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.
If it’s not a genuine misunderstanding, we’re left with the uncomfortable conclusion that one or more parties may have got their version of events wrong. And to my mind, there are three options in that regard:
(i) Perhaps the senior FCO official who spoke to the Consul General has misheard or chosen to embellish what the Consul General said.
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