The evidence that Scottish borderers had once belonged to neither nation often evoked intense scepticism, as did the well-established fact that few neighbouring nations in Europe enjoyed such long and mutually profitable periods of stability and peaceful cooperation. The bullish brand of nationalism peddled by Alex Salmond had fostered a state of heroic indignation in which historical truths were a matter of personal choice. It was succinctly expressed on local radio by a nationalist representative of Scottish farming interests. Tired of being proved statistically wrong, he brought the discussion to a sudden end: “Well, I don’t care about arguments anyway. I’m a nation­alist, and that’s that!”

Nine days before Nicola Sturgeon unexpectedly resigned as First Minister of Scotland, Salmond accused her, in a tub-thumping Burns Supper speech in Dundee, of undermining 30 years’ of hard campaigning. She had “damaged the independence movement” with “some daft ideology imported from elsewhere”. This was a reference to what Salmond contemptuously called the “self-indulgent nonsense” of her gender recognition reforms. Commenting on Sturgeon’s resignation on The World At One, Salmond adopted a more oleaginous tone. In his view, the First Minister should have “[separated] the case for independence from the day-to-day business of government”. “The articulation of the fundamental case for independence,” complained the deposed leader of the SNP, “has sometimes got muddied and lost in the business of government.’

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