When Jim Murphy and Iain Gray met at Edinburgh Castle yesterday for a photo call with Scottish Labour's two “successful” Euro-candidates, a shiver of apprehension may well have run down their spines.

That shiver should not be attributed solely to the fact that on the basis of the results Mr Murphy and Mr Gray could well lose their seats when they next face the voters. The deeper truth for Labour is that Scots no longer look on the SNP as a party of protest.

Much worse for Labour is that for tens of thousands of voters, the Nationalists are now the natural party of government north of the Border and Labour is a soiled brand. It may not be yet among the also-rans in Scotland, but more than 50 years of Labour dominance appear at an end.

Labour's 21 per cent share of the vote was its worst in any election in Scotland since 1910. The SNP won 22 of Scotland's 32 council areas and is on course to have more than 20 MPs at the next general election. Even in the last redoubts of traditional Labour support such as Fife and Glasgow, the party just held off the SNP challenge.

Labour apologists will say that this is reading far too much into one election in which only just over a quarter of eligible voters in Scotland bothered to turn out and in which Labour hold its two Scottish seats. The party's supporters will argue that it ignores the MPs' expenses scandal and the recession. They will say that just eight months ago, Labour confounded the pundits by holding on to Glenrothes.

Except that in Scotland Labour is not in government and has not been for two years. Any thanks to Gordon Brown for “saving our banks” has disappeared into the mists of time along with the Glenrothes result. Remember, too, that the SNP, especially Alex Salmond, the First Minister, has not been left untouched by questions over Westminster expenses. Labour has also failed to impress on the electorate that the SNP entered office promising much but has achieved little.

In other words, this European result cannot be dismissed as a passing spasm and one that has nothing to do with the real Scottish political world. True, many Labour supporters stayed at home out of apathy and disgust at the expenses row. But that ignores the real point that the party in Scotland has failed to give them any reason to back it. For that, the party's leadership in Scotland must shoulder the blame.

Mr Murphy performed manfully but he cannot carry the fight alone to the SNP when he has to spend much of his time in London. Mr Gray is in situ, but his ambition appears to be “The Quiet Man” of Scottish politics.

Meanwhile Mr Salmond and the SNP are left to crow and no one should begrudge them that. They defy political gravity by managing to become more popular the longer they are in power.

They have now beaten Labour in two successive elections in Scotland. If the Nationalists triumph again in 2011, as it seems they surely will, they'll be expecting to keep the Scottish Labour Party for their trophy cabinet - like the Brazilians with their World Cup.

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