Insight: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's.... Supernat

In the wake of the SNP's spectacular victory in Glasgow East, can First Minister Alex Salmond do no wrong, asks Eddie Barnes.

THERE are few things Alex Salmond enjoys more than baiting journalists who have got it wrong. On Friday lunchtime last week, just hours after he had led his party to extraordinary victory in the Glasgow East by-election, the First Minister stood outside the Glasgow Fort shopping centre, bathed in sunshine, facing the press pack who – a few days earlier – had dared to suggest that Salmond's full-blooded commitment to the fight for votes might have been a foolhardy gamble.

Now, the extra 350 SNP voters in Glasgow East who had turned out for candidate John Mason the previous day had ensured his bet had paid off. "Some gamble. Some victory," said the First Minister, revelling in the press pack's discomfort.

Perhaps the hacks should have known better. Three years ago, Salmond gambled his already-firm reputation in SNP history by deciding to stand again for party leader – and won. Last year, he gambled his own position by choosing to fight in the safe Lib Dem seat of Gordon when there were other safer options available – and won. Defying sceptics, he boasted the SNP would emerge as the biggest party at Holyrood – and he was right. Last week, after making so many visits to Glasgow East that it had turned the by-election campaign into a virtual referendum on his Government, he won again.

It is a winning streak that cannot be explained simply by luck. Rather, Salmond appears blessed with a Midas touch. Now, as the dust settles on last week's victory, attention will turn towards his biggest-ever roll of the dice: the promised referendum on Scottish independence. The polls suggest that this will be the toughest battle of all, even if Salmond manages to persuade Scotland's Unionist parties that the referendum should take place at all. But, this weekend, few would be prepared to bet against him. Is there no stopping him?

SNP sources date the success of the Glasgow East campaign back to a meeting of the SNP cabinet at the Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen in late June. Salmond declared the seat was winnable, but only if the party gave its all. All leave was cancelled. And the First Minister decided to take centre stage. "It was vital that the SNP demonstrated electoral credibility, which is why Alex decided that he would lead from the front," said one source close to Salmond. "We would hold nothing back, because we knew we could win."

And so it proved. The party threw everything at the seat, outnumbering Labour activists on some days by three to one. Salmond chose not to be present at the count in Glasgow's east end on Thursday night, spending the evening instead at his Bute House residence in Edinburgh. His first appearance was at around 4am, when he turned up to wild cheers at the Barrachnie Inn in the east end, the pub that had been booked out by the SNP for the night. A special licence had been obtained until 3am for the election party, but so great were the celebrations that, with 3am having passed, the pub started giving away the drinks. By contrast, the pub that Labour had booked – the Crachan – had shut at midnight.

Salmond, tired but elated, was ready with a typical quip: on the same swing as the previous day, only Labour MP Tom Clarke would be returned at the General Election, "and I expect him to defect any minute", he declared. Last Thursday, hundreds upon hundreds of Labour voters in Glasgow East had done exactly that: defecting as never before to a party once seen as anathema to the east end's values. One Labour councillor recounted how, on Thursday afternoon, he had met a voter coming out of the polling booth, practically in tears. "She told me that her father would be turning in the grave, but that she just couldn't bring herself to vote Labour. She felt she had to vote SNP for the first time in her life," he said.

The significance of such defections is the subject of much political debate this weekend. For Labour, it is a typical by-election swing.

"The first silver lining I can think of is that (SNP MP John Mason] will only be there until the next general election," commented Transport Minister Tom Harris on his blog. But for Salmond and the SNP, Thursday was a moment of genuine import.

"It was a crossing-the-Rubicon moment," one Nationalist MP said. Among many neutrals too, the feeling was that Scotland had reached a watershed moment in its political history, and that old certainties, old loyalties no longer held. Scotland was now a country where anything could happen.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said the truth was somewhere in the middle. "Of course it was a protest vote against Labour and it is highly likely that Labour will win the seat back at the next general election. But the crucial thing is that the SNP is also in government, and it is popular and winning support because it is persuading people that it is standing up for the people of Scotland."

SNP strategists insist that it won last week because it, unlike Labour, had a positive message to sell about its time in office – a message that contrasted perfectly with Gordon Brown's woeful last 12 months. Walking around the Fort shopping centre on Friday morning, Elizabeth MacPherson, a 24-year-old from Wellhouse within the constituency, revealed she had voted SNP for the first time last week for just those reasons. Speaking music to SNP ears, she declared: "I like the fact that they're going to do away with council tax. My mum has always voted Labour, but I don't see why I should follow." One senior SNP figure declared: "You don't win elections with a negative message."

