IN the four years that have elapsed since Alex Salmond fired the starting gun on the first independence referendum nothing else has defined so starkly the case for self-determination than the events of the last three weeks. Set against this Nicola Sturgeon’s modest re-calibration of the timetable for a second referendum was almost insignificant. At Holyrood yesterday she could have rammed home one of the messages that have emerged from the chaos of the 2017 General Election: that not only will a second referendum occur soon but that she now has a moral duty to ensure that it happens.

Instead the First Minister settled for a simple alteration: there would still be a referendum after the Brexit negotiations have concluded but not necessarily within the time-frame of her original choosing. This was not the U-turn or capitulation dreamt of by her foes among the Scottish Conservative and Labour parties (though it may still be portrayed as such by their outriders in the Unionist media). Rather it was an adroit acknowledgment that though work requires still to be done on the SNP’s performance prior to a second referendum it’s in the sure and certain knowledge that Theresa May and the forces of extreme right-wing conservatism in England are daily making the case for an independent Scotland.

In responding to the First Minister’s remarks yesterday Ruth Davidson and her faithful political ally, Kezia Dugdale, once more howled about a divisive second referendum. A few miles down the coast HMS Queen Elizabeth was slowly leaving Rosyth Dockyard, bound at last for the high seas. All the blow torches that together helped forge this hulking vessel of war would not make a mark on the Davidson’s brass neck.

The Scottish Conservative leader’s entire political songbook consists of one tune: that referendums are nasty and divisive and that there shouldn’t be another one. Exceptions to the rule of course are EU referendums and snap General Elections in the midst of a Brexit crisis. She knows in her heart that Theresa May, her Westminster leader, has torpedoed the only policy that she has ever had or is ever likely to have for the foreseeable future. How can she continue to repeat the mantra of a ‘divisive’ referendum when her boss and the party she leads have set a new benchmark for what constitutes discord and division?

The UKIP faction among the Westminster Tories forced David Cameron to hold a referendum on membership of the European Union. Having done so, they embarked on a wretched campaign of disinformation, xenophobia bordering on racism and outright lies about funding the NHS. All the toxins which lurk below the surface of the hard Right in England — fear of change; suspicion of others; an implacable desire to retain ancient privileges — came together during the EU referendum and poisoned the waters of political discourse in English public life.

Not satisfied with that, the British Prime Minister decided that she wanted to divide Britain from its European allies in the hardest and most irreversible way possible. To bring this about she decided she didn’t want to be hidebound by pesky things like parliamentary scrutiny or accountability and so she called a snap election which she assumed would strengthen her position. And barely two years after she and her party had used continued membership of the EU as the central plank of its opposition to Scottish independence she arrogantly rejected all requests by Holyrood to be included meaningfully in the Brexit negotiations. This was the reality of what the English Tories meant by Scotland being treated as a full and equal partner within the United Kingdom.

She then proceeded to leave her mark in history by becoming the first leader of a modern democracy to spend an entire election campaign running away from anyone that looked like an ordinary member of the British public. She did so because she swallowed in its entirety the pantomime image of Jeremy Corbyn that existed in the warped and febrile imaginations of the leader-writers of The Mail, The Sun, The Express, The Telegraph and The Times. And when she crept back into parliament, her authority and credibility destroyed, she made a deal that threatens the fragile peace of Northern Ireland. Thus she completed a remarkable political cycle that was initiated by UKIP and concluded by the DUP. Future historians will come to refer to this period of British political history as the Jurassic Age.

In letting some air out of the second referendum it’s to be hoped that Nicola Sturgeon has begun the process of storing up all of these occurrences to be deployed when the next independence campaign gets underway. Before then she will also have plenty of opportunities to use them to put Ruth Davidson back in her place. The Scottish Conservative leader has a sinister fascination with the imagery and symbolism of British military might, one that she exploited in working class areas where such iconography still appeals.

During the 2017 General Election campaign she repeatedly stated that she and her adherents would stand up for the people of Scotland while the SNP obsessed about independence. Yet they all meekly accepted the £1bn bung that Theresa May threw the DUP yesterday in exchange for clinging to power.

Not one of them raised a whimper about extra money for the country they purport to represent. They are simply at Westminster to add ballast in shoring up the traditional English Tory position on Scotland, namely that there’s no great mischief if she falls.

Across Europe the political leaders of the remaining 27 EU states are salivating at the prospect of punishing an increasingly isolated and chaotic UK for the arrogance of its political leaders, embedded in ideas of cultural supremacy that have endured for centuries. In Scotland Nicola Sturgeon too has reflected on the duplicity and double standards of her enemies. Yesterday she opened a window slightly on her initial thoughts. What she didn’t say is that Theresa May and the DUP have jointly authored a prospectus for Scotland’s right to determine its own future. And they’ve done it with such dark eloquence.