The weekend’s election results have been devastating for Labour - even on a falling vote share the Tories in Scotland are on the up.

The local election results in England and Wales were devastating enough. Labour no longer has control of any county councils and is reduced to only 178 councilors – compared to the 1531 of the Tories and 484 of the Liberal Democrats. Sure, governments expect the electorate to give them a bloody nose in local elections – but this is the worst council election performance in living memory – if anything says just how poorly the public think of Labour then that does.

Unfortunately it did not really tell us anything about Scotland – we have had to wait until the European elections for that. But it was worth waiting for. The beauty of the European elections is that although the votes are aggregated up into one Scottish region that returns six MEPs, the counting takes place in local authorities and the way each authority counts the votes can often reveal what the result in a general election might be.

Now of course such an extrapolation comes with a very heavy health warning. Firstly, it is not a general election – the motivations of voters can be different – they may simply be willing to protest, knowing they will return to the fold when it really matters – or they may be expressing a choice that is not usually available to them or that they feel is irrelevant in the general election context (such as UKIP or the Greens). More likely they just sit on their hands and stay at home – the turnout in Scotland falling below 30% on this occasion.

These factors can make a difference. I recall, for instance the occasions when a European election would suggest that the Conservatives could and should win the seat of Stirling in the Westminster parliamentary elections – but they didn’t. The truth was that the Labour voters turned out to return their Labour MP when they just could not otherwise be bothered for the European elections.

This must be what Alastair Darling, Nigel Griffiths and other Labour candidates in Edinburgh must be hoping – for the European election results suggest they will all soon be drawing their vey generous severance allowances.

If the European results were replicated in Edinburgh Labour would have no MPs, losing South to the Tories, and East, South West (the old Pentlands) and North & Leith to the SNP. In the first two of those seats Labour actually came third on Sunday. (My interpretation is that Darling will probably lose to the Tories – the SNP was only 70 votes ahead of them and in a General Election the Conservatives will have more relevance and offer the chance of changing government – an attractive mix.)

The strongholds of Midlothian and East Lothian also look lost and the whole of West Lothian is a probably a goner two – although there are two parliamentary seats there and one can’t be certain about how the votes are distributed – but the gap between the SNP and Labour, at 10,000 is so large it probably doesn’t matter.

It is worth remarking that UKIP and the Greens did well (although across Scotland the UKIP vote was marginally down) but it would be a major surprise if they could hold on to their votes in a general election – which begs the question where would they go. My guess is not to help Labour, so there would be no solace there.

In the rest of central Scotland the picture seems fairly consistent. The SNP is now a respectable party to vote for – something I think has happened because of Labour’s abandonment of it’s old sectarian and sentimental working class roots in favour of Blair and Brown’s New Labour.

Labour might of caught the Zeitgeist of the mid nineties when the public wanted the scandalous Tories to be replaced with a more palatable compassionate conservatism – such as a Blair presented New Labour as – but it has caused a great disconnect with the traditional Labour voter in Scotland which now feels more comfortable with the sectarianism of the SNP.

The result is that in Many Labour seats the SNP will either win itself or will drain so much support that Conservatives will win. Seats such as East Renfrewshire show the current Secretary of State, Jim Murphy actually in third place after the SNP and the Tories, who would come first. Now I think such a poor result for Labour in a general election is unlikely when the real vote and larger turnout comes, but it does suggest the Tories can win the seat with Murphy probably only managing to recover into second place.

Elsewhere the Tory vote looks rather healthy, Dumfriesshire and the Scottish Borders looking good prospects – seven seats across Scotland is what I now being seen as a realistic achievement. That would be a remarkable outcome when one considers that the Scottish Tory vote – at 16.8% - has still not broken above the 22% it won in 1997 when it was wiped out, and is actually 0.9% less than at the last European elections in 2004. And for all such gains would be hugely assisted by a combination of ‘anybody but Labour’ and by SNP corrosion on Labour – rather than the positive appeal of Cameron & Goldie’s Tories – they would take it tomorrow if it was offered to them. And why not?

Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org