How long a game is Nicola Sturgeon playing?

Image: SST / Alamy Stock Photo

Nicola Sturgeon as good as admitted last week that Scottish independence isn’t happening anytime soon. The question now is whether, like the Quebec separatist movement in the 1990s, the SNP has peaked and will recede; or whether, more like the Catalan nationalists, they will constantly regroup and reassert, keeping the constitutional issue live for the foreseeable future.

The answer depends, I suspect, on whether Labour can revive sufficiently in Scotland to lead an alternative government in Edinburgh within the next two or three Scottish elections. In Anas Sarwar the party now has a credible leader; but with Sturgeon…