The stars are aligning for a second independence poll

Since then, as the SNP conferences have become bigger and new records are set for numbers attending a party gathering anywhere in the UK, the scorn has become a shriek. It’s not a conference; it’s a rally, the detached political observers snorted.

The delegates are untutored and unsophisticated obsessives gathering round the totem of a single, over-arching issue. They’re not proper political activists; they’re just fanatics. Sometimes they have been accused of clapping aggressively in the direction of us as we sit in the media area. On other occasions they stare at us aggressively. They are unkempt and unpredictable. Why can’t they conduct themselves with more decorum?

And on Thursday, as they stood to applaud, they were patronised once more. After all, Ms Sturgeon hadn’t really moved a second independence referendum up the timetable, had she? There was no date for a second referendum and no suggestion even that there would definitely be one any time soon. There will be a draft bill and there will be consultation on it. Yet still they stood to applaud. The poor, deluded fools.

The First Minister may know what buttons to press but, in reality, her listeners aren’t stupid either. They knew exactly what was being said and what was not being said; they just needed to hear that the process was starting.

Ms Sturgeon had emerged on the morning after Brexit, steely-eyed and breathing fire and signalling that the decision to take Scotland out of Europe against its wishes would trigger an early second referendum. Since then she has been quieter and into the void has poured a slew of Brexiter-led propaganda.

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said that perhaps he had exaggerated the adverse effects of Brexit.

Business in the south-east was still brisk and the eurosceptics began to dream of bending a remorseful EU to their will. Had the First Minister reacted too loudly and too soon? On Thursday we had our answer as she reminded Theresa May that her most dangerous political adversary resides in Bute House.

It’s already been suggested that Ms Sturgeon’s stated desire to work within a UK-wide, cross-party campaign for a cuddly and inclusive Brexit signals a new SNP approach on this issue.

This is a flawed analysis. It rests on the gloriously optimistic hope that an event begotten by fear, loathing and resentment of others could somehow ever become soft and inclusive. The First Minister is on secure ground here. She has been as astonished as any of us at the speed with which we have witnessed the Conservatives, a so-called mainstream party of the centre-right, being annexed by the hard-right.

At this event the incarnation of the Tories was revealed in all its narrow-minded and xenophobic malevolence.

In the unpleasantly febrile atmosphere in which it all unravelled the message was clear: those Europeans are going to get a damned good thrashing. They will be brought whimpering to the negotiating table on the refitted Royal Yacht Britannia and forced to permit Britain still to trade freely even as they threaten and revile those European nationals whom they consider to be inferior.

Yet, there hasn’t been the merest hint of Europe’s resolve in its post-Brexit relationship with the UK weakening. While the Tories are still trying to decide what Brexit means the Europeans are unequivocal: Brexit means a hard Brexit.

How could it mean anything else? For the EU to allow the UK access to the European free market even as it demonises foreign nationals would be to pass a death sentence on its own existence.

This was all before the revelation in the right-wing press that the vote to leave the European Union would cost the UK £66 billion a year and that, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute, 80,000 Scottish jobs would be jeopardised and the Scottish economy would decline by five per cent.

The First Minister’s speech was not designed to mollify 3,000 gullible delegates; rather it was a clear message to Teresa May and the country at large: we’ll do all we can to help you achieve a soft Brexit with Europe that respects Scotland’s position, so don’t blame us if it doesn’t happen.

Certainly, no one I spoke with in Glasgow over these last three days thinks that the Prime Minister, in thrall to her party’s scarecrow wing, will come anywhere near meeting Ms Sturgeon’s measure of the worth of any Brexit deal.

Rather, the prevailing mood among delegates and activists was that the First Minister is preparing the ground for a second referendum before Brexit occurs. As usual, those who seek a second referendum sooner rather than later are labelled as SNP hard-liners in the favoured argot of the Unionist press, who neglect to explain what is “hard-line” about seeking a second referendum.

That the opportunity to hold this has come about significantly earlier than many of us had expected is not because of hard-line SNP fundamentalism but because of hard-line and reactionary Toryism.

There is also a feeling here that the weather conditions for a second independence referendum will not become any more favourable than they are at present: a Tory administration in the grip of the hard right; an air of menace surrounding the wrong sort of foreign nationals; a Labour Party still too riven by internal fighting to stop England lurching to the Right and the real threat Brexit poses to Scottish jobs and the Scottish economy.

The concept of waiting until a series of polls indicate 60 per cent support for independence is a strange one. No poll in the foreseeable future will deliver that number.

Instead, take heart from the fact that, when the campaign for a new independence referendum gets underway, it’s likely that the Yes vote will be around 20 points ahead of where it was at the start of the last one.

The stars of Scottish independence are coming into alignment and then the moment will pass all too promptly.

Ms Sturgeon’s political career and Scotland’s future depend on her judging when they will be at their brightest. My advice to her is not to hang around too long.