There is something that needs to be knocked on the head right now.

It keeps being written and said, with no accompanying evidence, as though it were a revealed Truth. In fact, it is a mere statement of preference, a contentious one at that, and, I think, ultimately unsupportable.

I am talking about the routine assertion that democracy demands the UK Parliament bend to Nicola Sturgeon’s will and permit a binding referendum on independence. Sometimes it takes the accusatory form of charging the UK with being something less than a democracy if Westminster refuses to surrender.

The First Minister is chief peddler of this constitutional blancmange. Speaking at Holyrood last week, she claimed she held ‘a clear, democratic mandate’ for a second referendum and insisted she would not ‘allow Scottish democracy to be a prisoner of Boris Johnson or any Prime Minister’.

The UK Government was ‘refusing to respect Scottish democracy’ and Labour, in failing to back her rebel referendum, had ‘set its face so firmly against that fundamental concept of democracy’. Sturgeon, who has form for using inflammatory language on the constitution, warned that ‘independence cannot be suppressed’.

To call this nonsense would be an insult to nonsense. For one, there is no mandate for a referendum. The constitution is reserved. Last year’s election was to a devolved parliament which has no competency in reserved matters. The SNP could win all 129 Holyrood seats and it still wouldn’t have a mandate.

Want to see how Scotland benefits as part of the UK?