It is vanishingly rare for the SNP-supporting paper The National – a publication that makes Pravda look like the Washington Post – to place anything remotely critical of Nicola Sturgeon on its front page. Yet on Wednesday it warned that the Dear Leader’s ploy to turn the 2024 general election into a ‘de facto referendum’ could ‘Blow It For Indy’. It is right. The idea looks like being about as popular as placing rapists in a woman’s jail.

The plan, unveiled by the First Minister in high dudgeon last November, after the Supreme Court rejected her bill to hold an ‘advisory’ referendum on independence, was to present Scottish voters with a one line manifesto before the next Westminster vote in or around 2024. That line would declare that Scotland should be an independent country. That’s it. No policies on health education or the like – just independence. If the SNP wins a majority in this de facto referendum, Ms Sturgeon would regard it as a mandate ‘to open negotiations on independence with the UK government’.

It was soon pointed out that not only was this undemocratic – instructing the electorate how to vote – but also destined to fail.

Initially, Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy, John Swinney, told the BBC that a ‘majority’ meant a majority of seats. He was corrected later that day by the FM. It means a majority of votes: 50 per cent and over. A monumental task in a first-past-the-post election. The SNP didn’t break the 50 per cent barrier even in the ‘tsunami’ general election of 2015 (here, they won 56 out of 59 MPs).

Want to see more SNP fails? – Transport Matters