Can you hear the hush? Cock an ear towards Holyrood and there is naught but the flutter of wings as London luvvies make their annual migration towards Edinburgh for the festivals. Position a satellite over Westminster and the only sound to be heard is that of George Osborne sobbing. With both parliaments now in recess for the summer it is quiet. Too quiet?

Not everyone is on holiday, alas. Spare a thought for those poor souls in Labour who have had to bin the bucket and spade to fight a leadership battle, and for the massed ranks of independence supporters still waiting to hear the starting klaxon for a summer of activism. Theresa May shows no signs of taking a break either. One imagines, rather like Mrs T before her, it will take a net and tranquilliser dart to get her on holiday.

Courtesy of a Twitter spat between Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, we know one SNP politician who is definitely going on holiday. The argument over the MIA order for Type 26 frigates, you may recall, ended with Ms Davidson hoping the FM had a lovely time when she heads off to Portugal at the end of this week. Perhaps this was what Jeremy Corbyn had in mind when he spoke of a kinder, gentler politics. Certainly, there are many Labour MPs who wish their leader elsewhere this summer. Tuscany, Barcelona, bottom of the ocean … the world is your boiled lobster as far as your parliamentary colleagues are concerned, Jeremy.

Prior to switching off the photocopier and cancelling the pint of milk from the canteen, Ms Sturgeon gave a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Edinburgh in which she outlined her vision for Scotland’s relationship with the EU after the Brexit vote. It is just as well Westminster had gone on holiday, for Ms Sturgeon delivered a blistering end-of-term report. The failure to prepare for a Leave vote had been “one of the most shameful abdications of responsibility in modern political history”; the Leave campaign had “lied and given succour to the racism and intolerance of the far right”; and it was David Cameron’s “political irresponsibility” and recklessness that had brought the UK to Brexit. If you are looking for a reference for your next job, Dave, maybe go elsewhere.

In short, Mr Cameron had fought the wrong battle at the wrong time over the wrong issue. Today, observing how Ms Sturgeon is hitching the second independence referendum wagon to Brexit, some will wonder if she is at risk of making the same mistakes as the politician she lambasts. Unlike Mr Cameron, she knows where she wants to go, but how she arrives there is another matter entirely. There are no maps for these lands. Welcome to the wild west of post-Brexit Britain, where the spoils go to those who get there first.

Ms Sturgeon is not entirely without political co-ordinates. The IPPR address set out the five “vital interests” the FM was determined to protect as the process of Brexit gets underway. Note she did not use the phrase “five tests”. That would have called to mind one Gordon Brown and the euro (whatever you do, don’t mention the euro), and it would have given a precision to aims the FM knows must necessarily remain out of focus for now. But reduced to the essentials, what the FM was asking for was a separate deal for Scotland which reflected the fact it had voted 62 per cent to 38 per cent to stay in the EU.

In the hokey-cokey between the UK and the EU, Scotland, then, is firmly for putting its leg, arm, and as many other limbs as it can muster, in. Yet Downing Street has set its face against such a deal. Not to be deterred, and faced with the “uncertainty, upheaval and unpredictability” of what the FM called a hard Brexit, “it may well be” that the option that offers Scotland the greatest certainty, stability and the maximum control over its own destiny was …. wait for it, wait for it …. independence. The “may well be” was a nice touch, suggesting it might be a peacock out of the oratorical hat instead of the same old rabbit.

It took all of a nanosecond for her opponents to accuse the FM of setting up tests she knew would be failed. This, said the Tory MSP Murdo Fraser, was merely another “flimsy excuse” for a re-run of the independence referendum. Mr Fraser, one notes, is the party’s finance spokesman, though he seems to be doing a job share with the shadow minister for the bleedin’ obvious. Of course Ms Sturgeon has independence in her sights, she is hardly a master at disguising it. That party name is a giveaway for a start. The question is, is she right to use the upheaval over Brexit as a means to secure her goal, or is that a gamble fraught with risk?

One of those urging caution is Jim Gallagher, a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, who wrote a piece in the The Herald yesterday, a slightly longer version of which is online at www.heraldscotland.com. Prof Gallagher cautioned against thinking Scotland was so very different from England when it came to disillusionment with the EU. Any way forward, he added, could not ignore the advantages Scotland derives from the UK, such as “public spending we could never afford on our own; a currency union; perhaps a million jobs that depend on the British market”. Sacrificing those for “only tenuous European connections” would be cutting off our nose to spite our face, he argued.

Being a former adviser to Better Together, the prof would say that, wouldn’t he? Still, one can see in his argument the beginnings of a campaign against any second independence referendum based solely around Brexit. Such a campaign would focus on the desirability of Scotland giving up the UK’s grip for the EU’s uncertain embrace. It would be relentlessly negative, but it could also be devastatingly effective. Never mind the current wisdom that the voters, in backing Leave, have shown they will not be fooled again by negative campaigning. Memories are short, and by the time any second independence referendum is being fought, the consequences of a Brexit vote will just be starting to bite. A second independence referendum would become the “out of the frying pan into the fire” campaign, a ghastly tussle that would make 2014 look like elections to the Tufty Club.

Ms Sturgeon spoke of June 24, 2016, when the Brexit result became clear, as being one of this generation’s "do you remember where you were when..." moments. She told the Scottish Parliament she had been “disappointed and concerned” by the result. She now admits this was “parliamentary language for a much stronger feeling”. Would Scotland, the day after a Brexit-induced independence referendum feel the same way, that however it had voted it had done so for essentially negative reasons? That instead of having a clear, positive aim in mind we were once again defining ourselves in relation to others? One to ponder in Portugal, First Minister.