This is weird. Labour has won, the Tories and the SNP have lost, and Liz Truss has been rightly punished for putting up my mortgage. So why don't I hear D:Ream telling me that things can only get, can only get better now I found you? Maybe it’s because some of the fundamentals underlying the election haven’t changed all that much. And maybe it’s because in Scotland, deep down, the results could actually be good news for the SNP.

But first, let’s deal with the SNP’s initial attempts to spin the actual results. What the election was really about, said Nicola Sturgeon, was kicking the Tories out and replacing them with Labour, the implication being that the SNP was squeezed in the middle. She also suggested the constitution hadn’t really been front and centre of the SNP’s campaign, the second implication being that the election results shouldn’t be seen as a judgment on independence.

I suspect many Scottish voters listening to that were thinking: nice try Nicola. Kicking the Tories out has been one of the SNP’s USPs for years, the T-word forever on their lips. The anti-Tory strategy has also been one of the SNP’s central arguments for promoting independence so the idea that it might now be a problem for them, and an explanation for their defeat, doesn’t hold together.

As for independence, the argument there is dodgy too. What Ms Sturgeon........

© Herald Scotland