Westminster must avoid the Sturgeon trap

The challenge for the UK government in the coming months is to make Nicola Sturgeon look like a constitutional obsessive. The SNP wants to frame the situation as Boris Johnson and the Tories denying the people of Scotland a referendum. The election results suggest there is no overwhelming clamour for a second referendum, with no SNP overall majority and the votes split evenly between pro and anti-Union parties. But UK government ministers should avoid giving the SNP the headlines they crave. They should side-step constitutional questions and instead emphasise co-operation on dealing with the after-effects of the pandemic.

Ministers should force Sturgeon to make all the running on the second referendum question. This could cost her politically — as Andrew Neil argues this morning — given it is not regarded a priority by most Scots, including a not insignificant chunk of those who voted SNP.

The biggest danger for the Union was always that any second referendum would seem like a confirmatory vote, that support for independence would be so high — think 60 per cent — that it was clear that its lead would survive the campaign.