In the spring of 1945, an appalled Harold Nicolson witnessed a wretched scene in the House of Commons. A new member, victor over Labour in a recent by-election, a GP and pulmonologist by trade, introduced himself to the Speaker and fellow MPs as the first elected Scottish Nationalist to take a seat in the House.

Nicolson, a snob whose politely disguised prejudices extended to Scots as well as Jews, regarded the Scottish National Party as a lunatic fringe and a distraction, and was equally horrified at the breach of parliamen tary etiquette – the new man had declined to be introduced by sitting members. Dr Robert McIntyre, the SNP’s leader and first MP, had pledged to the people of Motherwell and Wishaw that he would stand alone and pay no form of obeisance to the “London” parties.

It was another 21 years before the SNP came of age in parliamentary terms, when Winifred Ewing won a 1967 by-election in nearby Hamilton and became only the second parliamentary member in the Scottish nationalist interest, going on in her later career to become the longest-serving British member of the European Parliament and known in Strasbourg as “Madame Écosse” for her determination to “put a kilt” on every political topic.

Since the two pioneers, another 87 SNP candidates have won Westminster seats, with nine out of the 57 Scottish constituencies currently held by the party. More to the current point, SNP held 60 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament – an entity that didn’t exist in McIntyre’s or Ewing’s day – before the dissolution prior to the elections on 7 May that many regard as make or break for all the major parties in Scotland.

Can the SNP, which was formed around the time the first Loch Ness Monster hoaxes were being published in London newspapers, retain control of the country at what seems like a cusp moment in local and world economics? Or has a party riven with scandal – rather conventionally focused on the two old favourites, sex and money – and which in the latter days of Nicola Sturgeon’s administration became weirdly obsessed with identity politics, had its moment?

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