Memo to Nicola: Most voters just want you to calm down

NO thanks – not now. Politely but firmly last week, the Prime Minister, myself and Scottish Secretary David Mundell set out our view on a potential independence referendum. As we go through the process of leaving the European Union, we simply do not think that it is fair to ask people to make yet another enormous decision on our future.

Under the SNP’s plan, we would have been voting blind, forced to pick a fork in the road without knowing the destination on either path. And what’s more, we would have been voting at a time when we are deeply divided about the SNP’s right to take us back to a vote it said would be ‘once in a generation’.

Another independence vote in as little as 18 months’ time, while the Brexit process is still playing out, would have been an invitation to chaos. Nicola Sturgeon’s plan was, in short, unworkable.

I know the SNP party faithful, who have spent the weekend gathered in Aberdeen, have not exactly welcomed our position.

But I hope they understand that there are many thousands of Scots – who voted both Yes and No to independence – who do not want to go back to a referendum any time soon.

I hope their party leadership remembers that they promised to bring it back only if a majority of Scots supported independence. I hope they reflect on that when they accuse me and others of being ‘anti-democratic’ in opposing it. By ignoring their own pledge to respect the 2014 result, they have abandoned their own promises in that regard.

And I hope they accept that saying No to yet another referendum so soon after the last one is not to be ‘anti-Scottish’, it is because we feel that yet more division on this defining issue would be damaging for our society, and because there are so many other issues we must now focus on.

And how. Just imagine it for moment – a government in Scotland which wasn’t banging on and on about the latest grievance or a new trigger for a referendum for once! (I’ve lost count now of the reasons, but I seem to remember Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister counted at one stage).

It is now so long since the SNP came to power – ten years – that it is hard to remember a time when its increasingly tedious brand of constitutional warfare wasn’t the main focus of our Government. So I hope our decision to decline the SNP’s second referendum proposal might be a different sort of trigger – one that jolts the SNP to focus on the job we pay it to do.

Because what we’ve got right now isn’t on. It was summed up for me last Monday, the day the First Minister made her surprise announcement on a referendum.

We learned afterwards that, at the same time, she had ordered her Ministers to spend the day doing a call-round of influential public bodies in Scotland to set out their pitch.

Ministers, who we pay to sort out our schools and protect the NHS, instead spent the day acting as sales reps for independence. And this isn’t a one-off, because the truth is these SNP Ministers have always put separation at the top of the in-box.

It’s time for a change. Just imagine for a moment if independence was not always the driving concern.

Instead of shying away from vital education reforms for fear of creating enemies prior to a referendum, we’d have a Government that is prepared to sort out the mess that is Curriculum for Excellence, taking the difficult decisions required to improve education.

Instead of seeking to pick fights with Westminster over everything from welfare policy to agriculture, we’d have a Government that was big enough to recognise that co-operation with the UK Government might actually achieve more for people in Scotland than constant conflict.

And instead of using Brexit to whip up support for separation, we’d have a Government that was working out how best to prepare for our new relationship with the EU – and exploit any potential opportunities.

My sense is that people have now had enough of the SNP’s approach to Brexit – and I am afraid Nicola Sturgeon and her advisers are to blame. Right from the moment the decision came in last year, they have done little else but use it to try to increase support for separation.

At the Scottish parliament, a staggering 41 hours have so far been allocated by the SNP Government to hold debates on Brexit – debates designed purely to stir grievance about the result. Over the same time period, just eight and a half hours have been allocated by the Government to education, Nicola Sturgeon’s alleged number one priority.

And if we didn’t know it was all a ruse to increase support for independence, last week confirmed it.

Nicola Sturgeon announced she was pressing ahead with a referendum while discussions with the UK Government about Brexit were still on-going. That showed where her priorities lie.

It then emerged that the SNP might not even apply immediately to become a member of the EU if Scotland ever voted for independence – raising the question of why a referendum based on our departure from the EU had any justification at all.

Just think on that: the SNP wants a referendum on independence in 18 months because we are leaving the European Union. But they can’t say now whether, if we voted to leave the UK, we would go back in. It is a nonsense.

THIS week, the grievance hunt will go on. With their helpers in the Green Party, the SNP will win a vote in the Scottish parliament demanding that powers are transferred to stage another referendum on independence.

The SNP has ignored numerous parliamentary defeats in recent weeks on everything from the NHS to education to legislation on sectarian behaviour. But Nicola Sturgeon will now argue that to ignore this particular vote will be tantamount to a democratic outrage. As always it is one rule for it, and one rule for everybody else.

My sense this week is that most people would simply like the First Minister’s team to cool down for once.

We can all see what they are doing – pressing the same old buttons in order to try to whip up anger and resentment against the big Westminster bogeyman.

Let’s focus instead on getting the best deal for Scotland and Britain out of the Brexit negotiations. Let’s have a Scottish Government that prepares us for Brexit by boosting skills in Scotland, by supporting our economy, by straining every sinew to help job creators increase opportunities for our people.

And, most of all, let’s not drag the country back to the division and uncertainty of another referendum – not when we’re already divided by the mere prospect.

Not now, Nicola. That’s all Scotland is asking.