SNP surges ahead

The Nationalists breaking through the 40% barrier and taking a 41 to 36 lead brings even gloomier news for Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar and his strategists, because Labour has slipped four points in both our questions: on voting intentions for Holyrood and for Westminster.

Their fear will now be that this may indicate for the first time the Blair Government's honeymoon is over in Scotland, making next May's Scottish Election a mid-term mountain to climb.

The question on Scottish voting intentions, if reflected in the poll next year, would result in a virtual deadlock in the number of seats gained by the two main rivals at Holyrood, with 53 seats for Labour and 52 for the SNP.

The Conservatives, rallying three points to 11% this month, could expect to gain about 12 seats, the same as the Scottish Liberal Democrats, unchanged on 10%.

No-one knows how much switching on the second vote there will be in the new proportional representation system but, if this brought significant further gains for the SNP, it could even be enough to give it an outright majority over a would-be coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the 129-seat Parliament.

Labour admitted last night it had to work to regain the trust of Scots voters.

SNP leader Alex Salmond called the poll ''spectacular progress'' but cautioned his supporters that the coming year was ''a marathon, not a sprint''.

Most observers expected the SNP's surprising progress in recent System Three polls to falter: instead there now seems to be a clear trend. On the Scottish question, the party trailed Labour by 11 points in February: now it is ahead by five.

On the Westminster question, the Nationalists were 25 points behind: now the gap is 14 points. Last year that gap averaged 32 points and the SNP's highest monthly score was 26%. Now it is 30%, a figure seen in the past as a psychological breakthrough point.

For 24 years, The Herald's monthly snapshot of Westminster voting intentions by System Three has provided one of the only consistent benchmarks for Scottish political analysis.

For the last four months, a similar second question has been asked about the forthcoming elections to the Scottish Parliament and the answers have electrified the political scene.

The SNP will be jubilant at its ever stronger showing in the poll, particularly as the party planned to use today's date, one year to go to the Scottish Election, to step up campaigning activities.

It will reveal its theme for the next 12 months: ''Scotland's Parliament will need Scotland's Party.''

Mr Salmond said: ''This is an enormously encouraging poll, which gives the SNP our highest ever rating, and the first time that we have ever been ahead in Scottish Parliament voting intentions.''

He added: ''Labour's much-vaunted relaunch in Scotland has been a total flop because all that it has shown is that Labour in Scotland are a hand-me-down party who take their orders straight from London.''

The Labour line to such regular acerbic remarks has been to keep the response low key, stress it is not complacent, and promise the party will fight in the months to come along similar lines to the way it fought the last General Election campaign, arguing that the focus on promises that could be kept on education, health, jobs, and crime brought a landslide.

Now, the party is frantically engaged in finding ways to halt the Nationalist bandwagon. There have been a string of key appointments, including a press aide to Mr Dewar, in addition to the two special advisers already on board.

There is a new party general secretary in Scotland: Fife politician Alex Rowley, a close ally of the Chancellor; and a new head of communications at Keir Hardie House, former broadcaster Paul McKinney. To harness all this new firepower, Labour is assembling some of its most experienced hands in an ad hoc committee under Mr Dewar to try to get the campaign back on track.

Scottish Office Minister Brian Wilson, a key figure in the General Election campaign and earmarked for a similar role over the next 12 months, said: ''These figures confirm that Labour must work even harder to ensure that the general support which exists for the Government is converted into votes at the elections for the Scottish Parliament.''

He repeated the emphasis on delivering on health, education, jobs, and the other major planks of Labour policy, to regain support. ''As the elections draw closer, there will be growing scrutiny of our opponents' policies and in particular the Nationalists' clearly stated intention of using the new Parliament merely as a staging post for their quite different ambitions.''

Tories and Lib Dems, limping along at similar levels, tend to be dismissive of opinion polls. However, the Lib Dems may have to re-think a strategy that has made them likely junior partners of a Labour coalition if the SNP looks like emerging as the biggest party.

The Conservatives, who shouted loudest about the danger that devolution would play into SNP hands, recently called for a pan-Unionist alliance to halt the Nationalists and were roundly rebuffed: they will be looking to say ''we told you so''.