Nicola Sturgeon can’t call a Scottish referendum and for now the voters don’t want one

The drums are beating. The Scottish press brings daily updates. Nationalists tell anyone who will listen that a second independence referendum is coming and my old friend Alex Massie reports in the latest edition of the Spectator that the case for such a vote is becoming unanswerable. At the SNP’s conference later this month First Minister Nicola Sturgeon must say something that moves it all forward, or risk upsetting her activists who are primed and ready to go.

There is one flaw, however, and it is, for the Nationalists, annoyingly straightforward. Nicola Sturgeon cannot call a Scottish referendum. The right to sanction such a vote does not lie with Sturgeon; it lies with Westminster and Theresa May, what with Scotland still being in the UK and the matter being reserved. The constitutional position is clear. Both governments have to agree to an order in council under Section 30 of the Scotland Act. Ultimately, this is Westminster’s call, and not Edinburgh’s.

This is not to deny that the situation is tricky. The headache for Theresa May rests on how to keep saying “no” nicely because being excessively dismissive risks further inflaming ‎opinion in the SNP and the press north of the border. She must also decide whether to consider a UK-wide redrawing of the constitution as a compromise, or whether to say there can be a referendum only not until after Brexit is a done deal in 2019 or later.

The pressure from the SNP will be intense and one can imagine the denial of a referendum outraging even some of those Scots who say now they do not want a vote. It is perfectly possible to imagine Sturgeon‎ mounting an outraged campaign, with Trump-style rallies demanding justice and noisy protests in the Scottish Parliament – and indicative votes at Holyrood lambasting May and Westminster.

But there the SNP is in a hole. For public ‎opinion is not for a second independence referendum, or not any time soon. Any public campaign for Indyref II runs up against this pretty quickly, for all that Nationalists talking to each other are getting carried away with the inevitability talk. A poll for the Sunday Times, conducted by Panelbase in January, found that 51% are opposed to a referendum in the next couple of years, with only 27% wanting an independence referendum pre-Brexit.

Voters in Scotland seem heartily sick of referendums and the plethora of elections in recent years. The suspicion also grows that the Nats are combining their constitutional obsession with a need to distract from their pretty poor record of running Scotland. ‎To that end, what is happening is a new version of what ‎has been happening in Scotland for decades. It is always easier than fixing the broken Scottish education system, or getting the transport system right, to bang on about powers denied and the constitution. The journalists and politicians talking to each other are buying it, but not yet the public.

This may change. It is perfectly possible that a majority of Scots will become in a few years so scunnered with the Brexit ‎negotiations that they demand withdrawal from the UK Single Market where almost two thirds of Scottish exports go. Or the prospect of more Tory victories at Westminster could drive millions of voters to sign a petition, a covenant, demanding a vote. Or just hearing May so “no” in an English accent could change public opinion.

There is no evidence of ‎this happening so far. Despite all the Nationalist name-calling and hyper activity, Sturgeon’s team are demanding something she cannot do, that the Scottish voters – as of now – do not want.