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After the chaotic launch of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign (didn’t they work out that having the acronym BSE is not a good idea?) the Scottish National Party has made its mind up: it’ll stay well clear of this. John Swinney, the SNP Deputy First Minister, has just been on BBC Radio Scotland laying out his reasons. Yes, he doesn’t like the idea of being part of a campaign that might involve the Conservative Party – but it’s about more than that. As the SNP can see, the ‘in’ campaign is turning out to be a rebadged version of ‘Project Fear’, the campaign that almost destroyed the union in last year’s Scottish independence referendum. It has the same people, even the same selebs (June Sarpong, for example).

This morning Nicola Sturgeon said in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show that a second referendum on Scottish independence is now 'inevitable': 'I've always believed and I still believe today that Scotland will become independent and it will become independent in my lifetime.' While many unionists were quick to point out that Sturgeon had said that the last referendum was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, David Coburn opted to take a different tack when it came to voicing his opposition to that 'awful strident woman': https://twitter.com/DavidCoburnUKip/status/653259716068511744 The Ukip MEP says that if Sturgeon does manage to have her way and make Scotland an independent country, the consequences will be disastrous.

In Mhairi Black's maiden speech in the House of Commons, the young SNP MP voiced her opposition to the Tories by criticising George Osborne over his party's housing policy. However, despite calling the Conservatives 'a really dangerous party' in an interview with the Guardian, it appears Black has at least softened in her approach to some members of the party. The SNP MP says that she has a lot of time for Jacob Rees-Mogg, adding that she could listen to the eurosceptic Tory MP all day: 'I could sit and listen to him all day, I disagree with him 99.9 per cent of the time, and that wee percent is just because he’s got good manners. But I love listening to him, his knowledge is incredible, and he’s so polite.

Ruth Davidson has secured her place as one of the most interesting politicians in the Conservative party. In her speech to Tory conference this morning, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives had the crowd in the palm of her hand with strong attacks on the SNP and another independence referendum. She argued that the Tories are the only party representing unionists north of the border: ‘every cross in the Scottish Conservative box is a vote backing Britain and defending Scotland’s place in it’. But the most interesting part was her compelling vision for the future of the party.

The great thing about the 'new politics' - or at least the new politics we have lately been privileged to endure here in Scotland - is that it's just as fetid and grubby as the old politics it replaced. The band may change but the music remains the same. Consider the twin controversies swirling around the SNP. Neither, on its own, is enough to torpedo Nicola Sturgeon but, combined, they represent the largest challenge to her authority the First Minister has yet encountered. First there is the curious case of Michelle Thompson, the MP for Edinburgh West. Mrs Thomson was previously managing director of the 'Business for Scotland' group arguing for a Yes vote in last year's independence referendum.

Jeremy Corbyn is supposed to come to Scotland this week. Thursday's visit will be his first since he became leader of the erstwhile people's party. Then again, he's been due to visit before only to find some better use of his time so who knows whether he can brave life beyond the wall this week? Yesterday John McDonnell, Jezzah's vicar, used his speech to the Labour conference to plead with Scottish voters to "come home" to the party. It was past time, he suggested, that voters understood that the SNP are no kind of socialist revolutionaries. Which will not come as any great surprise to most Scots. That's part of the point and one of the reasons why the nationalists have been trusted with the keys to power. They're no-one's idea of militant Trots.

This morning Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, outlined the extent to which she agrees with Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party. Both wish Scotland, and indeed the United Kingdom, to remain a member of the European Union. It is true, as Ms Davidson noted, that the SNP oppose even holding a referendum on the terms of British membership but it is also the case that, at least notionally, each wish, or are on record as desiring, a broadly comparable set of EU-wide reforms. Now, as Mark Wallace rightly observes, Davidson's case for continued EU membership is a purely practical one. The emotional and historical arguments for maintaining the integrity of the British union do not apply to continuing membership of the EU.

