Scotland

Scottish nationalists may want to get the champagne at the ready. Word reaches Steerpike that Andrew 'Calamity' Cooper - the serial bungler whose last project was the EU Remain campaign - is being sounded out to lend his expertise to Scots trying to save the union. The SNP want a referendum within two years; Theresa May has said 'not yet' but plans are being made by unionists. Unsurprisingly, Cooper has been at a bit of a loose end since the EU campaign. A campaign is currently being set up in preparation of a second independence referendum -- with the working title 'New Direction'.

Corbyn flunked it. Yet again. And his failure to skewer the government left the field open to the SNP. Speaker Bercow seemed to collude with this arrangement and he gave the Nats six opportunities to quiz the prime minister. Angus Robertson appeared to relish the battle. His great grey face was already brimming with fury as he demanded that Mrs May reach ‘an agreement’ with Holyrood before triggering Article 50. By ‘agreement’ he meant that Scotland must stay within the single market while the rest of Britain gets out. Which is hardly sensible. Like putting a zebra-crossing on a runway. But the SNP isn’t interested in good sense or compromise. Disharmony and strife are its objectives.

Fraser Nelson is joined by Alex Massie and James Forsyth to discuss IndyRef2: When will the politics ever end? Now Nicola Sturgeon says she wants a second Scottish independence referendum, and so we plunge ourselves – wearily but no less determined – into yet another fight to save our country. The nationalists operate on the principle of being a persistent irritant. Demand independence so often and so annoyingly that eventually the country just says: 'Have it, if it will shut you up.' But no. We proud Unionists cannot submit to the SNP’s logic that independence is 'only a matter of time'. We have to fight this. And we can win. First, let me shoot down the Brexit myth.

In 2013, the Scottish National Party claimed an independent Scotland would be the sixth richest country on earth. Like many extravagant suggestions, this contained the essence of its own downfall. It would be lovely if it were true but didn't it seem just a tiny bit too good to be true? At the same time, and for the next 18 months or so, SNP politicians assured the Scottish people that there was no need to worry about the economic case for independence. They had the numbers to prove it. Granted, no one was ever encouraged to ask awkward questions about the assumptions made to generate this rosy-tartaned vision. For instance, what level of immigration would be needed to compensate for a population ageing more rapidly than the UK as a whole?

There's something quite romantic about the idea of a real border between Scotland and England, which a government minister warns will be the result of Scottish independence. Maybe we could have an India-Pakistan style daily face-off, but with soldiers dressed as The Jocks and the Geordies. Or an old-fashioned war over the 'debatable lands', which hasn't been seen since the Rough Wooing. As Alex Massie warns in this week's cover story, voters in parts of Britain may soon have to endure yet another referendum, with a considerably weaker unionist case this time around: Neither May nor Sturgeon would choose to make their stands on this kind of terrain. But politics has to be played with the cards you are dealt.

Its economy will be destroyed by leaving the single market. Losing access to European sales will destroy swathes of industry, and without free movement, employers will be crucified by skill shortages. Nicola Sturgeon is no doubt already preparing her lines for a vote on Scottish independence once the UK leaves the EU. Right now, that looks as if it could come a lot sooner than anyone imagined. It is reported that as soon as the Prime Minister Theresa May triggers Article 50 and starts the process of leaving the European Union, Scotland’s First Minister will announce plans for a second referendum on independence – a demand that May could find impossible to resist. But hold on.

The SNP appears to be on the verge of changing one of its core beliefs – full membership of the European Union. Senior party figures have revealed, in a piece in the Times today, that there is a desire in the higher echelons of the SNP to ditch this long-standing tenet of party policy. Instead, they want the party to adopt a Norway-style model. This would see an independent Scotland outside the EU but inside the single market, after Brexit. Scotland could then join the EU at a later date, if it wished to do so but it would not immediately join the back of the queue for EU membership, as has always been assumed. It would be a policy earthquake for the party to ditch something like EU membership that has been central to its message since the 1980s.