STURGEON’S SILENCE ON INDEPENDENCE PUTS SEPARATISTS IN A SPIN

NICOLA Sturgeon is another political leader who should be grateful to be addressing a virtual gathering rather than a live audience next week.

The Scottish First Minister is due to speak to the SNP’s online conference on Monday.

Her party activists are more impatient than ever for a rerun of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence and frustrated by her Government’s failure to trigger an unofficial wildcat poll on the issue.

Given a choice, hard-line separatists want an independence referendum tomorrow and preferably every day until they get the answer they want. Ms Sturgeon, however, has been muted on the issue since the Scottish Parliament election last May.

The loss of the SNP majority in the Edinburgh assembly appears to have shaken the confidence of her administration and weakened her case for a vote on a Scottish breakaway from the UK.

Boris Johnson has been unflinching in his insistence that his Government will not grant permission for an official independence referendum.

And support for such a vote is waning among Scots. A Panelbase poll this week for the anti-separation Scotland In Union campaign group showed 52 per cent of voters north of the border do not want an independence vote in the next two years. It also found 57 per cent of Scots wanted to “remain” in the UK.

With little public enthusiasm behind her, the First Minister would be taking a massive risk if she tried to trigger a showdown with Westminster by holding her own poll.

Her task at her conference over the next few days will be to try to cheer up her grumbling grassroots by dangling the prospect of a poll just over the horizon.

Her grip on power depends on clinging on to the separatist dream.The last thing she needs is for her conference to stage serious debates about the SNP’s dismal record in office.