Every fresh political scandal that erupts around Sturgeon’s government – be it financial, ethical, sexual, or political – generates cries for her resignation, yet she remains immovable.

Every fresh collapse in Scottish public service levels – be it in Scotland’s NHS, education, drug rehab, ferry services, and so much more – brings appeals for Sturgeon to focus on the day job instead of campaigning to break up Britain, yet she remains immutable.

Every fresh revelation, like the police investigating her party’s finances, or her husband’s £107k personal loan to the party being declared late, or the repeated covering up of inappropriate personal behaviours by elected SNP politicians – causes demands for Sturgeon to take responsibility by departing, yet she remains impregnable.

Every divide the First Minister causes in Scottish society over gender politics, marginalising the rights of women and accelerating the sexualisation of our children – and even every fresh split she causes in her own party on how best to obtain a referendum or deliver “independence” – causes more and more people of all political persuasions to wish to see the back of her. Yet for all their pleas for moderation and compromise she remains to them absolute and impervious.

Were the Scottish Parliament’s executive run by any other party than the SNP it is impossible to believe their leaders would have survived as many calamities without at least having faced a credible leadership challenge. Discipline, however, remains at the core of the SNP operations, with the cause of “independence” allowing every error to be excused or ignored. Nothing can happen without the party leader’s consent, therefore no breach in loyalty to the party leader can be contemplated.

Unfortunately for Scotland the SNP is now run in the manner of a personality cult where the supreme leader’s approach – stoically aloof from all but a few ministers and advisors – has been accorded that of a deity.