There's a spring in the step of Labour MSPs at Holyrood these days. Yes, you read that correctly. They are beginning to believe that, with the debacle of Wendy Alexander's error-strewn year of leadership behind them, their long, dark night is coming to an end.

Their optimism is based on two things. First, Iain Gray, their new leader, for whom the adjective “understated” is verging on hype, has succeeded, for two weeks in a row, in discomfiting Alex Salmond at First Minister's Questions. Secondly, they believe that Salmond himself is beginning to make avoidable mistakes.

Certainly, the First Minister has not had the best of things recently. He has brought his huge appetite and energy for financial matters to bear on the HBOS saga, but not always combining it with the surest of touches. Enough has beeen said of his “spivs and speculators” moment of rhetorical whimsy, but last week he once again displayed his unswerving devotion to all things emanating out of Dublin by calling on the UK Government to follow the Irish Government's lead and guarantee all bank deposits.

That Greece and Germany have both followed the Irish lead since is beside the point. He would never hesitate to portray himself as anything but a good European, yet Mr Salmond appeared to be applauding a measure borne out of a panic-inducing potential failure of a big Irish bank and one that ran counter to notions of pan-Europe collaboration and co-ordinated response to the global meltdown.

To most observers, political point-scoring over Brown and Darling seemed the real impetus for Salmond's call, although he would protest that he was merely trying to protect the interests of Scottish savers. But he chose to ignore the fact that Dublin regarded as of little relevance the Irish interests of Scottish banks such as RBS. Mr Salmond's instinctive desire to worship at the feet of the Dublin politicians would not have endeared him to these Scottish bankers he otherwise courts.

And mentioning the Irish Republic is to remember that for years Mr Salmond has been telling us that only membership of the benighted United Kingdom stopped us from following the economic example of the Celtic tiger over the water. Well, thanks to an economy based more than most on a massive property price bubble, this particular Celtic tiger has had its claws clipped. With Iceland also feeling the chill winds, it has been well observed that the famous Salmond “arc of prosperity” of which Dublin and Reykjavik were two of three members is looking decidedly dodgy.

Labour claims that the First Minister is also in big trouble over free school meals and, certainly, it was erroneous of him to claim at the weekend that only Labour councils are proving resistant to this extra financial burden on overstretched budgets. Local authorities where his own party is either in power or sharing power are not enamoured of the idea, either.

Meanwhile, the least said about the SNP's proposed ban on under-21s buying drink in off-sales the better. It is a potty policy and should be consigned now to the rubbish bin of devolution. Labour MSPs would be foolish to believe that the Salmond bubble is showing signs of strain and that the Nationalists are in trouble. The First Minister is at his most dangerous when he is appears to opponents to be feeling the heat.

These optimistic Labour MSPs cannot get away from the plain fact that if another Holyrood election was held tomorrow, the Nationalists could chalk up an outright majority and have no need to think about a coalition partner. While that situation lasts, the First Minister will not be losing sleep. Glenrothes lurks around the corner and that by-election should bring with it its own reality check for Labour in Scotland.

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