The Ukraine war continues to change everything. That includes the future of the English-Scottish union, a matter of rather more heft and pith than the latest turn of the staircase in the endless tumble-bump-thump of Mr Boris Johnson.

The SNP is committed to IndyRef2 by the first half of this Scottish parliament; that is, next year. Nicola Sturgeon, her senior colleagues and Scottish civil servants have begun planning for it, even though London still refuses to discuss the matter. This, we know.

But increasingly the timing looks bad for the anti-Trident, left-of-centre Scottish nationalists. The war and Putin’s nuclear threats have made Nato more popular right across Europe – and British nuclear weapons more relevant to much middle-ground opinion of the kind the SNP needs to convert to nationalism. A time of sudden Western unity, felt in Scotland as much as anywhere else, is not, you might think, an ideal time to insist on the break-up of the United Kingdom.

Want to see more SNP fails? – Health Matters