Mr Alex Salmond was declared leader of the SNP for a second time today.
The Banff and Buchan MP secured an impressive 76 per cent of the votes to win the top job, which he surrendered four years ago.
Mr Salmond, who insisted he would decline a nomination when Mr John Swinney announced that he was quitting after a poor European election showing, was odds-on favourite since his dramatic change of heart on July 15th.
About 6,500 SNP members voted in the contest between Mr Salmond, who leads SNP MPs at Westminster; the party's deputy leader, Perth MSP Ms Roseanna Cunningham, and former party chief executive Mr Mike Russell, who lost his Scottish Parliamentary seat last year.
Mr Salmond appears to have successfully faced down criticism of his last-minute U-turn and opponents' claims that he cannot lead the party in the Scottish parliament at Holyrood while still at Westminster.
He headed the SNP for a decade, leading them into the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 before quitting the following year.
PA