The biggest threat to the Union is not the SNP. It’s apathy from we No voters

CONSISTENCy is the hobgoblin of little minds. If Emerson’s saying is true then Nicola Sturgeon’s thinking is fiend-free. Bar the desire for independence, her mind is unencumbered by any need to be consistent.

Anti-nuclear, she wants an independent Scotland to join a nuclear alliance in Nato. A fierce critic of the UK’s fiscal policy, she wanted to retain the pound last time I looked. Determined that Scotland should make its own decisions, she wants to share sovereignty with Brussels.

This is not the flexible mindset Emerson advocated. They are serious inconsistencies. But they soothe pro-Union minds with the soporific effect of Horlicks.

In the smug corners of Unionist salons they reassure us like a Saturday morning duvet that there will not be a second referendum on independence.

How can she call one while fundamental questions like currency and EU membership remain unresolved? Let’s go safely back to sleep in our Union Jack jammies.

Clever people instead pose clever questions about how Miss Sturgeon might march her supporters, who expect a new poll, back down the hill.

The answer is that she won’t. It is the clever people who are stupid. Dangerously complacent if you believe in the Union.

There were mistakes made by the Better Together campaign in the run-up to 2014. But the biggest one was that it stopped. The yes campaign didn’t.

Defeated, yes, bloodied, perhaps, but undaunted it has continued ever since.

The SNP has a standing army of hundreds of thousands, ready for a new conflict at a moment’s notice.

The UK government seems to think it will be able to conjure up an instant-mix militia to defeat them if, and when, a referendum is called. They are profoundly wrong. Their next effort could make Dad’s Army look like the SAS.

If 2014 was our constitutional Dunkirk, as of today the next referendum might look more like the Clydebank Blitz.

We are not in an era of rational thought. If we were, 45 per cent of Scots would not have voted for independence, a dysfunctional and failing SNP government would not have been returned at Holyrood and Donald Trump would not be a candidate for the US presidency.

In a world where incomes have fallen for a decade, dreams have been dashed and lives put on pause, the emotional trumps the rational. Ideologies have failed but identities are immutable. And that is being exploited by the Nationalist cause. Bluntly, the SNP is organised and hungry, the pro-Union majority incoherent and tired.

you can be as clever as you like but the Nationalists have boots on the ground in a way pro-Union forces can only dream of.

Their cultural apartheid is taking hold. They seek to define two classes of Scot. Real ones, they say, voted yes. Sub-standard ones voted No.

I had lunch with a dear friend and academic who is a long-standing independence supporter. He explained to me the reason they lost was a matter of confidence. People like me – who fought for the Union – were ‘self-loathing’ Scots. That would dissipate over time, he told me.

Fervour

Now I will admit to living with the requisite degree of Presbyterian guilt given my upbringing. But loathing myself? I have other people to do that for me.

I love Scotland and believe the Union is a vehicle by which we Scots prosper.

That message, however, is not spoken let alone heard. It is time those people who believe in the Union started making the case with the same fervour as the Nationalists make theirs every day.

Relieved by success in 2014, David Cameron didn’t question the Better Together campaign and instead used it as a template for the Brexit vote.

As a formula it failed second time around, while the Leave campaign learned from the indyref and improved its message for change. It was simple – ignore the facts and scream ‘take back control’. It worked.

There are two things the Nationalists can take from the Brexit vote. yes, they can talk of Scotland being dragged ‘kicking and screaming’ out of the EU against our will. But that just plays to their base.

The second point is more potent. They now have parity of uncertainty.

Theresa May cannot tell you what relationship the UK will have with Europe any more clearly than Nicola Sturgeon can tell you about Scotland’s. And that is an opportunity for the Nats.

That is why Miss Sturgeon will call a referendum before any of the detail of the EU deal can be coloured in.

In 2014, the SNP knew it would lose on facts. So it tried to create as much noise about them as possible and make the question a purely emotional one. They were not far from pulling it off. Brexit makes it much easier for them. In Whitehall they laugh off the idea of a second referendum. There is no reason, they argue, for the new Prime Minister to grant one. But Nicola Sturgeon just needs to call one and whatever the legal niceties, it will be held.

May’s better response would be not to deny it but to better define the question.

Brexit has led to uncertainty. A yes vote in 2014 would have led to the same.

This time the Prime Minister should agree to a vote – but not on the principle of independence, but on the deal.

She should negotiate with the SNP on what the currency would be, our share of the national debt, the future of Scottish shipbuilding, pensions, welfare and all, so what we vote on is a real deal and not a grope in the tartan dark.

And then she should go further. Theresa May should seduce Nicola Sturgeon into an experiment with consistency.

In 2014 Scotland voted to remain within the United Kingdom. This year the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

Miss Sturgeon demands the right of a part of the United Kingdom to remain. So let’s be consistent. If there is another referendum on independence, those of Scotland’s 32 local authorities who vote to remain within the UK should be allowed to do so even if the overall vote is to leave.

Let Glasgow, Dundee, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire be the basis of a new Scottish state.

Let the Borders, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and the Highlands remain part of the UK if they wish.

That would be consistency – even if it means Nicola Sturgeon’s mind would be filled with hobgoblins.