Brexit latest: prepare for a lot of SNP strutting around

To Birmingham, where Theresa May has given her first speech to a party conference as the Tory leader and the UK’s Prime Minister. It was robust stuff, which will see her accused of rushing things by people who have hitherto accused her of dragging her kitten heels. She just can’t win, unless you count outwitting all those Tory boys and through a combination of stealth and determination making herself Prime Minister, which sounds rather like winning to me.

All the attention around the speech is rightly on the implications in terms of the Single Market and how far towards Hard Brexit May is prepared to go to lever an agreement out of the EU.

It was also a noticeably Unionist speech, which is as it should be what with her being Prime Minister of the UK. She also attacked the Nationalists, the SNP, as divisive.

She is already being denounced for this by the SNP on social media and beyond. For it is written as modern Scots law that the SNP and its more dunderheided spokespeople are free to denounce everyone else – the Tories, Labour, journalists, and the majority of Scots who voted for the Union – but the moment anyone else has a pop it is as though Vinnie Jones or some other English archetype has peed on the haggis.

Expect masses more SNP strutting about on the question of Brexit. My old friend Mike Russell, former SNP chief executive and education minister, is demanding a a seat at the negotiating table alongside the UK government so that Scotland gets a special stay in the EU deal. Stroll on…

Perhaps because they have for so long been focused on their own campaign, the SNP seems curiously incapable of processing a historic event – Brexit and the crumbling of the EU – that eclipses their own obsessions. It may well be that Brexit leads to Scottish independence, although it is by no means certain and it is quite possible that the SNP’s bluff – exploring all options for the 254th time! – is being called by May and the voters. But we’ll see soon enough.

They seem strangely discombobulated, with the former fundamentalist wing that used to be obsessed with independence now urging caution for fear of defeat and the old gradualists led by Alex Salmond wanting a new referendum right away. One dear friend, a usually sensible Scottish Nationalist of long-standing, explained to me the other day in Glasgow that the Unionists should not be worried about the second Scottish independence referendum. It is the third or fourth referendum that should be causing pro-UK forces sleepless nights, he said. Just because the “neverendum” (repeated referendums) in Quebec drove the voters away from separatism, that does not mean it applies in Scotland’s case. The SNP can have as many goes as it likes, he said.

He also explained that he and his colleagues have concluded May is completely useless at politics and rubbish at being Prime Minister, which strikes me as probably a touch over-optimistic on his part. On the evidence of today she’s a toughie, maybe even tougher than Nicola Sturgeon.