OVER the weekend, Michael Gove told a right-wing newspaper that the British Government would not stand in the way of another Scottish independence referendum if it was the “settled will” of the people of Scotland.

Admittedly this is Michael Gove we are talking about here, a man who is perfectly capable of insisting to your face that black is white, up is down, and Boris Johnson has never knowingly told a lie. Gove wants us to believe that whatever issues from his mouth on any given occasion can be proven to be the truth, because he was terribly, terribly polite when he was saying it.

Gove is ideally suited to hold a senior role in Boris Johnson’s government. The closest this Conservative government possesses to a guiding philosophy is its senior figures’ ability to convince themselves that whatever they happen to be saying at any moment is true, or sort of true, or ought to be true, or that it could pass for true if you squint at it and only look at it from a certain perspective in particularly flattering lighting.

Writing in the Sunday Mail, Gove said: “If it is the case that there is clearly a settled will in favour of a referendum, then one will occur.”

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Nevertheless, Gove’s admission that Scotland has the right to decide if it wants another referendum represents a significant change in the position of a Conservative government which has until now insisted there are no grounds for another referendum and that any request from the Scottish Government for a Section 30 order to facilitate one would be rebuffed.

His admission was nonetheless heavily hedged about with caveats – after all it wouldn’t be a Gove statement if he didn’t provide himself with enough wriggle room to smuggle a blue whale through.

That wriggle room lies of course in the definition of the “settled will” of the people of Scotland and in how that “settled will” is to be demonstrated. Naturally those are points which Gove did not address since he’s only really interested in giving the appearance of respecting democracy, not in committing himself to it.

You might think, and you would not be wrong, that the desire to hold another independence referendum was already clearly the settled will of the people of Scotland. That will was settled in the Scottish Parliament election held just a few short months ago in May.

The SNP and the Scottish Greens fought that election seeking an unequivocal mandate for another independence referendum within the five-year term of this Parliament. Between them they won a large pro-independence majority. The Scottish Conservatives, the Labour Party and the LibDems fought that election campaign on explicit platforms of opposition to another independence referendum. They lost, and they lost badly.

Deciding whether or not Scotland should have another independence referendum was easily the most important issue in the recent election. It put all other issues in the shade. Gove and his allies do not get to retrospectively rewrite the outcome of that election just because when the people spoke via the ballot box they gave a response that was not to Gove’s liking.

If between them the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems had managed to win a majority of MSPs in Holyrood they’d have been the first to claim that there was a majority against another referendum and that the people of Scotland had settled the question. The question was equally settled in favour of another referendum when the SNP and the Greens between them secured a

pro-independence majority of 71 MSPs versus 57 opposed. They managed to do so despite the fact there was a concerted, well-organised and suspiciously well-funded campaign of anti-independence tactical voting aimed at preventing that majority.

The British nationalist tactical voters failed, and failed badly. The large pro-independence and pro-referendum majority in the Scottish Parliament represents the settled will of the people of Scotland and Michael Gove and other opponents of independence do not get to gainsay it. There is no other means of demonstrating the settled will of the people in a parliamentary democracy.

The people have already spoken. Their will for the next five years is settled. That is unless Gove expects the people of Scotland to demonstrate their settled will through opinion polling.

We do not have government by opinion polling in this country. If we did then Boris Johnson and Michael Gove would be confined to permanent exile on a small rocky island far out in the North Atlantic far from any WiFi or mobile phone signal and beyond the reach of even the most obsequious journalist from the pro-Brexit press.

To be fair, I have not actually been asked that in an opinion poll, but it would certainly be my preferred option and without any doubt it would also be the preferred choice of many thousands of other Scots.

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We’ve had an election in which the people of Scotland were asked whether they wanted another independence referendum. This was an election for the Scottish Parliament, not a referendum, and by the rules of the election, which are the only rules that matter, the people of Scotland gave a very clear response.

What Gove’s comments over the weekend were really about was a desperate attempt to muddy the waters and create the impression that there is still doubt about a mandate for another referendum, a mandate which is far clearer and stronger than the Tories’ mandate for Brexit.

It might suit Gove and the Tories to pretend to themselves that an election which they fought and lost on the single issue of opposition to another independence referendum wasn’t really about holding another independence referendum at all, but they are fooling no one but themselves and their zooming supporters on social media.

Gove cannot argue with the arithmetic of Holyrood. The opponents of independence simply do not have the votes to block a referendum bill. Gove knows that too. There will be another referendum and Gove knows he cannot prevent it.