Now it’s time for Sturgeon to forget the tactics and think of the nation

ABSURDITY breeds quicker than a fruit fly. That is why, having been confronted by the absurdity and uncertainty of the result of Brexit, we should brace ourselves for another referendum on Scottish independence. And quickly.

No taking in of breath. No quiet contemplation of consequences. We are going to have Indyref2. Sooner, rather than later. What Nicola Sturgeon said was a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity in 2014 turns out to be the generation of a fruit fly.

Here is why she is compelled to do so – and why if she is clever she should do so completely differently from last time.

The compulsion part is simple. Scottish independence she decided was the right thing when she was a teenager.

Forget that she was born in a time when ‘party lines’ meant neighbours sharing telephones, not a spin doctor’s instructions – and that we now live in an era of iclouds and ipads – the solution is the same. She would betray herself to do otherwise. Wise Nicola would betray naive Nicola if she did.

What’s more is she has to manage 100,000 disappointed Yessers who joined her party and cannot understand why there wasn’t another referendum last week.

And she is a politician. I have worked for many, all of whom have been well intentioned. Have done things for the right reasons. But it takes a certain self-serving ego to have the confidence to ask your fellow man to vote for you because you can make their lives better than they can themselves.

This is about legacy. Her place in history. National payback for personal sacrifices.

Having seen off Alex Salmond, Sturgeon cannot leave office without having at least attempted to do what her mentor failed to. She is a woman of reason. But temptation haunts us all; and looking across at the Unionist side, she must see that the low-hanging fruit has already fallen. Dropped to the ground. Rotted. Been fed upon by drunken wasps.

There will be no Better Together to oppose her this time. The Labour Party has limped into a hospice, determined that its failures are down to how it campaigned in the last referendum rather than confronting the more profound reasons of its failure.

There is no Alistair Darling to lead the campaign. No Gordon Brown to dust off in a community centre in Maryhill in hope of a tour de force. They don’t have the hard will, let alone the hardboard, to create a Potemkin village.

So in a world of uncertainty she will offer us the chance of greater uncertainty as a raft to cling to.

The goal is open. But she has a challenge to herself. If she is the woman I think she is, this is not a time to bayonet the wounded. Those of us who love Scotland must hope that her contempt for Salmond compels her to a different direction. He fought the 2014 referendum like a giant by-election. Winning was all and reality a can to be kicked down the road.

That is why he was happy to perpetrate lies which endure – like voting No would mean the NHS was privatised. That canard boosted the Yes side, but Sturgeon should learn a different lesson from it.

Sacred

That argument was repeated by Brexiteers who realised that the NHS is the closest thing we could call sacred in this country. You can neither threaten it nor decry it. That is why they claimed that if we left the EU we could spend more on our health service.

But instead of the success of the tactic, she should remember the faces of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson the day after their side won the EU referendum. They looked stunned. Devastated even. They had got their tactics right to win the vote – but no strategy for what happened next. They led us up to the top of the hill – and then scarpered.

If Sturgeon has any statesmanlike qualities, she will forget the tactics and think of the nation. No more photographs with SNP ratcatchers from Paisley pretending they are EU diplomats, as she did last week. If she wants to be a nation-builder rather than just the winner of a vote, she will treat her fellow Scots with dignity and tell us the truth. That there will be pain if we leave the United Kingdom and face a £10billion deficit. That if we vote to be in the European Union while England and Wales leave it we will have to have a hard border. That we will have to adopt the euro and swap Westminster for Frankfurt as the people who decide what happens in our economy.

This week, a former Nationalist MSP argued that the difference between the Scottish and EU referendums was that in the White Paper the SNP had a plan.

In a week in which the Chilcot report slaughtered the dodgy dossier ahead of the Iraq War in 2003, it merely proved that irony is not something we need to import, just something we need to recognise. We grow our own.

This was a man who negotiated the Royal Bank of Scotland’s takeover of ABN Amro without looking at the books, after all.

I have known Nicola Sturgeon for more than 30 years. We were students together. She was in the same law class as my wife for four years at Glasgow University.

It would be fair to say we have never really liked each other. Didn’t hit it off. Not best buds. But I admire her achievements and respect the sacrifices she has made to pursue things in which she genuinely believes. As you might say, she has done her duty by the light that God has given her to see that duty. Now, that light has to be brighter than ever.

If the tactics of the European referendum were dictated by lessons learned from the Scottish referendum, then it must stop now. 2014 may have begat 2016; but now that dynasty must cease. We deserve something better.

If Brexit is seen merely as another opportunity to pursue the goal of independence, the SNP will have let us all down. Giving us, like a sleaze in a bar with a teenager, another jagerbomb until we incoherently say Yes.

Repeating the mistake of the 1940s when the SNP decided neutrality in the Second World War was a chance to oppose the British state at the price of refusing to fight fascism. The wrong thing. That does not build a nation.

We are not defined simply by what we are not. We are defined by what we are and what we choose to be. By settled, defined and shared ideals.

That means we will have to face the truth. What was once Project Fear we now find is fact. Scaremongering about our EU exit turns out to be nearer soothsaying.

That means we need to marry our ideals to reality in a way which Alex Salmond’s SNP never could. The challenge to Nicola Sturgeon is to do better.

To embrace compromise. The grand old British art of compromise.

Not to stoke the sparks of resentment to blind us or grope for a form of words we can agree.

To tell the stark truth about the reality she wants to visit upon us.