The Brexit divide may prove the deepest yet

DO you remember The 45? Those shrieking, tear-stained Yes voters who couldn’t quite get it into their heads that Scotland voted No in 2014? They were the ones who organised rallies, refused to accept the result and changed their social media pictures to the number 45 so that everyone they’d ever met would know they were one of the 45 per cent for whom this was Not In Their Name. Heavens, it was tedious.

I only ask because I’m so interested in the 397,000. You know, the 397,000 SNP supporters who voted to leave the European Union. After all, it’s an extraordinary number. More than double the number of Scottish Tory party supporters who voted Leave.

And yet we haven’t heard a peep from them. Even the First Minister has been silent as the grave on the small matter of almost 400,000 people who voted for her party also voting for Brexit.

Indeed, the way she was swanning around Brussels this week you’d think she’d extracted a pinkie swear from every single Scot about really, really wanting to stay in Europe.

I keep hearing that Scotland voted ‘overwhelmingly’ for Remain but I’m not sure how true that really is. A total of 38 per cent of Scotland voted to Leave – only 7 per cent less than the Yes vote in 2014. That a significant chunk of that 38 per cent are also SNP supporters is a sticky issue for Sturgeon and her party because it speaks to a rather unpalatable truth at the heart of this country and, despite the SNP’s best efforts, it won’t go away soon.

There are a number of people who want independence at any cost. They are not interested in Europe, they don’t care about Britain and for them voting to leave the EU was a cynical attempt at triggering a second Scottish independence referendum.

It is such a callous, small-minded, selfish strategy that it makes me queasy just thinking about it, yet it is undoubtedly a strategy.

During the EU referendum campaign, Sturgeon and the main body of the party distanced themselves from the Nationalist Leave movement – just as well given that the official SNP Vote Leave campaign launched with a declaration that an independent Scotland ‘simply isn’t possible within the EU’.

YET – and perhaps I am completely wrong in this – I cannot help but think that when Sturgeon woke up last Friday morning to the news that Britain had voted to leave, her heart must have done a tiny leap.

Despite campaigning vociferously for Remain, the First Minister has never been one to let an opportunity slip by. Who knows? Perhaps it’s the result she was secretly hoping for all along.

Certainly, she wasted no time in wheeling out the second independence referendum drum and giving it a good clatter. This week, she tottered around Brussels telling anyone who would listen (and several who wouldn’t) that Scotland should be a special case.

But the stark truth is, it shouldn’t. We are part of Britain and Britain voted to leave. It is not the result I or many others voted for, but it is what we are stuck with. Which is exactly what Francois Hollande and Mariano Rajoy told her.

There is a lot of talk now about ways ahead and compromises and federal powers. I have no idea what is going to happen next (except that Theresa May is probably going to be our next Prime Minister and Boris Johnson will have another book on the shelves by Christmas) but I worry about what lies ahead for a Scotland in which a frightening amount of people seem to want to be out of both Britain and Europe.

Sturgeon should probably be worried about that too.