NOW that the dust has settled from last week’s Scottish elections, where are we now?

Despite being just two seats short of an overall majority, it’s clear the SNP were the winners of the election. Winning more constituencies than any other party has done before, with over one million votes in the constituencies alone, it is clear that the Scottish public have again put their trust in the SNP to stand up for Scotland.

This is a remarkable achievement for a party which has been in government for nine years, gaining more seats than all the unionist parties put together.

In contrast the biggest losers were undoubtedly the Labour party. From a high point of 56 seats in 1999, Labour have lost MSPs with every Scottish Parliament election, reaching a new low last week of only 24. Labour ran a haphazard campaign, symbolised by their tax policy with the “now you see it, now you don’t” rebate.

Apparently Labour now want to position themselves as the party of home rule and call for stronger devolved powers – what a shame that they objected to so many powers like welfare, taxation and employment law being fully transferred in the Smith Commission. It does seem strange that Labour want us to ignore the credibility gap between their proclamations that we already had the most powerful devolved parliament in the world to now saying they want to give us more powers. I don’t think I’ll be alone in not trusting Labour on this.

Labour were caught in the middle in the battle for Scotland’s future, between those of us who believe it is better to be an independent nation making our own decisions and those who prefer being part of the UK and others making the decisions about our future. The Tories outflanked Labour on playing the union card. Ruth Davidson was clear that she was against any new referendum and that her party fully supported the union. Kezia Dugdale dithered on allowing Labour members to support independence, to supporting a referendum and even potentially voting Yes in it, to being reigned in and denying everything she had just said.

It is ironic to think that significant numbers of Labour supporters seemed to have transferred their vote to the Tories. Who would have thought Labour supporters who opposed the party of Thatcher which destroyed our industrial base in the 1980s and the party of Cameron/Osborne which today viciously attacks our most vulnerable would end up backing the Tories?

Of course there is a chance that many of them didn’t realise that in voting for the Ruth Davidson “I want to be second” party they were actually voting for the Tories – they all but eliminated their name from their campaign material. It was a bit surprising to see the Tories gain what is admittedly a distant second place, increasing their MSPs from 15 to 31. However, a closer look at the percentage vote simply highlights that the Scottish Parliament’s voting system did the job it was meant to do. With 22 per cent of the constituency vote the Tories received 24 per cent of the Parliament seats.

It is interesting to note that despite the wilder media acclamation of this result being some sort of Tory revival, that they are still polling less than they did under Thatcher, who in 1979 actually received 31 per cent of the vote in Scotland (although it did fall in consecutive elections to 28 per cent and then 24 per cent).

As for the Lib Dems, they seem unnaturally happy at achieving fifth place in the election, albeit with an increase in constituency seats.

The Scottish Green Party may have a chance to influence future policy developments depending on what they ask for in return, and they did well to increase their representation from two to six. However, it should be noted that we’re not in the same situation as the previous SNP minority administration from 2007 to 2011, where with only 47 seats it was important to do deals with other parties. Although not a majority, the 63 seats could provide some comfort knowing that all opposition MSPs will have to join together to vote down SNP proposals.

The real outcome of this election will be seen in the weekly First Minister’s Questions, which will see the Scottish Tories under more scrutiny than before and having to defend the policies of their London bosses who support hammering those on benefits while ignoring tax havens for the rich.

And although Ruth Davidson will now have more questions to ask, she will also have more to answer when Nicola Sturgeon highlights the Tory policies of paying for prescriptions and tuition fees whilst facing welfare cutbacks. How many Labour supporters who backed the Tories will stay with them once they see this on a weekly basis?

This will bring sharply into focus the two different visions for our country. On the one hand we will have the First Minister advocating a fairer society protecting the vulnerable and supporting public services, as opposed to the Tory vision of cutting public services and hammering the vulnerable. In such a debate surely there could be only one winner.

It will also be interesting to see where the others line up in this new battleground. No doubt the Lib Dems will side with their unionist allies or at the very least return to sitting on the fence while the Greens will, in general, support the SNP’s vision of a fairer, more progressive Scotland.

But what of Labour? If they truly believe in a fairer, more socially just Scotland they will have to back the SNP – or will they again side with their Better Together allies to maintain the British state. In a battle between the two nationalist visions, there is no middle way and Labour MSPs will have to decide which vision they wish to support.