SNP members really are the cheapest dates in UK politics — they’ll lap up any old swill dished out by their leaders. After the Yes campaign in the 2014 independence referendum was defeated, the nationalist faithful unquestioningly accepted repeated promises from Nicola Sturgeon that they’d soon have a second chance — and that, this time, they’d win.
The problem with the former Scottish First Minister’s position was that, for all her energising rhetoric, she didn’t have the authority to run another vote on the constitution. Sturgeon could, and frequently did, claim to be in possession of a mandate to deliver Indyref2 but she did not. Constitutional matters are reserved to Westminster and no amount of SNP anger can change that.
Laughably, after the vote was counted, Yousaf declared that when it came to the matter of another referendum the ‘process question’ had been answered. It had not.
By the end of her time in office, Sturgeon was starting to look desperate.
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