The Glenrothes by-election yesterday saw Labour hanging on and the SNP failing to come anywhere near taking the seat after looking to be unstoppable just a couple of months ago.  Extravagant claims meant that many commentators had written this off as an SNP gain already.  Instead, the swing from Labour to the SNP was a mere 4%.  Has Alex Salmond's bubble burst?

The SNP increased its share of the vote by 13.1% but at the expense - it would seem - of the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.  In this widely-trailed two-horse race it is hardly surprising that protest votes would go to the party most likely to unseat Labour, but what is surprising is that Labour's share of the vote actually increased.  There are a couple of important explanations for this.

The first is that the SNP is largely the 'incumbent' party as far as Scottish politics is concerned.  As voters begin to learn more about its performance in government and its plans for the future, the enthusiasm with which they rally behind the SNP to bash Labour will diminish.

The second reason is that the Labour party at Westminster is seen to be tackling the financial crisis, however controversially, with the SNP as bemused bystanders.  The fate of two Scottish-led banks - RBS and HBOS - is in the hands of Gordon Brown, not Alex Salmond.  The real pain from the financial crisis is still to unfold but as of this moment the electorate can only look to political leaders in London to provide some sort of lifeline.

This is not yet evidence of any great comeback by Labour and the coming job losses and house repossessions will almost certainly hit Labour hard.  It is more of a political stalemate as the old established parties fight it out with little real enthusiasm behind them.

As Hamish Mcdonell notes in The Scotsman :

Momentum is everything in politics. Going into the Glenrothes by-election, it was with the SNP. Now, as the ballot boxes are packed away and the posters are taken down around the Fife constituency, that momentum has been stopped.

It is far too early, and there is much more to be done, before that momentum is transferred completely to the Labour Party. Indeed, that may never happen. For Labour, Glenrothes may prove to be a temporary blip, a short respite in an overall downward spiral.

What of the also-rans?  The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives saw their votes collapse.  While part of this may be the effect of a by-election with the SNP being seen as the main challenger, it is also the case that confident and strong parties should not collapse so easily.  The Conservatives are largely an irrelevance now in Scottish politics. The four minor parties achieved less than 2% of the vote between them.  There is no obvious challenge to the status quo, but neither is there any great enthusiasm for the status quo.  Something has to give.

We sense a vacuum of ideas in Scottish politics.  The SNP's forward march has been halted but nobody among the established parties is mapping out an alternative future for this country.  The Scottish Progressives seek to work with others to provide that alternative and build a coalition of ideas to challenge the politics of failure that has been Scotland's lot these past number of years.