Honest, it wisnae me. A big Tory did it and ran away

HOW the heart bled for Nicola Sturgeon. Despite her very best efforts to keep the UK together, she has been forced by the Conservative Party to call a second referendum on independence.

Anyone who might dare doubt the First Minister’s enthusiasm for the maintenance of the Union had only to listen to her speech to the SNP’s spring conference in Aberdeen.

Until Miss Sturgeon spoke, you might have been labouring under the misapprehension that she was obsessed, at the expense of all other matters, with breaking up the UK. But the truth – or the First Minister’s truth, anyway – is that she dearly wanted to avoid another vote on the future of the Union.

As the FM, dressed in a sharply tailored, dark pink suit and sporting a sleek new hipster hairstyle, explained that, since the UK voted last June to leave the EU, she had done everything in her power to protect Scotland, supporters cheered their sympathy.

She had not, she explained, reached the decision to call another referendum lightly. Indeed, she had striven for months to find compromise and agreement with the Prime Minister. Despite Scotland’s overwhelming vote in favour of remaining in the EU, her Government had accepted the inevitability of Brexit. All she had hoped for was the right of Scotland to retain its place in the single market.

Miss Sturgeon sorrowfully explained that Theresa May had refused to meet her half-way – or any of the way. And so here she was, this great champion of the UK, forced into an action that might threaten its existence.

As she spoke, a bright light seemed to emanate from Miss Sturgeon. A spotlight had caught her brass neck, just so.

Of course, the First Minister was never in any danger of striking a special deal over Brexit for Scotland. The decision to quit Europe was taken on a UK-wide basis and all parts of the Union are bound by it – the Prime Minister’s crime is to have failed to do the impossible.

Once Miss Sturgeon had ensured her supporters were in no doubt about the pain the referendum decision had caused her, she turned her attention to other matters.

The First Minister had received, she explained, a number of requests from voters south of the Border to move to Scotland. Of course, these people need no permission to move freely within the UK but Miss Sturgeon gave hers, anyway. Come to Scotland, one and all, she urged. Join Us! (small print: those who would vote Yes in a future referendum are especially welcome).

The last time the SNP campaigned for Scottish independence, a generation ago in 2014, Miss Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond bluffed and blustered their way through difficult questions about the economy and currency. Next time, things will be different. The people of Scotland deserved, said the First Minister, to hear the SNP speak frankly about the challenges facing the Scottish economy.

Naturally, Miss Sturgeon went on to explain what the Scottish Government’s own figures said about the problems independence would cause. There would be, she admitted, a new financial black hole of some £15billion. This would necessitate both swingeing cuts to public services and massive tax rises. If people thought Tory ‘austerity’ was bad, they’d seen nothing yet…

No, of course, she didn’t really say any of that. For all her talk of wanting a full and frank debate, for all her talk of wanting to treat those of differing views with respect, Nicola Sturgeon simply doesn’t have answers to the hardest questions thrown up by the prospect of independence.

And no amount of phoney concern about the constitutional turmoil ahead can hide that fact.