A leading Labour polling guru has declared the party's Holyrood "heroic" campaign "showed Labour at its best". Even after they had lost, the Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown "still believed that something could be done"

A leading Labour polling guru has declared the party's Holyrood "heroic" campaign "showed Labour at its best".

Even after they had lost, the Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown "still believed that something could be done".

Lord Philip Gould, one of the key adviser to the Prime Minister for the past 14 years, has set out his triumphant account of how Labour nearly won last week's elections.

Writing in the New Statesman magazine, he said the Scottish battle was "the most dramatic and certainly the most challenging of all the campaigns I have been involved in".

After conducting the focus groups which have been at the heart of the Blair election machine, he explains the SNP as "a more potent mood for national expression in the post-devolution era". The public demand was for recognition rather than separation, he claims.

"This blended into a political brew that seemed unstoppable - the perfect storm that SNP leader Alex Salmond believed would sweep him into office."

Lord Gould's research suggests the SNP "lost emotional power and clarity of message" in the final days of the campaign, when its reassurance message to voters was most vulnerable.

He admits the early stages of the campaign were "bleak" and the turning point was publication of the SNP's economic plans, which he says put Nationalists on the back foot.

The final week's message to Labour voters to "come home" made the campaign team sure it would win or come close.

In claiming the campaign showed Labour at its best, Lord Gould cited Tony Blair as "magnificent, and always able to change the political weather" while Gordon Brown was indomitable, "raging against the possibility of defeat with energy that was breathtaking".

Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander had determination that was both pathological and infuriating, he recalls.

The "heroic" campaign showed a "courage that will not allow for the possibility of defeat".

If Labour could win in Scotland, it could win anywhere, and he predicts that last week's results across Britain will mark a low point for Labour from which it can bounce back.