Measured tones at the dais

Who would have thought the SNP’s spring conference would be the relatively quiet end to a quite frankly ridiculous week in Scottish politics?

There were around 2,500 delegates, 250 media and 100 exhibitors attending the event in Aberdeen’s soulless conference centre over Friday and Saturday, most of whom were expecting fireworks.

At the very least there was the hope for flags and face paint.

Nicola Sturgeon is smarter than that, however, and such antics were never going to be front and centre during this gathering of activists and politicians.

Make no mistake, though, the tone was conciliatory but Ms Sturgeon’s speech to the faithful was her drawing referendum battle lines – and making sure her own side know what she expects from them in terms of behaviour.

“I hope you will forgive me because my speech this afternoon is not really aimed at you,” she told the crowd.

The venue was the Nationalist conference but the presentation was an address by the First Minister, not the party leader.

It’s a small but very significant difference. A second independence referendum, if it happens, has the potential to be exceptionally nasty given what is at stake.

This was Ms Sturgeon reaching out to the small group who will decide any future vote.

Those people who, in the First Minister’s own words, are “feeling nervous and anxious, perhaps even resentful” about the prospect of going through the long-running, sometimes bitter debates all over again.

The speech was the start of a charm campaign where Ms Sturgeon will seek to present herself as being entirely reasonable, especially when compared with a Prime Minister she accused of “condescension and inflexibility” towards the Scottish Government.

I know it could be tough, she intimated, but can things really be any worse than they are at the moment?

Of course, the promise to speak “frankly” about the economic challenges was followed by a warning to opponents not to “run down Scotland’s strengths and our nation’s great potential”.

Some rhetoric will remain the same, it would seem.

It was a speech all about inclusion, with very little domestic policy.

It was a pitch to those who see themselves as liberal, and might be persuadable towards independence because they are unhappy with the vote to leave the EU, that her vision for the country reflects their views.

It was also a warning to her own side not to become embroiled in the kind of nonsense that raised people’s hackles last time around.

The packed out conference centre loved it. Hands were slapped together enthusiastically and, admittedly, a few flags were unfurled.

Ms Sturgeon will be desperate for it to resonate with Scotland’s constitutionally agnostic centre ground.

A large number of Scots, unlike before the 2014 referendum, are entrenched in their views.

Finding people prepared to switch in either direction would likely be much more difficult than last time out for the respective campaigns. Will we even have one? There was a lack of fury in Ms Sturgeon’ s speech but she hopes people will be getting angry about Mrs May’s decision to take another vote off the table for an indefinite period of time.

The SNP’s manifesto absolutely gives it the mandate to propose a return to the polls but there appears to be little appetite among the general public at the moment.

A friend of mine who voted Yes last time out told me on Saturday that he was already bored of the rhetoric and was not looking forward to another two years of campaign chat.

While that kind of apathy with constitutional politics remains the case, Mrs May will be perfectly comfortable keeping another referendum off the table.

And no amount of reasoned or reasonable speeches will be able to change that simple but crucial fact.

There was a lack of fury in Sturgeon’s speech...

Flag-waving was kept to a bare minimum at this year’s SNP conference.