Eight months ago, the First Minister stood at the same podium in Bute House with the same flags, the same urns and the same mantelpiece as Monday’s announcement. It was the morning after the Brexit vote and a bleary-eyed nation was coming to terms with the momentous result. In that context – without hesitation or reflection – Ms Sturgeon announced that she’d already instructed civil servants to draw up the necessary legislation for another independence referendum.

She put Scotland on high alert. She indicated then what her end-game would be. No Brexit discussion would truly be conducted in good faith, as Brexit itself was only a lever to the primary goal of her political career: the break-up of Britain.

She tried to co-opt the Remain votes of thousands of Scots like myself as ciphers for support for independence when they were nothing of the sort. She turned a deaf ear to the million Scots who voted Leave, nearly 400,000 of whom were her own SNP supporters. And, by signalling her intent so far in advance, she allowed discussions and decisions to be made on how to present the response when she finally, inevitably, pulled the trigger.

The majority of the people of Scotland don’t want independence. They don’t want the decision they already made to be overturned. They don’t want to be told that their original answer was wrong and it’s time to do it all again. They don’t want to be dragged back to the uncertainty and division that binary referenda entail. Ms Sturgeon may also find that they don’t want a First Minister who acts only for her own narrow party interests and not those of the nation as a whole.  

No wonder the former Labour minister Brian Wilson was moved to write: “Nicola Sturgeon’s unlikely success in allowing a Tory Prime Minister to speak for the great Scottish majority...is unlikely to be looked back on as her finest hour.”

David Fuller's view

Does Nicola Sturgeon remind you of any other politician? 

How about Donald Trump, although more articulate but with less charm.

I will leave FTM’s last word today on this emotive subject to this Letter to the Editor, sparked by Ruth Davidson’s article above:

“Impressed with Ruth Davidson. Seems like she is the only one in Scotland with the nerve and political nouse to take on Sturgeon. It's about time she was given the same air play, particularly by the BBC who seem to positively wet themselves whenever Sturgeon speaks.

It's about time somebody really pressed home the killer questions to Sturgeon.

1) Currency, 2) Budget Deficit, 3) UK Trade outside the Union, 4) Defence spending in Scotland, 5) Trident 6). The majority don't want another bloody referendum anyway.

She shouldn't be allowed to keep back heeling the questions to some imaginary SNP experts who are supposedly looking into this.

Keep up the good work Ruth!”

Here is a PDF of the article above.