Sturgeon’s 2017

Nicola Sturgeon is in a position of strength: the leader of a disciplined, focused party, with the Greens gifting her the separatist Holyrood majority she needs. She’s the mistress par excellence of anti-uk rhetoric and the SNP manipulates social media with extraordinary skill.

Plus, Ms Sturgeon regularly enjoys depicting Downing Street as a rabbit frozen in the Brexit headlights – for a few days in the summer she seemed a clear thinker amongst muddled prevarication.

So surely next year must be one of huge achievement for Ms Sturgeon? Maybe not.

The Nationalist leader may already regret using Brexit to fire up her dyed-in-the-wool supporters into a state of Indyref2 fever. As opinion polls remain fixed against her independence dream, it’s evident pro-union Remain voters value the UK above the EU.

So Ms Sturgeon reinvents Project Fear – she insists the Tories seek a hard Brexit and that Scotland will lose 80,000 jobs when we leave the EU.

But common sense shows it is Brussels that has a vested interest in a hard Brexit, whether Theresa May likes it or not. Why would EU bureaucrats encourage European voters to believe that accessing the single market while leaving the EU is a viable option?

Meanwhile, European leaders remind us Scotland exits the EU along with the UK. Ms Sturgeon’s separatist stance means we’re ensured no special favours.

And thus follows Ms Sturgeon’s tortuous non-sequitur that, since we’re leaving the EU, we must leave the UK – though this make negligible sense to most of us. If, after many years and unaffordable cost, we eventually were able to join the EU then, since Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK dwarfs that with Europe, why would we erect a barrier against our number one trading partner?

And all the time, the SNP’S lacklustre performance in managing education, the NHS and other public services doesn’t go unnoticed by voters.

So 2017 for Ms Sturgeon? Inevitably she’ll focus on Brexit in an attempt to achieve Indyref2. With so much rhetoric behind her, she has little choice. But the nationalist leader’s chances of coming anywhere near achieving her UK break-up dream anytime soon are starting to look increasingly slim.

MARTIN REDFERN Royal Circus, Edinburgh