A week in politics has been a very long time for Salmond

IT BECAME the most significant, most exciting but also most chaotic week in recent Scottish political history.

Alex Salmond led the SNP to victory in the Holyrood elections - inflicting the first electoral defeat on the Scottish Labour Party in 50 years.

Mr Salmond spent the week trying, without success, to forge a "coalition of progressive forces" and is now resigned to having to rule Scotland with a minority government.

Everybody in the political world in Scotland is in uncharted territory and no-one knows where the next few weeks, months and years will take us.

We look back on the events of the momentous last seven days and explain what happened.

ALEX SALMOND AND THE SNP

DURING the most tumultuous week of his life, Alex Salmond has gone from being a backbench MP in the House of Commons to the putative First Minister of Scotland.

He had a personal electoral success in overturning a comfortable Liberal Democrat majority in Gordon, becoming an MSP in the Scottish Parliament for a second time.

And then he watched, more than 12 hours later, as his party inched over the finishing line just ahead of Labour to become the largest party in Holyrood.

Mr Salmond had done what no other political leader had done in Scotland for 50 years - he had defeated Labour in a Scottish election.

It was a monumental achievement, but if Mr Salmond woke up on Saturday morning dreaming of four years of relative stability, allowing him to build up the credibility in government that he so desperately wants, then he was brought back to earth over the course of the weekend.

Three short phone calls with Nicol Stephen, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, were all it took to shatter Mr Salmond's hopes or a "coalition of the progressive forces", the tripartite agreement which he had hoped would run Scotland.

The Liberal Democrats ruled themselves out, refusing to budge on their insistence that the Nationalists drop their commitment to a referendum on independence.

By Monday morning, all Mr Salmond was left with was the Greens and it wasn't long before the second reality check of this extraordinary week came.

The Greens also rebuffed his overtures for a coalition, preferring instead to pursue a much looser "confidence and supply" model of support for a minority SNP government.

Instead of securing the 65 seats he wanted for an overall coalition, Mr Salmond was now left with just 47 - all those held by his own party.

The SNP leader tried to be as positive and upbeat about it as he could, claiming there were "clear advantages" to running a minority government, but it all sounded unconvincing.

Mr Salmond will go down in history as the first Nationalist leader to secure the highest political office in Scotland, but whether he will also be in power will not be known for some time yet.

JACK McCONNELL AND LABOUR

JACK McConnell has been in denial. There doesn't seem to be any other explanation for his behaviour this week.

The facts are simple. Labour lost last week's election to the SNP and Alex Salmond is now on course to become First Minister next Wednesday.

Yet Mr McConnell has spent the whole of the last week trying to resist this. He has never really conceded defeat to Mr Salmond. He did accept that the SNP had emerged as the largest party, but the statement that he put out admitting that fact was one of the ungracious political statements in recent Scottish political history, couched, as it was, with provisos and littered with warnings to Mr Salmond.

He described Labour's performance as "outstanding" on Sky TV.

Mr McConnell has also insisted that he might cling on to power, claiming that he might still be re-elected as First Minister, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and he has yet to even think about moving out of Bute House.

Mr McConnell did have a positive meeting of his parliamentary group this week. He was given the enthusiastic backing of his colleagues but even he will have realised by now that he cannot go on for long as a former First Minister and leader of the Labour group.

He needs to give way to somebody else but the more relaxed attitude he displayed towards the end of the week, when he was walking around the parliament, chatting and joking to everybody, dressed in an extraordinary blue kilt jacket, blue tartan kilt and blue socks suggested that he might be ready to stand down soon.

By the end of the week it did appear as if he was no longer in denial which, as any psychologist will tell you, is the first step to getting your life back.

NICOL STEPHEN AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

IT IS fair to say that Nicol Stephen has had better weeks.

He went into the election as Deputy First Minister and leader of a party which was tipped to do well, a party destined to hold the balance of power at Holyrood and which would become a more powerful force in government, with more ministers and more influence on policy.

Mr Stephen ended it heading towards the opposition backbenches with his depleted band of MSPs, bruised and battered by an electoral squeeze which had helped to cast them out of government and condemned them to being no more than the fourth party in Scottish politics.

Mr Stephen himself has then had to contend with rumours that he will soon either be forced from his job or that he intends to resign - both of which he has strenuously denied.

The two private meetings of the new Liberal Democrat parliamentary group were central to Mr Stephen's fortunes last week.

The new MSPs met both on Saturday and again on Sunday to discuss their approach to the SNP and the prospects of forming a coalition government with the Nationalists.

All were cautious, primarily because they had promised the voters they would allow an independence referendum, but some were downright hostile to the Nationalists.

Against the advice from some MSPs, who suggested the Liberal Democrats actually find out what the SNP was offering and whether Alex Salmond would drop his referendum plans, the hard-liners won out.

The Liberal Democrat group decided to have nothing to do with the SNP, setting such a tough ultimatum - drop all referendum plans or we will not even talk to you - that there was no going back.

So the Liberal Democrats are out of government in Scotland for the first time since devolution and Mr Stephen has led them to their worst result since the parliament was established.

They will go back to their parliamentary offices to regroup, reassess and plan for four years' time. It is not much but it's all they have left.

ANNABEL GOLDIE AND THE CONSERVATIVES

ANNABEL Goldie must have felt like King Canute this week, doing her best to withstand an almost overwhelming flood of appeals, entreaties and insinuations designed to push her into the Presiding Officer's job.

But she has resisted the onslaught determinedly, knocking back every request with a firm "No, thank you".

It simply comes down to a difference of opinion. Many people, including a large number of MSPs, believe Miss Goldie would make a first class Presiding Officer in what will be a testing few years for the institution.

They have argued, with some merit, that the elevation to the speaker's chair would enhance both Miss Goldie's reputation and that of the Scottish Conservatives.

As for Miss Goldie, she fought such a good campaign that she feels reinvigorated and ready for the challenge of taking the Tories on to greater things. She does not want to end all that by becoming the Presiding Officer, a post which would inevitably signal the end of her political career in four years' time.

But, in truth, the election result was hardly a runaway success for the Tories. In 2003, they had 18 MSPs elected. Last week this dropped to 17. It wasn't a headlong retreat, but it was a step backwards.

So while Miss Goldie can claim to have run a good campaign, she is really not much further on than she was before the election.

The real test for Miss Goldie is to make those 16 MSPs count in the new fluid parliament. If she can, she will have proved she was right to stay on as leader.

ROBIN HARPER AND THE GREENS

FOR Robin Harper and the Greens, the last week has been a curious blend of bitter disappointment and joyful expectation.

The Greens did appallingly badly in the election, slumping from seven MSPs to two, but

the SNP had invited the Greens in for coalition talks.

It is an irony probably not lost on Mr Harper that his party is about to have its biggest impact ever on the political process in Britain off one of its worst results.