It would be difficult to overemphasise the degree to which the Scottish election result has sent UK politics skidding on its ear. In the final wash-up, the Scottish National Party won 47 seats to Labour’s 46 in the 129-seat Scottish parliament, the Lib Dems 17, the Conservatives 16, the Greens 2, Independents 1.

The vote had seen a consolidation of party support — the Greens lost seven of the nine seats they previously held, and the Scottish Socialists (and split-off group Solidarity) lost all six of their seats — a fair proportion of these votes going to the SNP as the prospect of punishing Labour drew tantalisingly close.

The SNP is claiming moral right to form government, though they’re not out of the woods yet. Labour is considering a legal challenge in one seat where it was defeated by 48 votes — due to the fiasco of informal votes running as high as 10%, because the constituency and list ballots were placed on the same piece of paper.

Since the smaller parties get their seats from the low quotas in the list allocation of seats, they would seem to be the principal victims of this screw-up… if, as was being muttered in the Glasgow pubs where Socialist support runs high, it was a screw-up.

Yet, the result is one of those classic and delicious car crashes that list-systems can create. On the one hand, the SNP can claim legitimacy with the largest single vote — on the other hand they’re the only one of the four major parties that wants an independence referendum.

By rights, Labour should form a “Unionist” government with the support of the Lib-Dems and Tories — except the supporters of the last two would never stand for it. Presumably, the SNP and Lib-Dems will strike a deal — and then contort themselves further to get the support of the two Greens and the Independent. SNP leader Alex Salmond will then spend the next four years turning every conflict between Westminster and Holyrood into an “affront to Scotland” and seeing if he can’t get people baying in street for freedom next time.

For the UK as a whole, should Salmond form government, it’s an extraordinary novelty — the distinctive feature of a tiered, federal system, that of having a de facto leader of the opposition having a measure of state power. When you reflect on what, for example, Joh Bjelke-Petersen did to Whitlam, or how Howard has been outflanked on climate change by a states’ Labor full-house — and compare it with the much freer run a British PM gets (from pollies, not the press), one can only wonder what would have happened during, for example, the lead-up to the Iraq war if the split had already been in place.

Which leaves Gordon Brown (who was desperate not to be opposed by a fellow Scot) getting it from both directions — with The Tories gaining 800 seats and control of 35 more councils on a 40% share of the vote to Labour’s 27% (the same result Labour enjoyed in 1996). What can one say but… “Scots wha-hey!”.

Oh, and there was also an election in Wales. Not many krilled.