Against All Odds.

Mr Smith thinks it has been one of those weeks for major political upsets and the rewriting of political history both foreign and domestic.

First we had Barack Obama being elected the first black President in the United States, and only the third Democratic President in the last ten American Presidential elections ... and then we had Lindsay Roy holding onto the Glenrothes seat for Labour in yesterday's by-election.

It is difficult to decide which is the bigger achievement, given that most political commentators thought that an SNP victory in Glenrothes was certain with only the size of the majority being in doubt. The eventual outcome of a seven thousand vote majority for Labour is a a clear sign of one thing however, and that is that with a possible Scottish Government independence referendum as little two years away that the SNP's case for independence has taken a major political dent in light of the UK Government's hundreds of billions of pounds' solution to the current economic and banking crises. A solution that would never have been open to an autonomous Scottish government.

The Glenrothes by-election result wasn't so much the end of the SNP's political "honeymoon" in Scotland. It was probably also the end of the SNP's independence dream at least for a generation.