A perfect contrast was offered last weekend when the two parties were handing out leaflets. The SNP's leaflet had a picture of Salmond under a banner promoting Glasgow's Commonwealth Games bid, saying "Winning for Glasgow". Labour's had a grimy mugshot of Mason under the heading "Whose side is he really on?" – a reference to Mason's suggestion that the Tories and Labour were effectively the same party. Another leading SNP source added: "We deliberately introduced the concept of a tale of two governments towards the end of the campaign to provide a fresh message and final lift. Labour walked right into the trap by accepting the choice between Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown – an extraordinary blunder that played right into our hands."

The wonderful thing, as far as the SNP is concerned, is that it can't see this contrast ending – indeed any change, it believes, can only work in its favour.

As for keeping their own house in order, Team Salmond oozes confidence. The First Minister himself is in his element, say ministerial allies. "He doesn't get carried away with his own publicity," insisted one minister. "He has fierce powers of concentration. He will want quality advice on something, and he will want proper information before making a decision."

Impartial civil servants also declare that they are better directed and better managed than before. Many SNP figures, Salmond included, trace their strength in government to the moment the Lib Dems refused to go into coalition with them last year. "It was the best thing that could have happened to us," Salmond has said. As a result, he and his team have been able to run an organisation on their own terms, with a direction and a focus that, they believe, is being noticed by the public at large.

And as for the wider political picture, Salmond and his allies only see it getting rosier. The Conservatives are now nailed on to win the General Election in 2010 – handing the SNP the perfect chance to demonstrate to Scots that they are being ruled by a party not of their choosing. Not that the current Labour Government, they add, is proving an obstacle to success. One MP added: "One of the big things of the next year is going to be local income tax. We know that Scots want it, and we will be able to say: 'Guess who is stopping it happening? Labour.' People are just going to punish Labour for that – plain and simple."

Nationalist MSPs and MPs are also convinced that Labour will simply never learn how to take them on. "They are pursuing the wrong strategy on independence. Of course, there is a case for the Union, but they always exaggerate the benefits and make out independence to be a complete disaster. It's stupid and no one believes them any more," said one minister. As for last week's campaign, a source close to Salmond said: "We could not believe that they kept labelling John Mason a 'hardline nationalist' – it showed they didn't know the electorate. We knew support for independence in Glasgow East was higher than support for the SNP at the outset."

Amid the jubilation, there is a note of caution among some, however. One minister added: "We won't get carried away. We have still got to be the Government and we have got to prove ourselves. We are going to be faced with some very difficult decisions." Among those coming up soon are likely public-sector strikes. The SNP will also soon have to make good on its various hard-to-deliver promises: ending council tax and scrapping student debt among them. Other SNP figures question what has been described as Salmond's "cavalier" approach to power – with his handling of the Donald Trump case being the most obvious so far. One Labour minister who knows him well simply laughed when it was suggested that the First Minister would carry all before him. "Hubris will get him in the end. Just you watch."

There is also the sense that Labour simply can't be as bad as it has been for the last 12 months. This week, the party begins the process to elect a new leader – likely to be Iain Gray, Andy Kerr or Cathy Jamieson. First up, the candidates will have to decide how to handle the issue of Salmond's referendum, following the call by former leader Wendy Alexander to "bring it on". Gray sets out his own strategy in these pages today, offering a far more cautious note than Alexander. Labour strategists are desperate to try to haul the agenda back off the SNP's ground and back onto the more familiar territory of bread-and-butter issues. If it can stop the internal chaos that has bedeviled it for the last 12 months, the party insists that it can bring Salmond's momentum to a grinding halt. "The idea that we are watching Mao Tse Tung's march to freedom is just ridiculous," said one leading figure.

But if Salmond gets his referendum vote, can he win? The lesson of Glasgow East, says the party, is that he can. With the SNP brand established and made credible, say strategists, the resonance of its central message will start to strike home. They argue independence is just another word for more powers for Holyrood – a proposition most Scots are known to favour.

People remain to be convinced. And what the battle for Glasgow East showed clearly was that the SNP is better than Labour at making its case. Labour sources have revealed how activists sent out to tread the streets were told that they shouldn't even bother trying to persuade SNP voters to switch back to Labour. Instead they simply focused on just getting their people out to vote. On the other side, Labour 'waverers' received personal visits from SNP ministers or MPs on their doorstep, urging them to change.

If, in two years' time, it boils down to a confident assured SNP stating its case for independence against a paranoid and miserable Labour arguing for the Union, who is to say that Alex Salmond's biggest gamble of all will not also turn his way?