WE DON’T have a date for a second independence referendum. We don’t even know for certain that there’s going to be a second independence referendum.

It is still possible that Theresa May’s Government might see sense and realise that it is economic suicide to pursue a Brexit that’s harder than the look on a Tory’s face when confronted with a benefits claimant.

Admittedly this has the same vanishingly small probability of occurring as the atoms making up David Mundell’s body spontaneously rearranging themselves into the form of a crushed hedgehog lying in the middle of the A9 – thereby transforming him into a far more effective advocate for Scotland in the UK Cabinet than he has been to date.

Even though no-one knows when there’s going to be a second independence referendum, the Unionists have already shown their hand, and we know what their main lines of attack are going to be. If Scotland becomes independent, they tell us, we’ll lose access to the UK single market, to which we export four times as much as we do to the EU.

It’s economic suicide, allegedly, and yet another instance of how Scotland couldn’t possibly survive without the tender ministrations of a Westminster that loves us and cares for us in the same way that yer average granny in Surrey loves and cares for a chipped pottery Scottie dug that she bought on a coach trip to the Highlands in the 1970s and which currently resides dusty and forgotten at the back of a drawer in her spare room. I’m just back from buying some messages from the shops in Baillieston Main Street, or the Baillieston single market as our Unionist friends like to call it.

Tiny single markets are very much in vogue with British nationalists these days – along with demonising immigrants, xenophobia, and sooking up to narcissistic presidents.

The UK single market argument is one of those ridiculous exercises in British self-aggrandisement which rests upon the dubious assumption that the UK holds all the cards and Scotland is weak, isolated and friendless.

There are a number of problems with the argument about Scotland in the UK single market and how if we become independent we lose access to it. If Scotland becomes independent, it will still be a part of the EU. The rest of the UK can’t decide that it’s going impose trade barriers on one part of the EU, but do all it can to ensure maximum access to the rest of the EU. The EU really is a single market. That’s ever so slightly its point.

If Westminster blocks the access of an independent Scotland to the English and Welsh markets, they also block access for the whole of the rest of the EU. Westminster doesn’t get to pick and choose.

They want us to believe that as the UK Government negotiates with the rest of the EU in order to ensure tariff-free access to the EU single market, the Scottish part of the EU will face trade barriers.

There’s as much chance of the EU agreeing to that as there is of Donald Trump admitting that he lost the popular vote fairly and squarely.

It’s estimated that some £220 billion in exports go from England and Wales to the EU, a further £62.7bn go to Scotland. Together that represents £282.7bn, or almost half the total exports from England and Wales.

The Unionists are trying to tell us that if Scotland becomes independent, the rest of the UK will sacrifice half of its entire exports just in order to teach Scotland a lesson. And if you believe that you probably also believe that Fluffy Mundell is a stalwart defender of Scottish interests in the UK Cabinet.

After Article 50 is invoked, the UK has two years to negotiate its exit from the EU. The negotiations will include talks on the terms of British access to the EU single market after Brexit.

Despite the fond hopes of the red, white and blue Brexiteers, it’s the EU that holds all the cards, and it’s the EU that will be negotiating from a position of strength.

Any deal which is struck is going to benefit the EU more than it will benefit the UK. As an independent country, Scotland will participate in that preferential deal. After independence, we’ll have free access to the rest of the EU, and preferential access to the rest of the UK.

And if the UK insists on a trade deal with the EU that isn’t in Scotland’s interests, the Scottish Parliament will have the right to veto it. That really is having the best of both worlds.

As a part of the UK, we don’t even have the right to be consulted. The party which can accurately be characterised as too wee, too poor and too stupid in the second independence referendum campaign isn’t Scotland – it’s the rest of the UK, which is governed by idiots.

The fact that they’re banging on desperately about a mythical UK single market is a sign of just that – desperation. Let’s not be fooled by it. It should be treated with the derision it deserves.