The only way to defeat the SNP is to make their entire purpose in politics near impossible to achieve. It’s time to toss independence into a locked box and bury it six feet deep.
Boris Johnson has a narrow window of opportunity. Allow even a unilateral, consultative referendum to go ahead — for example, a Holyrood-initiated plebiscite on which parliament ought to have the power to hold an independence referendum — and you risk ceding moral authority to a bunch of constitutional vandals.
The time to act is now. I have previously argued for a new Act of Union but if Downing Street still cannot bring itself to see the merits of devolution reform, there is a course of action open to the Prime Minister that would curtail the threat to the Union in the immediate future.