The answer to this question, it turns out, comes from Kenny Dalglish. The answer is mebbys aye, mebbys naw. At the weekend the Scottish party's former leader suggested Labour should have (some kind of) 'free vote' in the event of there being another independence referendum. Kezia Dugdale, the latest occupant of this poisoned throne, conceded Labour MSPs should, if there is another referendum, be free to campaign for independence if that's where their heart lies. Now, in one respect this makes sense. Labour are in a hopeless position in Scotland right now. Moreover, the party cannot recover unless it wins votes from erstwhile supporters who have crossed the constitutional aisle to support the Scottish nationalists.

A year ago today, Britain woke up to find the union saved – but only just. In 10 Downing St, the 45 per cent voting ‘yes’ looked like a victory, and the whole issue closed. I was in my hometown of Nairn that day, in the Highlands, where things looked rather different: after visiting pupils in my old school I wrote that, far from being closed, the debate had just begun. It wasn’t just the depressing closeness of the result, but the way the ‘no’ campaign had relied upon relentless negativity to make its case.

Nicola Sturgeon got one thing right this morning. A year on from the independence referendum, Scotland's First Minister allowed that the plebiscite "invited us, individually and collectively, to imagine the kind of country we wanted to live in". The answer, you may be surprised to be reminded, was Britain. Surprised, because it has since become commonplace to observe that the losers have become winners and the winners losers. Scotland, everyone agrees, is a changed place even though (almost) everyone agrees that the country would still reject independence were there another referendum next month. (The economic questions that hurt the Yes campaign so badly last year are, if anything, harder to answer convincingly and reassuringly now than was the case a year ago.

During our annual odyssey around the Scottish Highlands, I read Tears of the Rajas, Ferdinand Mount’s eloquent indictment of imperial expansionism in India. One of Ferdy’s themes is that the British lived in the country without ever attempting to make themselves of it. How far is that true of sporting visitors to Scotland? The SNP’s persecution of landowners gains traction from the fact that guests in shooting and fishing lodges encounter only keepers, gillies, stalkers. We disport ourselves within a social archipelago utterly remote from the mainland of the society in which it lies. In our defence, however, that is what tourists do everywhere in the world, much to the advantage of host nations.

As the Queen celebrates becoming Britain's longest-serving monarch today, David Cameron led tributes for Her Majesty this morning in the Commons ahead of PMQs. While the Prime Minister praised her 'unerring grace, dignity and decency', Sir Gerald Howarth tried a different tack; showing his appreciation for her with an anecdote about his wife not wishing to attend a local donkey derby: 'When I consult Lady Howarth and ask whether we should go to the donkey derby, and she says, “But we went there last year,” I say, “And Her Majesty does all sorts of things every single year.” Her Majesty has done a fantastic service to this nation.

Paul Monaghan, the SNP MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, seems quite keen to become Parliament’s new David Ward by making offensive comments on Twitter. The Jewish Chronicle earlier this week extracted an apology from the MP for tweeting about the ‘proud Jewish race’ who were ‘persecuting the people of Gaza’ - but he’s also tweeted about the Union Flag being a ‘butcher’s apron’ and the ‘queen’s diarrhoea’.

With Alex Salmond currently engaged in a war of words with Nick Robinson over the BBC's 'disgraceful' coverage of the Scottish referendum, there is one former Beeb employee he can turn to in his time of need. Step forward Paul Mason. Mason -- who worked as Newsnight's economics editor before defecting to Channel 4 -- joined Salmond on stage at the Edinburgh book festival to plant a few blows in the direction of his ex-employer. Despite pleas from Nicola Sturgeon for the BBC to enhance its presence in Scotland with a BBC Scotland TV channel, the PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future author said the BBC's unionist values were part and parcel of the corporation: 'I'm absolutely sure that the BBC believes it is a unionist institution.

No, Nicola Sturgeon does not have much reason to be worried about Jeremy Corbyn. But the rest of the country does. To borrow from the tabloids, Corbyn is The Most Dangerous Man in Britain because, though no-one in London seems to appreciate this, he could be the man whose leadership of the Labour party leads to the end of Britain as we know it. Now I know people in England have tired of Scots banging on about the constitution. And I know that some things don't have to be viewed through the prism of the constitution. Nevertheless, it's a much more important issue than anything anyone says about trains. Or the health service. Corbyn tells the Herald today that he's not a Unionist, he's a socialist which, frankly, does not come as much of a surprise.