WHEN Chuck Colson was President Nixon's special counsel during the Watergate crisis he was collected daily at home by the White House limo and driven to work. On the way he would scan the Washington Post and its daily diet of exposes. He wrote later about how he increasingly failed to complete the journey before exploding in a rage and crunching the paper into a ball.

It must have been a bit like that in recent weeks with the Scottish Labour Party as polls showed the SNP riding high and ungrateful Scottish voters turning away from the Government which delivered the Scottish Parliament.

But three new press handlers and a one party relaunch later, it was Labour's turn to smile this week as The Herald survived uncrunched to deliver the bad news to the SNP that ''Scotland Says No'' to independence, according to System Three.

This was not a huge surprise. Most polls have consistently suggested that only about one third of Scots want independence. Yet the SNP was entitled to be disappointed that its surging support does not reflect any notable rise in sympathy for breaking the Union with England.

As this column noted recently, the Scots' continued sentimental attachment to being British, despite our famous talent for grumbling, is the SNP's greatest weakness and the Unionists' greatest strength. All that is new is the fact that while Labour in England is getting away with murder in the continuing absence of effective Opposition, the party in Scotland is being put through hoops by a resurgent SNP.

What was it Alex Salmond was never done telling us in recent years? Ah, yes.

''The SNP's problem is that there are more people who want independence than vote SNP.'' That paradox remains, only now it seems to be reversed. System Three suggests that there are more people wanting to vote SNP than want independence. Mr Salmond's press officer explains this away by pointing out, correctly, that support for the SNP has increased.

Mr Salmond himself argues the picture is distorted by the Don't Knows whose inclusion in the independence question deflates support for his party. Well, only up to a point.

It all seems terribly confusing, but is it really? Earlier this week I met a middle-aged Glaswegian who said he had never voted in his life. Why not, I asked. ''Canny be bothered,'' he shrugged, ''there's no point voting in Scotland because nothing ever changes''. He confessed he had considered voting Labour but concluded that the Tories were about to be hammered anyway without his help.

Would he vote in the Scottish Parliament elections. ''Oh, aye, that's different,'' he replied. And who for, I inquired? ''The SNP,'' he said, reasoning that ''in London Scotland doesn't get a shout but in Edinburgh it'll be different''.

Did he want independence, I asked this one-man sample of public opinion? He shrugged: ''Why not?'' There must be many Scots like him who are not committed voters, or even voters at all, and who have no antipathy to Labour and no great passion for nationalism or independence. But the ''Edinburgh-will-be-different'' attitude seems to be an emerging force in Scottish politics at this puzzling but fascinating time.

The SNP has supporters who don't want independence. Labour has supporters who do. There are oddball Tories and Liberal Democrats who prefer independence to devolution but, if the polls are right, the Scottish electorate looks set to carve up around 80% of the vote on Labour and the SNP and let them fight each other for the spoils.

Labour must rue this for it would not have happened when the Tories were a force, even a dwindling one. You knew where you were with the Tories because they played the Westminster game. Mr Salmond's lot play by different rules.

They only have to win once.

There are several lessons to be learned from this latest poll. Those Labour Party free spirits like John McAllion who argue that an independence referendum would stuff the SNP for the foreseeable future appear to be right. Wishful thinkers like George Robertson who assumed a Scottish Parliament would ''kill the SNP stone dead'' are wrong. For his part Mr Salmond appears vindicated in insisting on the Nationalists playing the gradualist game, to the anger of his fundamentalist fringe.

Scotland is not yet ready to vote Yes to independence. For the moment at least the voters merely want to put a brake on New Labour and are turning to the SNP to do the job. They seem to be telling the Nationalists: ''First prove yourselves and earn our trust - and we'll see what the future holds.''

The SNP should see this setback on the referendum issue as pain today and gain tomorrow.

If Labour wins power at Holyrood and begins to struggle - which seems inevitable - the Nationalists will be a forceful opposition just waiting for the right moment to go for broke.