Gordon shows he'll fight not fizzle out

Last night's result - a majority of more than 6,700 for Labour - leaves chaos among Scots Nationalists and will furrow the brow of the Conservatives at Westminster.

Expectations of the two Scottish by-elections in recent months were both dramatically inverted.

Labour expected to hang onto Glasgow East in the summer, but got another bloody nose in its Scottish heartland to add to the humiliating wipeout in Crewe and Nantwich.

Now its confident return to by-electoral form, increasing its vote (a rarity for a sitting party) since 2005, confirms that the financial and economic turbulence and Mr Brown's handling of it, has revived his premiership.

All week, Labour ministers had knocked down expectations: while the SNP's bullish Alex Salmond was predicting victory even as the polls closed yesterday.

But the Tartan army met its Waterloo last night. Mr Salmond looks like a far less invincible foe for Labour than he did before this vote. It is easy to forget how close Mr Brown came to disaster. Had the downward trajectory of the spring and summer continued, the appetite for an alternative, or at least an internal contest, would have grown. This election - in effect a referendum on his leadership - could very easily have signalled his demise.

At senior levels in his party and his Cabinet, there was growing concern that their leader had neither the personal appeal nor the strategy to win, and that a wipeout in their Scottish heartlands would leave Labour even more exposed to a retreat of voters in the South-East and Midlands.

Mr Brown has shown that he can regain confidence and embody resilience.

The Scottish National Party under Mr Salmond, who only a day ago was echoing Barack Obama's "Yes we can", discovered that no, this time, he could not.

His platform of not-quite-yet Scottish independence fared well in stable economic times but, in an era of falling oil prices, looked ragged and unreliable for a party whose main economic plank is a claim to North Sea oil.

The boast of an "arc of prosperity" linking Scottish banking to Iceland and other small economic nations was rudely shattered by the massive credit crisis.

Mr Cameron also has food for thought from this turnaround. He has sometimes adopted a tone towards the PM which verged on the presumption that Mr Brown must soon be gone.

That now sounds out of date and a touch cocky. Mr Brown may justifiably be accused of having contributed to the scale of the credit crunch, but he has also profited in political terms from a period when voters' prime concern was how they will get through a period of economic hardship.

That sets a new challenge to the Tories, whose showing in Glenrothes was parlous, despite visits by the shadow cabinet and Mr Cameron.

As for Labour, a revival in Scotland is welcome but not a sufficient condition of winning a fourth term - still an uphill struggle. It should not really come as a surprise that a Scottish Prime Minister can maintain control of the seat next door to his home constituency. What will determine his general election chances is whether he can effect a similar revival in key marginal seats in England, where his real political problems lie.

Still, Number 10 has reason to pop a good credit-crunch champagne cork or two today. It has repelled the advance of the Scottish Nationalists, who were eating away at its base in Scotland, and confirmed Mr Brown's leadership.

One thing now looks certain about this premiership: it may be an uncertain and troubled one, with no guarantee of final success, but it is not going to fizzle out without a struggle.