 | 'Both Donald Dewar and I have agreed that the future direction of Scotland is a matter which can only be decided by the judgment of the Scottish people.' Alex Salmond, 3 rd August 1997. |  |
| 'Both Donald Dewar and I have agreed that the future direction of Scotland is a matter which can only be decided by the judgment of the Scottish people.' Alex Salmond, 3 rd August 1997. | |
But the leader of the Scottish National Party could be forgiven for having a larger than usual grin on his face as he looks to the political future after winning over his party to the Yes, Yes campaign in next month's devolution referendum.
A detailed analysis of May's general election results establishes beyond doubt that the Nationalists are now the second political force in Scotland behind Labour.
Whatever he might have said publicly before the election about "pygmy parliaments", it was always Mr Salmond's view that the root to power and influence for the SNP was only likely to come through devolution.
The prospect of a law-making devolved parliament elected by a proportional system is, and always was, too good an opportunity for the SNP to miss.
A devolved parliament is guaranteed to give the Nationalists a substantial number of full-time members of the Scottish parliament with the staffing and research back-up to build a formidable political bloc with far greater power and clout than a handful of MPs - or even the football team's worth they achieved at their zenith in 1974 - could ever achieve.
Calculations based on the last general election indicate that in the first 129-member Scottish parliament, the additional member system would give the SNP 28 members sitting in Edinburgh to Labour's 63, the Tories 22 and the Liberal Democrats 15.
However, that is only half the story as the figures are based on the assumption that voters will behave in a proportional elections system as they have done in a first-past-the-post system.
No-one knows just how sophisticated voters will become when they realise that, under the new system, they can vote at once for both a local constituency candidate under first-past-the-post and for the party of their choice.
For the first time, electors in Scotland will not be forced to vote tactically as they did so effectively to oust every single Tory MP in Scotland at the general election.
It will, of course, be open to all the political parties to exploit the new system, but the analysis of the general election, contained in the latest edition of the journal Scottish Affairs, shows just how well-positioned the SNP is.
The Nationalists were disappointed on 2 May when the final votes were counted. Though they won six seats in total compared with three the election before, their share of the Scottish vote had only increased from 21.5 per cent in 1992 to 22.1 per cent in 1997.
That put them well behind Labour, which took 45.6 per cent of the Scottish vote, but put the SNP comfortably ahead of the Tories on 15.5 per cent and the Lib Dems on 13 per cent.
However, a detailed breakdown of the voting strengths of the parties across Scotland by David Denver, a reader in politics at Lancaster University, shows the SNP's underlying strength.
The Nationalists captured just under a fifth of the votes in Glasgow (19.9 per cent), nearly a quarter of the votes in Dundee (24.9 per cent) and between a fifth and a quarter of the votes in Central Scotland, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire.
They also performed well in the rural areas of Scotland, taking just under a quarter of the vote in the Highlands and Islands (23.6 per cent), more than two-fifths of the electorate in Perth and Angus (43.1 per cent), where they took three Westminster seats, and more than a quarter of the vote in Dumfries and Galloway (26.7 per cent).
The figures also reveal the extent of the Tory humiliation. The Conservatives suffered a drop of 13.2 per cent in north- east Scotland, a fall of 11.7 per cent in Perth and Angus and a similar disastrous showing through many areas once considered Tory heartlands.
It is not, of course, possible to predict the results of elections to the Scottish assembly in the spring of 1999, during what could be a low point for the Labour Government, and with an untried new voting system.
However, as an example, it is a reasonable assumption that, apart from in a constituency like Govan where the SNP had a realistic chance of winning at the last election and could have benefited from some tactical voting, people in the Labour stronghold of Glasgow who vote Nationalist do so because they support the SNP.
The reason they support the SNP could be either that they believe in independence or perhaps they are just voting for the party which has provided the most effective opposition to Labour "one party state" municipal socialism.
Therefore it is likely that if the voters can get to grips with the new voting system - and it would be patronising to assume that they will not - a lot more people in places such as Glasgow are likely to vote SNP once they realise their vote will count and result in an SNP victory.
Proportionality does, it is true, work both ways. There will be Labour supporters in the Highlands and the Borders who have been voting Lid Dem in recent times to keep the Tories out and can now revert to type.
There will be closet Lib Dems in parts of the north-east around Aberdeen who backed Labour for the same tactical reason and can now vote with their heart not their head.
The most likely outcome, therefore, from the first election is that Labour will come out the winner, though because of the PR system without an overall majority.
It would make sense for Labour to form the first Scottish executive with their Lib Dem partners from the Constitutional Convention, a move which in the climate of Lib-Labbery now emerging in Whitehall would spark little controversy.
But the figures suggest that we are also set to see a strong SNP opposition group sitting in the Scottish parliament which will use every opportunity to hold the new "government" to account and make the case for independence.
What happens then can only be guessed at but we can be sure that, whether it is out of conceit or genuine pleasure, Mr Salmond's grin will have grown wider by the time of the millennium.
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