Salmond sees out his rivals

Two down and one to go: that’s the score among the opposition leaders in the Scottish Parliament as the parties continue to sift through the wreckage left by the SNP tsunami last week.

Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, didn’t wait long. He announced he was quitting on Friday afternoon, even before the full extent of Alex Salmond’s landslide victory was officially declared. Mr Gray will stay on until the autumn but will go then to allow someone else to start the unenviable task of picking Scottish Labour up from its disastrous performance last week.

Yesterday Tavish Scott, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, told his parliamentary party that he was resigning too. But, given that his parliamentary party consists of him and just four others, it wasn’t so much a meeting as a small chit-chat among a small circle of friends – indeed they could have held that meeting in the back of a taxi.