WHEN our System Three poll two weeks ago showed the SNP surging five points ahead of Labour for the first time in voting intentions for the Scottish Parliament, others summoned up apocalyptic conclusions. The final, fundamental debate about the political union that has bound Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom since 1707 had begun, we were solemnly told. The devolved Edinburgh Parliament would be embroiled, from vesting day, in constitutional wrangling about the virtues of moving rapidly to the next stage - full independence. Conviction Nationalists could scarce hide their glee. Labour, expecting praise for delivering on a key manifesto pledge, looked gutted. The slippery slope tendency, feeling thoroughly vindicated, stopped nursing the bruises left by last September's crushing rejection of No-No and launched instead into an enthusiastic chorus of we-told-you-so.

We reflected on the stushie we had caused. Our own instincts suggested that Scottish politics have entered a complex new phase, throwing up voting patterns even the party professionals are still struggling to comprehend. If that SNP surge we have charted over recent months equates simply into gathering enthusiasm among Scots for outright independence, that apocalypse-now hypothesis is readily testable. So The Herald commissioned System Three to carry out an additional poll, gauging attitudes to the only two constitutional choices that, since September's referendum result, now confront all Scots - the

constitutional settlement Labour is currently delivering at Westminster or the independent Scotland that is the raison d'etre of the SNP.

The findings tend to confirm our instincts. Yes, there is clear evidence of a move from Labour to the SNP in voting intentions for the devolved Parliament. But that switch in voting behaviour is not accompanied by any equivalent surge in enthusiasm for Scottish independence. The 34% of our sample who now say independence is what they want is not out of line with past ceilings on popular support for a constitutional split with the rest of the United Kingdom. Our own System Three polls have found similar levels of support for independence in 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and again in 1996. The independence referendum that a rainbow spectrum of Scottish political opinion - Donald Gorrie, John McAllion, Gerald Warner, Alex Salmond - say they want would, on these figures, be lost resoundingly. The SNP still has a mountain to climb to deliver its ultimate political goal.

To be fair to the shrewder segments of that rainbow, like John McAllion, that is the outcome they anticipate. But for Alex Salmond and his party the message of this poll is uncompromising. Four out of every 10 Scots who say they will vote SNP in next May's elections want the SNP leader and his colleagues to run the Edinburgh Parliament as an integral part of the United Kingdom. But running one part of the British state, no matter how devolved, better than its political rivals or in coalition with a Unionist partner is not what the SNP is in business to deliver. Turning that significant rump of SNP support into conviction Nationalists will test every sinew of Alex Salmond's formidable political muscle.