The SNP's election win has transformed Scotland, whatever happens next. Last Friday morning didn't just usher in a majority nationalist government. It ushered out an enduring caricature of the Scots as dour, cautious and eternally pessimistic.

Dinnae get above yersel. It's ae (always) been. I kent his faither. We're all doomed. Scotland's cliched wisdoms describe a society that's traditionally been slow to change but quick to hobble the ambitious, progressive or cocky. Yet now it has elected a man who is confidence on a stick. If the country were still populated by gloom-laden Private Frazers or cantankerous Groundskeeper Willies, Alex Salmond's landslide simply couldn't have happened.

Negative small-screen stereotypes have straddled generations and sustained a sullen, no-can-do outlook that's slowly been strangling Scotland. Unfortunately for Iain Gray it's an attitude he personified during this campaign.

A thoroughly decent man, the Scottish Labour leader nonetheless treated the Scottish electorate like voting automatons, programmed to respond like terrified, herded sheep to words such as "Tory" and "Thatcher". And why not? Negative campaigning always worked in the past. No longer.

YouGov polling suggests 80,000 Labour voters switched to the SNP during the four final days of campaigning, when Labour deluged households with simplistic "Vote Labour – vote jobs" leaflets. At the same time 200 businesses – big and small, from every Scottish region – were backing the SNP in full page newspaper ads.

Racing driver Jackie Stewart, engineering millionaire Jim McColl and actors Brian Cox and Alan Cumming gave cross-societal cache to Alex Salmond's presidential campaign. In a world of "show, don't tell", the SNP could demonstrate popularity while Labour could only assert it.

News leaked that "Big Lec" had booked helicopter landing space for his victory speech outside a top Edinburgh hotel, days before the polls even opened. And on the ballot papers, the SNP was renamed "Alex Salmond for first minister". It was confidence bordering on arrogance, and utterly unScottish.

Salmond's astonishing self belief even prompted memories of Neil Kinnock's premature victory party in 1992 and speculation of a possible backlash.

It didn't happen.

The hyper-confident Alex Salmond swept the boards.

Scotland's first minister is unquestionably its tallest poppy. And yet, far from scything him down, Scots across social, sectarian, class and geographical divides abandoned the voting habits of several lifetimes to support him. In the process they broke every rule in the miserable Little Book of Calvin.

And destroyed the safeguards Labour had deliberately built into the Scottish voting system to safeguard against an overall SNP majority. The list vote -- designed to compensate parties with more votes than seats -- failed to reward those beaten in first-past-the-post constituency voting by the Nats.

Greater Glasgow– home of Keir Hardie – ousted "weel kent" Labour faces for unknown SNP candidates and even George Galloway didn't deflect left-wing voters in their headlong flight from Labour to the SNP.

The official opinion polls were wrong. The commentators were wrong.

The SNP landslide terminated the political careers of Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray, and this weekend Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott.

Five-years of impotent thumb-twiddling beckon for Alex Salmond's remaining political opponents. Radical SNP proposals will soon reappear – such as minimum alcohol pricing, local income tax and of course, the independence referendum. Scottish politics will be anything but boring.

Seismic political change has been possible because seismic cultural change has happened too. The SNP's victory is on a par with Tony Blair's 1997 trouncing of the Tories. Although Scotland quietly, loyally and pointlessly continued voting Labour throughout Thatcher's reign until England caught up.

The SNP's destruction of Labour has an unthinkable quality for Scots – the same jaw-dropping, epoch-ending force of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness standing together at the head of a power-sharing government in Belfast.Perhaps this significance is best appreciated by fellow Celts, accustomed to fortresses of deep tribal loyalty where proportional voting, better alternatives and rational argument have hitherto failed to have an impact.

Scotland's rigid electoral certainties have been swept away. Here the west voted Labour, the north voted Lib Dem, the oil-rich, north-east voted SNP and the leafiest suburbs voted Tory. Nationalists voted SNP, unionists wouldn't. The faultlines that divided Scotland were as formidable and enduring as the Berlin Wall. Last week they disappeared.

Each nation has a set of associated personality traits. Ours just changed. Scots are able to ignore scaremongering, hear bold ideas and believe change might just be for the better.

What's next? The path ahead is hard. The SNP has undoubtedly over-promised. Spending cuts, job losses and a stagnant housing market mean support could ebb from the nationalists just as swiftly as it has flowed their way.

But that's the point. The dam of convention has finally burst. Scots relied on their hearts and heads last Thursday, not reflex reactions or old habits. Private Frazer – eat your miserable heart out.