RUTH DAVIDSON

FINALLY, the mask is coming off. Nicola Sturgeon’s declaration this week that her dream of separation ‘transcends’ issues such as the health of our economy, the security of your job and the state of our public services has cleared any confusion. For the SNP, it is independence at any price.

Of course, this has always been the case. There never was and never will be a set of circumstances which might persuade the SNP to drop its support for separation. But the reason why the First Minister’s comments at the weekend are significant is because they bring an end to a decade of SNP dissembling and distraction over its case for independence.

This was a period in which the Nationalists sought to downplay their fundamental opposition to the British state as the reason for independence – and instead tried to claim they only supported separation for wider, social democratic ends.

Now we know from the First Minister’s mouth: that attempt is over. As she tries to engineer a second referendum only the SNP’s army of supporters actually want, the new message from the First Minister is that separation is worth it simply for itself: oh, and here – have a flag.

That it should be Miss Sturgeon leading the SNP’s new fundamentalists into battle is ironic because it was she who was chiefly responsible for setting out the so-called ‘utilitarian’ vision for independence.

In the referendum campaign, SNP activists knew they could not win over sceptical voters simply by sending out videos of Braveheart to every home in Scotland. In particular, they knew they would have to win over Labour voters who might back independence if it promised a more socialist future.

Alex Salmond, however, did not appeal to many Labour voters. A Left-winger by instinct, Miss Sturgeon was therefore dispatched to do the wooing.

In a speech in 2012, she declared that splitting up the UK was not ‘an end in itself’. ‘It is,’ she said, ‘about ending, once and for all, the cycle of deprivation so that our people can enter a thriving economy.’

Profound words – but people didn’t buy it then and they’re still not buying it now. Most people can see that Scotland’s cycle of deprivation won’t be broken by dividing up the United Kingdom. It will be smashed by imaginative policies on childcare and education, both currently controlled by Miss Sturgeon’s own Government.

Most people know as well that a thriving economy won’t be created by distancing ourselves from our biggest market and most important trading partner. It will be nurtured by maintaining the ties we have with the rest of the UK.

The more scrutiny you give the First Minister’s words, the more they fall apart: powers to sort out the social problems she claims to care about rest with her ministers already and ending the United Kingdom would only exacerbate those problems, not help them.

Powers

LEADER OF THE SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVES

All of this, of course, was debated to death during the referendum campaign itself. Since then, the SNP Government’s powers have massively increased, giving her even more scope to tackle the ‘cycle of deprivation’ she says matters to her most.

I have led the calls since the election for the First Minister to get back to the day job and focus on her Government’s responsibilities, not yet another political campaign. Unfortunately, she has chosen the opposite tack.

The SNP chose to exploit the EU referendum to revive the case for independence. Rather than seek to bring stability to Scotland, the First Minister used one referendum to launch a fresh campaign for another.

Now we see how they plan to do it. So much for independence being only supported as a means to an end. How does the First Minister believe poverty will be tackled by independence? How does the SNP believe we can reduce deprivation when we have a balance sheet £15billion in the red?

The brilliant answer Miss Sturgeon has come up with is to tell us to stop asking such piffling questions – because now it turns out that the case for separating the UK ‘transcends’ such matters. It’s mere detail. Stop being difficult. Just wrap yourself in a flag.

If there is one upside to this new position, it’s that it may at least bring an end to the SNP shape-shifting on independence over the past few years.

In that time, independence has been justified on the grounds we could get rid of the pound and join the euro. After the euro bombed, we were then told we could keep the pound and stay within the UK economic system.

It has been promoted as a way of granting us entry to a new ‘Arc of Prosperity’ alongside Iceland and Ireland – a ruse that was quickly dumped after the economic crash.

It was sold as a way of preventing the privatisation of the NHS, even though the NHS in Scotland was already under the complete control of the SNP Government

Finally, it has been pushed to us on the grounds we’d all be £500 a year better off because of all the oil money we’d receive.

None of it now makes any sense. All of it was misleading spin designed to provide some justification for the SNP’s plan – beyond wanting to break up Britain. Now, with the First Minister’s words this week, we can at least see the SNP’s position for what it is.

Two weeks ago, in the parliament chamber, I asked the First Minister about her response to the EU referendum. The SNP had employed weasel words after the result, saying it would only consider independence as an option if it transpired that it would be in Scotland’s best interests.

Were there any possible circumstances, I asked, where Nicola Sturgeon wouldn’t see independence as being in Scotland’s best interests?

Hunch

She didn’t reply to me at the time. At least now I have my answer. There are none and there never will be. My hunch is this won’t go down well with most voters in Scotland. The evidence bears it out: far from Brexit having given the SNP a bounce, support for independence hasn’t risen at all.

One poll yesterday even suggests that backing for separation has fallen by 5 per cent since the turn of the year. After five years of division, most people in Scotland don’t want us dragged back to yet more constitutional turmoil.

They want us to get on with using the new powers at the Scottish parliament and with meeting both the challenges and opportunities that Brexit presents.

That is the day job which we pay the Scottish Government to focus on. The pity is we have a political party in charge which doesn’t seem to get it. No matter the cost, and regardless of its impact, for the SNP it is always independence or bust.

And the First Minister has now made it clear: if bust is what happens – for her, that’s a price worth paying.

‘People didn’t buy it then and they’re still not buying it now’