MORE in sorrow than in anger, Lesley Riddoch, vice-convener of the Scottish Independence Convention, set the correct tone for indyref2 ( sorry “ScotRef”) in her numerous television appearances this week, usually against a bloke from Scotland in Union. She conceded that the Scottish voters would probably prefer not to have to go through another referendum. They’d rather get back to normality. But, folks that just ain’t possible: Brexit has abolished normality.

As she said on Scotland Tonight, if someone is planning to build a motorway through your house, you can either ignore it and pretend that nothing has changed, or you can start trying to plan your way round it. A useful analogy, this, because change is coming to Scotland and the road ahead will be a tough one, in or out of the UK. Unlike in 2014, there is no safety-first option to fall back upon, no Unionist status quo. There is now equality of uncertainty, equality of risk.

If anyone’s still in any doubt about this, they should take a look at the evidence UK Exit Secretary, David Davis gave to the Brexit select committee in Westminster yesterday – not so much a car crash as a multiple pile-up on the M6. Asked whether the UK Government had made an assessment of the economic impact of a hard Brexit under World Trade Organisation terms, he brushed it aside. “You don’t need a piece of paper with numbers on it”. ( Someone should have told the Chancellor, Philip Hammond about that before he put the National Insurance plan into last week’s Budget.)

Questioned by the chairman, Hilary Benn, Mr Davis delivered a series of boggling revelations of where we would stand if there is no deal with the single market. Would that mean 30-40 per cent tariffs on agricultural exports? “Yes”. Customs checks at Northern Irish border? “Light ones, yes”. Would passporting rights for the City of London fall? “Probably”. Ditto Open Skies, car export tariffs, even the EHIC health insurance card would cease to operate. Mrs May has said that “no deal is better than a bad deal” with the EU, but this looked like a very raw deal indeed.

Nor does Mr Davis feel obliged to reply to the Scottish Government’s White Paper published last year. “Do you [too] want a piece of paper?” he said bluntly, when asked by the SNP MP, Jo Cherry. This aversion to paper seems to be a new ministerial policy. One way to avoid difficult questions. Or as he put it: “political point scoring by the SNP”.

This does not inspire confidence. Scotland is caught between a rock and a hard Brexit. It might be easier had there been any sign that the UK Government had Scottish interests at heart. If it had responded to the Scottish Government with the kind of assurances being given to car manufacturers or the City of London about free movement, frictionless trade post-Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon would have found it much harder to call for a referendum on Monday if Theresa May had even offered a coherent package of positive post-Brexit benefits. It was an opportunity missed.

The Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, had frequently hinted about jam tomorrow. There were suggestions elsewhere that Scotland’s requirements might be recognised in any new immigration policy. The proposed independent Migration Advisory Committee could have been told to take into account “regional employment issues” when setting quotas. But nothing like that has emerged.

Of course, in time the Prime Minister may yet come up with some kind of package. She could assemble a raft of new powers on environment, agriculture and fish, worker’s rights and wrap it up into a new Scotland Act with some new offer of fiscal federalism. But in the meantime, all we hear are curious arguments about process and threats that another independence referendum may be blocked. There is even a suggestion that a Section 30 authorising the referendum might only be granted if the SNP wins an outright majority at the next Scottish parliamentary election.

This new 50 per cent rule would be most unwise, not least because it would remind Scots of the infamous 40 per cent rule in the 1979 devolution referendum. Then, Scotland voted Yes to a Scottish Assembly by the same margin – 52 per cent to 48 per cent – that the Brexiters won in the June 2016 referendum. They were told that this was not enough to justify even that modest constitutional change, yet it is apparently sufficient to embark upon a hard Brexit with no parliamentary backstop.

The Scottish Government’s mandate for a referendum is indisputable and the UK Government is daft to challenge it. It was in the SNP manifesto for an election in which the party won a landslide victory and returned more seats than all the Unionist parties, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat, combined. Next week, the Scottish Parliament is expected to settle the argument finally by voting for an early referendum.

More compelling is the UK Government’s argument about timing. Mrs May is right to say that Scottish people will be voting in the dark if they do so before the Brexit process is clear. The Scottish Government tacitly accepts this. Nicola Sturgeon has conceded that the referendum may not take place until March 2019 or even slightly later. Mrs May is expected to propose a date no earlier than 2021, after the next UK General Election. But is that wise?

By then, the UK will either have fallen off the cliff into the nether world of WTO rules, as depicted by Mr Davis, or it will still be in the process of negotiating its way back into the European Single Market. Either way the uncertainty is unlikely to diminish. Indeed, the very fact that the UK Government had scheduled a referendum for 2020/21 might make it more difficult for Mrs May to close a deal. Having a sword of Damocles hanging over her head could weaken her bargaining position with Brussels, because the UK PM would not be able to negotiate, with confidence, for the entire UK.

It might be more sensible to schedule the Scottish referendum on Nicola Sturgeon’s original timetable: before departure in March 2019 but after the Great Repeal Bill has gone through Westminster. That would be the time to sell the New Deal for Scotland with added Brexit powers. With departure from the EU a certainty, and clarity on what the constitutional picture will be (if not the trading one) then Scots voters might be persuaded that the game’s a bogey, and they might as well stick with the UK.

Who knows? This situation is without precedent in UK history. Indeed, you’d struggle to find parallels anywhere in the world for a country (the UK) trying to extricate itself from a Union (the EU) while two of its constituent parts, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are making for the exit. It is, to use a good Scots word, a right bourach. And Mr Davis has shone a bright spotlight right on it.