Newington's Evan Williams looks at what Scotland’s election results mean for the SNP’s hopes of a second independence referendum.

Gains for the Conservatives will severely diminish the SNP’s capacity in Parliament and their ability to command attention on the UK stage. Among the biggest losses were SNP Deputy Leader, Angus Robertson, in Moray and former First Minister, Alex Salmond, in Gordon. That said, overall, the SNP vote share remains a creditable 36.9%. With 35 seats they will claim the victory in Scotland. But as victories go, it’s far from emphatic. No party in Scotland has had a lower winning number of seats since 1951 (Conservatives) or a lower share of the vote since 1983.

The SNP has long benefited from the support of “small c” conservatives, who came to it from an anti-Labour, small government perspective in the 1980s and 90s. Those voters have now found themselves a home in the Scottish Conservative Party. To some extent, they were drawn by Ruth Davidson’s confident leadership, while also being driven away by the SNP’s devotion to another independence referendum and the national party’s vigorous courting of the left.

While the SNP remains firmly in control in the Scottish Government, only time will tell if the General Election result marks a permanent shift in political fortunes or a bump in the road. Either way, there will be tough questions asked inside the SNP.

So it seems that multi-party politics is back with a vengeance in Scotland. The SNP will, of course, try to claim this result is a victory. It will provide comfort to them in what will be a difficult weekend. However, their leader is wounded, their record in government under scrutiny like never before and their iron discipline will now be sorely tested.

Asked directly if independence was off the table the First Minister deflected the question. Yet, the inescapable conclusion of the vote is that indyref no longer binds the disparate strands of SNP together.

The SNP will need popular, eye-catching and ambitious new policy to get its teeth into and it will need to find a way to turn around the sense of drift in both Scottish education and the NHS. This creates an opportunity for those with solutions to these thorny issues as the SNP will have to be more open to listening to outside voices.

Meanwhile Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will face the future with renewed confidence in Scotland, having demonstrated the fallibility of the SNP and narrowing majorities across the country.