grudge and grievance” wing of the SNP, but it would win plaudits among those voters who are growing more and more suspicious that Mr Salmond's administration, by endlessly complaining about London, is using devolution solely for its own constitutuional ends at a time when their jobs, homes and economic futures are on the line.

It would show that some of the lessons of Glenrothes have been learnt and also, at a stroke, transform the First Minister from being a political propagandist, giving him the status of statesman he so craves. It would also show that Gordon Brown is not the only Scottish politician prepared to drop a “golden rule” or two in the interests of the public good and that Mr Salmond is also up to the challenge of governing in a crisis, and able to lay claim to having a real and urgent sense of the people's priorities.

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