It is difficult to think clearly when you watch the utter hypocrisy of our Prime Minister, lecturing the Scottish National Party about politics not being a game, moments before she needlessly rejects a Lords amendment to secure the rights of EU citizens in the UK. Everyone knows those rights will be guaranteed during the negotiations, so it would be so easy to seize the moral high ground by doing that now. But I’m not sure our Prime Minister, and her MPs, would recognise the moral high ground if it was staring them in the face.
But thinking as clearly as I can, and it is very early days, it strikes me that there is a crucial difference between any new Scottish referendum and the one held in 2014. In 2014, there was clear short-term economic pain, with no specific reason to believe things would improve in the longer term. This time there is still that short-term pain, which could be even greater than in 2014, but this time there is a very bright light at the end of the tunnel.
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