SNP supporters at Glenrothes were reported as "distraught" – a delightful spectacle, there will be more of that to come. The economic recession has awakened Scottish somnambulists to the absurdity of the fantasy they were toying with: the independence canard is off the agenda.

When Salmond is in the vicinity, there is never a shortage of bovine ordure. Bluster, assertion and a national economy configured on the back of a fag packet have carried him further than most. Last week, however, this posturing Pantaloon at last ran out of road.

Salmond's public career, from his "penny for Scotland" to the mythical £100bn he fantasised about deploying in an independent state to rescue HBOS, has been predicated on illusions.

His own illusions persisted into polling day last week, as witness his "Barack Obama moment" when, posing beside the Glenrothes obelisk, he borrowed the Democrat campaign slogan to declare: "Yes we can and yes we will." "Oh, no you won't!" riposted the electorate, entering into the pantomime spirit of the occasion. In the event, as one cynical commentator observed, it turned out to be more of a Neil Kinnock moment.

This buffoonery was vintage Salmond – he of the "unpardonable folly" of intervening to stop Serbian genocide, the denunciator of short-selling "spivs and speculators", which drew a sharp rebuke from his own adviser, hedge-fund manager Sir George Mathewson. Now that the balloon has been burst, the Salmond quote book makes hilarious reading. A year ago he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York: "In fact, our nearest three neighbours – Norway, Iceland and Ireland – are respectively the first, second and fourth most prosperous countries in the world according to the UN Human Development Index."

Not in the 2009 edition, Alex. This was Salmond's "Arc of Prosperity" which, within a year, collapsed into an Arc of Poverty. Suddenly, Salmond's coaxing of Scots "Vote for independence and you can live in a second Iceland" did not seem so seductive, as the Icelandic krona lost one-fifth of its value against the dollar and plunged 30% in a day against the euro. The latest problem in bankrupt Iceland is food shortages.

Meanwhile, Celtic tiger Ireland was forced to introduce an emergency austerity budget while its government, with a GDP of ?190bn and a national debt of ?45bn, proceeded to guarantee bank liabilities of ?400bn – very much how one imagines Salmond would have behaved as leader of an independent Scotland.

Yet there was Norway. Salmond clung to that consolation, until Jonas Jahr Store, the Norwegian foreign minister, rained on what was left of his parade by contradicting the First Minister's beloved myth of Norway's £200bn "oil fund" as a misrepresentation of the facts and denied that his country had bailed out its banks.

When the SNP became the largest party at the last Scottish election, sceptical observers predicted that while voters would employ Salmond to run Holyrood in preference to discredited Labour, if it came to an independence referendum, the answer would be "No".

That was in the palmy days of credit-fuelled prosperity. Even then, opinion surveys showed a firm rejection of independence. Now, in recession, Glenrothes has given Alex Salmond his congé. The SNP might still survive in Holyrood elections – ironically, the reverse of what the party is about, since independence is a Westminster issue – if voters delegate them to mind the shop; but so far as an independence referendum is concerned – bring it on. Alex is committed to initiating a referendum in 2010: that should be a laugh. By his own admission, a "No" result would take separatism out of politics for a generation.

In the meantime, he might address the question of how he is going to pay for his multiple, gallon-sized spending commitments on a pint-sized budget. SNP activists used to tell voters impressively: "Alex Salmond is a former economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland." So were half the people that dragged us into recession.

On the BBC's Question Time programme two weeks ago, a new phenomenon was evident: on the UK stage, Salmond had become a figure of fun, a conjurer of £100bn packages for fantasy bank bail-outs. Now the laughter has spread to his native heath. Politicians can survive hatred, but not derision. It is downhill all the way from now on for Alex Salmond, Scotland's Pied Piper without a following.