I have no science and no polling information to back up this claim but, after a two-year referendum campaign, a general election and a Holyrood election to come I’ll wager there are few outside the political chatterati who are looking forward to a long, drawn-out EU referendum campaign.

Yet the instant reaction from the SNP to Scottish Secretary David Mundell’s suggestion that the EU vote could be held in June, up to eight weeks after the Scottish Parliament vote on May 5, was that such a move was an affront; disrespectful, said SNP Europe minister Humza Yousaf.

Was it really? Are we to believe the Scottish electorate, apparently politically energized by the independence referendum, is incapable of absorbing the issues of the Scottish election campaign and then the EU debate perhaps the best part of two months later?

And if we are to believe the assertion that most Scots are hard-wired to back the EU, then surely the timing makes little difference? The new, politically engaged Scottish electorate will presumably vote overwhelmingly to stay in.

More confusingly, if there is a possibility of England voting for departure, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s view that this would produce the conditions for a second independence referendum would surely encourage the swelling army of independence supporters to make sure the Scottish result was a third tsunami.

What better way of advancing the cause of separation than to follow the now almost certain SNP triumph in two successive elections with a clear cross-Border schism over Europe?

Except, maybe, it isn’t as simple as that. If David Cameron is successful in negotiating a new deal with Europe and judges a snap poll would be the best way to ensure Britain stays in the EU, isn’t that what the SNP wants too?

Maybe Ms Sturgeon and Mr Yousaf actually want a longer EU campaign so the English Brexit campaign has as much chance of success as possible? Of course they will deny it, just as it was denied that the First Minister told the French ambassador she preferred Mr Cameron to Ed Miliband in Number 10.

Or do they worry that, the closer the vote is to Mr Cameron’s EU deal, the more it looks like they are backing the PM? Surely the electorate is too sophisticated to be so confused.

Recent polls show between 47 and 54 per cent of Scots support a new independence vote if Britain leaves the EU but even the most optimistic puts support for independence under those circumstances at just 52 per cent. It’s not enough to guarantee victory and, as Chris Grayling clumsily put it this week, that’s without considering the oil crash, the effect of which has not been subjected to the same political test as it would in an Independence referendum re-run.

The economy was the reason Scots voted No in 2014 and the majority were not convinced the principle of self-determination, honourable as it was, was more important. Ireland in 1918 this is not. The SNP did not resolved the currency issue and, if a second independence vote was held on the back of division over Europe, it would be writ even larger than before.

Oil revenue has vanished, plunging £39 million into the red in the first six months of the current financial year compared to income of £3.3 billion in 2011, so the chance of an independent Scotland keeping the pound is even slimmer than before.

Just as unlikely would be the successful adoption of a new Scottish currency because the oil crash has knocked away one very big leg of the economic stool upon which the new country would negotiate its finance. Membership of the euro would now be a virtual certainty for an independent Scotland in Europe.

SNP strategists know all of this, but they also know how important it is for them to control the agenda and to maintain a sense of momentum as key votes approach, so attacking Mr Mundell’s suggestion keeps the election to the front of voters’ minds and makes them part of the story about the timing.

With new surveys showing 55 per cent of Scots believe independence will happen by 2031, the trick for the SNP is to balance momentum with patience. With oil crashing but employment rising and big taxation powers coming to the Scottish Parliament next year, it will need a thoroughness for which the First Minister is well suited.

She knows that, if Mr Cameron succeeds in winning the EU vote (I hope he does and my hunch is he will), it removes the only real independence referendum scenario she has spelled out. And by the end of June she might just be relieved.