Emerging from the ruins of the Independence campaign that saw their charismatic leader resign and the Independence issue booted down the round for twenty years, incredibly, the new look SNP is stronger and has more support than the party that was heavily defeated only a few months ago.
On tonight's Question Time , from a traditional labour stronghold in Glasgow, the answer to why a sudden surge in SNP support became clearer.
"On the doorstep we are hearing 'Labour sold us out. I will never vote for them again'.
"Labour's decision to join forces with the Tories has cost us very dearly", said Labour's deputy Scottish leader.This was reflected in the audience who asked why Labour had endorsed Tory policies. They didn't need to. They should have campaigned on their policies. Not the coalitions!
So there is one reason. Opportunistic politicking over ideology. Traditional supporters don't like that.
The SNP QT rep raised that "Labour MPs have been instructing their activists to vote Lib dem, or , God forbid, vote TORY, to prevent an SNP win."
That shocking short term vote grab explains an awful lot.
Scottish labour MPs have lobbied Ed Miliband to specifically rule out a deal with the SNP purely to frighten voters into thinking about a possible Conservative victory. Both these attempts are to shore up their own chances of a slender Scottish victory. But by deceit. By fooling and disrupting the usual democratic process. The people won't stand for it..to say to labour supporters vote Tory to help Labour is one thing. To let that message out into the wider world is an appalling gaffe. Setting the idea loose that socialist Scots would rather vote in a Tory government than an SNP one. Its Almost certain to create more SNP voters than before.
Tonight on QT Labour's message was vote Sturgeon..get Cameron. Over and over again used that 'the wider issue is Ed or Dave ..and you will get Dave"
That message isn't really working against UKIP, where it does at least have an element of truth to it.
In England a split Tory-UKIP marginal seat goes to labour.
In Scotland, where the Scottish national party is already the ruling party, that is simply untrue. An SNP seat is just a conditional Labour seat. The SNP have before , and again on Question Time tonight, said they will never, under any circumstances, do any ..ANY..kind of deal with a Tory government. There are no options and nothing is on the table and nothing is going to be put on the table. That's pretty clear. But they will, providing they can get a deal, work with and support a Labour government.
Humza Yousef, of the SNP, was also quite silent when Toby Young suggested that the SNP might demand a scrapping {probably moderated to..no immediate renewal} of Trident for their support. Toby said Ed would readily agree to that.
Which he would .
It delays the nuclear weapon decision for 5 years. Saves Ed the problem of having to deal with it during his minority government that will contain some 50% of Labour MPs who are CND types. With an even higher proportion of 'just say no' amongst its voters.
Toby also reminded the audience that Sturgeon has said she wants £180 billion extra cash for Scotland. She wants the mansion tax money from London as much as Murphy does for Labour.
But a vote for the SNP makes something like this more likely than a vote for Labour.
Because a weak labour party will have to accept the SNP's terms, or hold another election. Something that they could not afford to do, even if they wanted to.
Add to that the Liberal Democrats meltdown. Something that is going to be much worse in Scotland where the Liberals pre-coalition traditional two faced stance was very much to the left of labour and their Tory bed hop was like an act of treason.
So now we can see it.
The SNP is on the rise even after its total defeat on the platform of its very existence, because of the mistakes of the big national parties in recent years. The SNP has a very clear and very strong message. It sounds buoyant. It sounds positive. Labour sound frightened, desperate and panicked.
The voters sense that Scotland can gain a lot more through voting for local politics than it can through voting for national politics.
They are probably right.
