2016 will be another great year for ‘The most dangerous woman in Britain’

Yesterday a new Scottish opinion poll reported that 58 percent of voters intend to endorse SNP candidates when the choosing time comes for next year’s Holyrood elections. By any reasonable measure this is excessive, even extravagant. But there we have it.

As it happens, I would be surprised if the SNP polled that well on election day itself but we live in a time of astonishment so even the previously impossible can no longer be reckoned entirely improbable.

And, besides, what is the alternative? Nicola Sturgeon’s greatest strength is that no-one else – or at least no-one outside her own party – can be thought a plausible First Minister. Everyone knows she and the SNP will win in May, the question is simply the margin of victory that will sweep the most dangerous woman in Britain (as the dear old Daily Mail described her, much to Sturgeon’s amusement) back to Bute House.

So this creates a problem for anyone who toils on McGrub Street.