So my Scottish friends, is there a Brown bounce up there?

Or a SNP anti-bounce?

I think the answer would be, a bit of both.


It's like the SNP, have slowly faded into the background due to the credit crunch while GB has came to the forefront in dealing with the crisis.

The SNP, look pretty ineffectual.

Nulab or SNP ???? a horrible set of options ....for an ineffectual government....

Good to see that Brown has his finger on the pulse isn't it? He claims that the result, a far redused majority, was a vote of confidence in his ability to sort out the present downturn.

So my Scottish friends, is there a Brown bounce up there?

Or a SNP anti-bounce?

I suspect Labour gained a few thousand tactical votes from the Tories and Lib Dems

However, they probably lost a few thousand to the SNP so to that extent Labour were lucky to maintain their vote, while the SNP's increased, but not by enough.

Of course, the reason it's being portrayed as a disaster for the SNP is that if they'd enjoyed the same swing from Labour that they had in the Glasgow East by-election in the summer then they would have trounced them, but of course they didn't even get close.

So in effect Labour lost votes but are well up on their Glasgow East result, which is probably due to a Brown/Labour bounce.

The SNP gained votes but by the Glasgow East standards they didn't gain much, and I suspect some were put off by the triumphalism and smugness shown in Glasgow East, and by Alex Salmond in effect proclaiming they'd won it weeks before the vote actually happened.

Alex Salmond visited Glenrothes thirteen times (unlucky!) during the campaign, and you wonder how he managed to fit all this in with his duties as First Minister, and MSP at Holyrood and and MP at Westminster.

Having another MP at Westminster will make barely any difference to anyone except the SNP themselves, so their obvious desperation to win the seat probably put a lot of people off.