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Narrative matters in politics.

Political parties seeking success will stress facts and issues which bolster their world view, thus inviting the voters to conclude that they alone offer solutions.

Sometimes those facts and issues will present themselves readily.

Sometimes they will have to be assembled. Sometimes they will run stubbornly counter to the party's vision, despite every effort. In those latter circumstances, the party will inevitably fail.

In the early 1980s, the SDP in alliance with the Liberals drove a narrative which said that Labour was too extreme to present a credible alternative to the Tories.

In the 1983 election, they came close to overtaking Labour as a consequence.

At the present time on the UK stage, the Tories have been telling a story of "broken Britain", a picture of economic but more commonly social fragmentation.

This narrative is designed to depict them as, uniquely, offering cohesion.

In Scotland, one can currently see the development of another narrative, used by Labour but also by those other parties which espouse the Union.

Scotland, it is said, is unable on her own to cope with the local impact of global recession.

That, it is said, was true with regard to the banks and is now true of the Dunfermline building society.

For example, Iain Gray, Labour's leader at Holyrood, has welcomed the sale of the positive elements of the Dunfermline society to the Nationwide.

He voices delight at the assistance this will afford to staff and savers.

Then he goes on to note: "The Treasury has taken on £1bn in toxic assets, something that the Scottish Government would not have been able to do."

Labour's narrative with regard to independence has shifted over the decades.

It was formerly easy to caricature them as arguing that Scotland was simply "too wee and too poor" to go it alone.

Understandably, that caricature prompted modification. It was too rude, too ugly.

Scotland, it was then said, could become independent - but should, on balance, choose not to do so.

Now the story has been refined once more in the light of the economic crisis.

Here, it is important to distinguish between the financial steps taken by the UK Government - and the political narrative built upon those steps.

There is continuing dispute over the fundamentals.

For example, there are those who argue that both HBOS and Dunfermline could have been maintained as Scottish institutions.

Against that, UK ministers insist they took the steps necessary to protect jobs, savers and investors.

They are adamant that the various problems were so deep-rooted that there was no alternative.

It is important to reflect that this matters less when it comes to the political narrative which is being assembled - and the challenge this presents to Alex Salmond.

One might argue that the narrative contains self-fulfilling claims: that Scotland's financial institutions failed because no credible rescue was mounted.

However, that is to disregard the impact of the narrative itself.

Labour ministers will repeatedly stress - from now to the UK election, from then to the Holyrood election - that Scotland's financial institutions had to be rescued by UK clout, that SNP ministers were peripheral.

You can argue that this is simple truth. You can argue that it ignores key elements. You can say it is a fact, you can say it is part fairy tale.

But, either way, it is a powerful story to tell.

As I have argued before, the SNP now requires to generate a new narrative of Nationalism, one that addresses the present economic conditions, one that relies less upon the previously proclaimed "arc of prosperity".

But then I suspect Alex Salmond already knows that.

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