The pre-election conventional wisdom about Scotland (both inside the country and even more in the rest of the UK) was that the SNP seemed to carry all before it. A little less impressively than previously, but the party still dictated the debate and shaped the political terrain, and had an aura of invincibility along with an inevitability about Scottish independence. Now, conventional wisdom post-election states the opposite—that the SNP juggernaut has been halted and reversed, independence put on hold, that there is a new-found confidence in unionist sentiment, and a greater prospect than for a decade of an enduring future for the union. This is what passes for much political commentary these days, as one orthodoxy replaces another with barely a pause or learning curve evident. A more accurate representation would be to say that Scottish politics has experienced a topsy-turvy world where perceptions have struggled to keep up with realities. The SNP has become the party of government and the establishment. The Tories are increasingly the party of protest and insurgency. This is a switch in classic roles for both—the SNP, until winning office in 2007, was the party of outsiders, while the Tories were that of the traditional establishment. Lest forgotten, Scottish Labour, for fifty years the dominant force of Scottish politics, has in the last decade struggled to find a new role. This was the backdrop to the 2017 election. The SNP remained Scotland’s leading party in votes (36.9 per cent) and seats (thirty-five out of fifty-nine), but lost 476,867 votes and 13.1 per cent between the 2015 and 2017 Westminster elections. The Scottish Tories finished in second place on votes and seats—with their highest vote (28.6 per cent) since 1979 and highest number of seats (thirteen) since 1983. The Labour party won 27.1 per cent of the vote—rising from the nadir of 2015 and 2016 and its representation increasing from a solitary one seat two years ago (when it lost forty of its forty-one Scottish seats) to seven now. The Lib Dems saw their vote fall to 6.8 per cent—but their number of seats increase from one to four. Scotland matters above its actual weight in the UK. The Tories had a net loss of thirteen UK seats, but Scotland contributed twelve gains out of their twenty UK gains. Scotland is also again live electoral territory for Labour. Despite its improved showing, Labour still needs sixty-four further seats for an overall majority of one seat, eighteen of which—more than one quarter—are in Scotland. Some commentators even said that the Scottish Tories ‘saved’ Theresa May and kept her in office. The argument was that without their thirteen seats and twelve gains, the party would have been in a more vulnerable position and perhaps ousted from power. But another way of assessing the picture is to note that England returned a Tory overall majority (297 Tory to Labour’s 227, eight Lib Dems and one Green). It was the combined effect of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—anti-Tory territory, and in the latter, completely non-Tory—which prevented the Tories having an overall majority and produced a hung Parliament.