Unionism’s referendum triumph has proved as bitter as it has been short-lived

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.)

And so, for the times being, Ms Sturgeon says “We respect last year’s result” but not, hark you, to the point at which she does not seek to have another crack it it.