Harry Wills: “The SNP juggernaut has been stopped in its tracks. Alex Salmond promised us an earthquake but by November the 5th and 6th, it has turned into a damp squib.”Jim Sillars: “Since Glasgow East, the leadership of the party has been infected by hubris.”
Jon Craig: “The SNP bubble appears to have burst.”
Jim Murphy: “When we lost the Glasgow East byelection I was honest enough to say it was a dreadful result, but yesterday is a remarkable result and the SNP should have the honesty to acknowledge that this morning.”
Alex Salmond: “I was wrong about the by-election. We’re disappointed with the result.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “I readily concede that this was a disappointing result for the SNP. We are very disappointed not to have won the seat.”
David Cameron: “The real loser is the SNP and as they want to break up our country, to destroy the Union that I’m passionate about, then maybe it's no bad thing that the ‘Salmond bounce’ has disappeared.”
Iain Gray: “Alex Salmond didn’t claim he could win, he said he would win. That’s typical of his empty bluster. People have seen the difference between what the SNP say and what they actually do.”
Simon Johnson: “The huge margin of the SNP defeat is the first sign that the prolonged Nationalists’ honeymoon, that began when the party took power in Holyrood last year, is finally over.”
Robbie Dinwoodie: “The Brown bounce turned into a Salmond headache as the SNP’s progress since July’s victory in Glasgow East hit the buffers, emphatically ending the Scottish Government’s honeymoon.”
Torcuil Crighton: “All honeymoons come to an end ... Salmond does obey the rules of political gravity.”
Brian Taylor: “This is a substantial setback for Alex Salmond. Politics is not in stasis. It is about momentum, about progress. The SNP's momentum has stalled in Glenrothes.”
Richard Thomson: “I don’t like talking of honeymoons in politics, but it’s clear that the charmed existence which the SNP has enjoyed since 2007 is probably at an end.”
Iain Gray: “Alex Salmond is now a diminished figure. His erratic judgment during the banking crisis proved he is not a serious man for serious times.”
Maurice Golden: “It is clear that people are rejecting Alex Salmond. The bubble has well and truly burst.”
Hamish Macdonell: “It is official. As of this morning, the honeymoon is over.”
Tricia Marwick: “Our SNP vote came out today, and I saw people coming out to vote for Labour who haven’t voted for 20 years. I need to think about that.”
Tavish Scott: “The First Minister made a great virtue of visiting Glenrothes regularly. Perhaps if he spent more time being First Minister rather than leader of the SNP, there would have been a different result. Alex Salmond predicted the SNP would win - he got it spectacularly wrong. Scottish politics has changed - the honeymoon is over.”
Alex Salmond: “Perhaps I should’ve spent more time on the doorstep to see how the temperature was changing. I think I would’ve benefited from more time on the doorstep.”
Lindsay Roy: “Although he [Salmond] is welcome to come to Glenrothes, I would much prefer him to be in London or Edinburgh helping deal with this major economic crisis. I think he has been found wanting when the chips were down.”
Gordon Brown: “People are prepared to give support to governments who are prepared to take the action, and less willing to support people who have no idea about how they can solve the problems we’ve got.”
Menzies Campbell: “Smart Alec has had his comeuppance. Once again an extravagant prediction from Mr Salmond has proved worthless.”
John Curtice: “It [the by-election] is a warning the honeymoon could be over. It’s in Mr Salmond’s nature to be confident but what he has to watch is if you start making too many predictions that don’t come true then people begin to doubt what you are saying.”
Iain Gray: “The honeymoon is over. The SNP’s broken promises and empty bluster are now coming home to roost. Their arguments for breaking up Britain have been exposed by the economic crisis, which has demonstrated that Scotland’s best future lies in partnership with the rest of the UK.”
Alex Salmond: “I hope to extend the honeymoon a bit yet, but we had a setback yesterday and while it’s certainly true we’ve had virtually untrammelled political success for 18 months, nothing in political life continues in that vein forever.”
Peter Grant, seemingly in denial: “There was never an SNP bubble.”
The First minister Of Scotland is a small office with little real power and less international influence.
Gordon Brown as the British Prime minister has shown the Strength of the United Kingdom.
We are stronger and more of a leading world power together as a 'Union' the Scottish people know this in their hearts.
as Churchill once said
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. (for the snps independence agenda)
Today for me is a happy day as a Scot and a British subject of the queen.
Let's hope it's actually the beginning of the end!
We think the end is beginning in Wales but for different reasons, Plaid Cymru have been caught playing card games, sleight of hand, with the constitution.
The card games might have been taught by Salmond.
SU
I don't think this was the beginning of the end.
Of course it was a spectacular win for Labour, and there were a number of factors at play. First off Brown is from Fife: this cannot be underestimated. Then we had Labour fighting the contest primarily on a local council issue, of which Roy's opponent was the main instigator - very clever.. Then there was Alex Salmond's over-confident predictions: something every swing voter detests. The fact that Scottish Labour has remained quiet and sensible without any faux pas' is clearly another factor.
But I still believe Scotland won't return to a 'one-party state'. And that's because every by-election fought, including local council elections, has returned a swing, small or large, to the SNP. That is the trend. Labour have a tough road ahead with the fall into recession. A backdrop of job losses to come will not be good news for Brown.
But this is indeed a wake-up call for Salmond. It's easy riding the crest of the wave, but it's how you return from a major setback that will determine whether the SNP have what it takes to remain a force in Scotland.
It seems to me that anti-SNP tactical voting happened in a big way - where else did the missing Lib and Tory votes go?
It will be very interesting to see if this happens at the General Election, too, although it will depend on the state of national and local polling at the time.
Still, it's a hopeful sign for the referendum (if that ever happens).