AFTER mocking Willie Rennie for only having four MSPs, Nicola Sturgeon this week told Holyrood she would be truly humble despite having 60 more.

“By any measure of parliamentary democracy, there is a clear mandate for a referendum within this session of Parliament,” she said, following her election as First Minister on Tuesday.

“It is important, in the interests of democracy, that that is acknowledged and respected. However, it is also important that I exercise that mandate with responsibility and humility, and only when the crisis of Covid has passed. I give that commitment today.”

Whether that load of self-confessed humility emerges remains to be seen.

However the pace of exercising her mandate is not, for now, in doubt.

With the pandemic still proving immune to wishful thinking by politicians, the economy stumbling, and the polls showing it would be a terrific gamble right now, the First Minister is not about to ramp up the Yes campaign any time soon.

There are also the small matters of a refusenik Prime Minister, Westminster sovereignty, and a potential fight at the UK Supreme Court to consider.

In addition, Ms Sturgeon knows she will be pounced on by the opposition and certain sections of the press if she starts to turn her attention away from the recovery onto the constitution.

Throughout the election campaign, her rivals repeatedly said it would be unconscionable for civil service resources to be applied to the case for leaving the UK amid the crisis.

By promising to make Covid and the economy her top priority, Ms Sturgeon tacitly went along with this argument.

Her allergic reaction to questions about basic issues such as borders and trade, deficit reduction, currency and a central bank, suggests she did so in large part because she doesn’t have a strong enough pitch to make yet.

The argument from democracy remains the strongest one for independence because it is the most enduring. It applies in all weathers.

The idea that the people who live and work in a nation should decide and supply its system of government is straightforward and appealing.

However the argument from economics, a cornerstone of Alex Salmond’s offer in 2014, is as weak as it has ever been under the SNP.

Not only has Brexit scrambled previous assumptions about cross-border trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK, the pandemic has shot the public finances to hell.

So for now Ms Sturgeon is holding back, pinned down by her opponents, and leaving her new Constitution Secretary Angus Robertson to focus on rhetoric and process and buttering up the chancelleries of Europe.

But that does not mean all is quiet on the constitutional front. Far from it.

Since the election, there has been a marked surge in activity by Unionist organisations keen to keep Ms Sturgeon gagged and to fill the vacuum with their own arguments.

There have been polls and open letters, commissions and demands for parliamentary inquiries.

The key players are Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future, the anti-Indyref2 Scotland in Union group, blogger Kevin Hague’s These Islands, and Scottish Business UK (SBUK).

Being Unionists, they naturally work in concert. Indeed, I understand they have been regularly coordinating their activity to avoid duplicated effort for more than a year as part of a ‘working group’ overseen by Mr Hague.

So Scotland in Union has led on objecting to a second referendum and critiquing the SNP’s record in government; SBUK aims to speak for businesses anxious about the recovery and the lack of detail about independence; These Islands has led on the state of the public finances, and the harsh measures needed to address them; and Our Scottish Future has just upgraded itself from a thinktank to a “campaigning movement” aimed at the swing voters of Middle Scotland.

Besides their stated objective of confronting the SNP and Ms Sturgeon, there is also a sense that it would be disastrous to rely on Mr Johnson and his cabinet chums to defend the Union, so they have stepped forward instead.

It means the First Minister is now confronted by a pincer move.

On one side, Holyrood opposition parties are demanding that she ignores independence and tasks her officials to concentrate on all things recovery.

If she crosses this first group, she will be accused of playing fast and loose with the economy for the sake of her constitutional ambitions.

While on the other side is a nexus of increasingly active Unionist groups demanding she explains exactly how independence will work, complete with all possible facts and figures.

If she ignores this group, she will be accused of a guilty silence, of hiding an embarrassing lack of answers or suppressing inconvenient truths.

Based on her recent statements, she will play it long and only flesh out her economic case on independence in the run up to an attempt at Indyref2.

Of course, she and Mr Robertson will still talk up independence when they can, just as Mr Johnson will cheer the Union, not least if Treasury munificence is deployed in its defence.

But the presence of that Unionist chorus, reinforcing the No vote and sowing doubt across Middle Scotland, is a problem for a muted FM.

Between now and another White Paper lie years of coordinated criticism and demands for evidence that will set the scene for the document’s dismissal as a piece of deluded propaganda.

True, they would say that anyway.

However the Unionist chorus is already mobilising on the political space created by the recovery to make its case and convince others of it too.