It must be worrying that this article could appear in the Torygraph of all places...

Instead the Prime Minister's position in his party and the country has been strengthened by the scale of the victory – both sides said the margin would be less than a thousand votes - and it was Mr Salmond who ended up with egg on his face.

In typically bombastic style, the Scottish First Minister confidently predicted victory and even boasted that he had put money on the result.

While Mr Brown's political star is in the ascendency, 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.

Significantly, it is also a huge blow to his dream of Scottish independence, which the SNP candidate, Peter Grant, said he tried to sell on the doorstep.

Recent opinion polls suggest that support for independence has fallen since the onset of the economic crisis, and the by-election result appears to be further evidence that voters are more worried about the money in their pockets than breaking up Britain.

Perhaps they have been reading the Communist Manifesto while bored waiting for a Conservative one.

Apologies for the short posts today but I will be back with a reading later on. We may have to reach into the twilight zone to find out why Labour won, but I think I have an idea or two about it. I think I might have committed unwitting voodoo again, the details are too embarrassing but in autumn 2006 I ripped up a begging letter from CCHQ because I was not going to pay a £20 membership fee to a party with whom I was already fairly semi-detached, and on top of that hand out extra money on the back of the promise of a Ministry for the Quality of Life or whatever neo-Orwellian idea DC had come out with. The poll in the next day's Times gave the Tories a lead of only 1%. Then in the next day's Mail gossip column, I read that the lead had been trailed as 10% and CCHQ notified - but something seemed to go wrong and the printed edition of the poll only showed a 1% margin. I am only an amateur voodoo shaman, but I rather think my ...activities last week might have had the same effect on the SNP that my activities then had on Tory polls. It doesn't seem to work for me if you do it knowlingly, that is the thing - but the concept of fate is based on the fact that although we may strive to create our own destinies, no man is an island and that nature tends to steer people in the "right" direction.

NB I am having some technical difficulties with the previous post about Glenrothes. I am trying to fix the problem but the only link that works seems to be to that Hitler X-box clip.