Damian Mcbride

When you tell people you work in or around politics, and if you can break through the initial contempt or boredom, one type of question tends ‎to surface first: 'what is so-and-so really like?' There are three answers to that question, only one of them good: 'They're exactly how they come across on telly', which — unless you're the likes of Boris Johnson or William Hague — is usually not a compliment. It tends to mean the individual is the kind of wooden, humourless, unthinking, battery hen politician that makes the public yawn, scream or both; 'They're a total (uncomplimentary word)'.

After 15 hours of fascinating and - let’s face it - fairly exciting developments in l’affaire Sturgeon, here’s where I think we are, and I’ll try to stick as much as possible to incontrovertible facts, not political bluster: If this was all a grand misunderstanding, I think the various parties would have come together by now to explain what they think has happened, e.g. perhaps Nicola Sturgeon used the word ‘expect’, that got turned into ‘espoir’ back in the French embassy, and then relayed to the FCO as ‘hope’. That’s pretty plausible, but we’ve heard no such explanation yet.