A good year

Nicola Sturgeon can look back on 2019 with some satisfaction. She’s clawed back a number of the Westminster seats she lost in 2017 and daily manages to keep the focus on constitutional matters, persuading a significant minority that her party’s 13 years of mismanaging our public services is a non-issue.

Plus, despite her anti-tory rhetoric, she feels she has a

Prime Minister she can spin – and the Brexit she truly longs for. As a single-issue politician, the SNP leader believes she can employ both to build lasting anti-uk sentiment and grow support for her raison d’être: Scexit.

So far, so good for the nationalist leader. Yet the general election result and Labour’s disarray suggest Boris Johnson could be in power for a decade – and no way is Mr

Johnson going to risk being the prime minister who presided over the break-up of the UK. Plus, Brexit’s usefulness for the SNP can only diminish – it’s already fading in voters’ minds, and trade deals will likely emerge with the EU and around the world next year and onwards. Crucially too, most voters understand that an independent Scotland’s path to EU membership is strewn with fiscal impediments.

On a personal level, despite her firm grip on the SNP, the independence-obsessed faithful now realise Ms Sturgeon’s election success means nothing. After five years with her at the helm, 12 December shows that still only 45 per cent of us support independence.

In 2020, expect Ms Sturgeon to turn up the anti-uk grievance volume to deafening levels – and not because she believes this’ll progress indyref2 any time soon. She must, to remain leader, continue to seem a credible one to core separatist supporters.

MARTIN REDFERN Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh

replied with this comment: “Aye, but they are fitting new yins soon”.

I doubt if the new yins were “fitted”.

JIM JARVIE Beldorney Place, Dunfermline