Why Nicola Sturgeon is playing a waiting game before revealing her 'indyref2' Plan B
On the day when the Queen’s speech is delivered in Westminster, it’s always difficult for Scotland’s first minister to be heard.
She’s 500 miles away from London at her party’s conference in Aberdeen, calling this whole process a sham - accusing the Prime Minister of promising things he can’t deliver.
That’s a familiar allegation levelled at Nicola Sturgeon herself.
Her big messages at her SNP conference are about stopping Brexit and delivering Scottish independence. Neither of which is in her powers to deliver.
The First Minister intends to request a Section 30 Order by the end of the year - that’s the legislation she needs from the UK government to host ‘indyref2'.
The UK government - no matter who is in Downing Street - is expected to say no, now is not the time. I spent the full seven minutes of my last interview with her asking what her Plan B is; she wouldn’t answer then and she wouldn’t answer today.
On stopping Brexit, she needs to convince other parties to unite behind a temporary Prime Minister of a Government of National Unity.
She says it doesn’t matter who, but logic would say her preference would be Jeremy Corbyn.
That’s because she believes him to be secretly sympathetic toward Scottish self-determination.
In our interview she says she has not yet heard that directly from the Labour leader, but given he supports self-determination for “just about every other country in the word” she believes “his instincts lie in that direction”.
Jeremy Corbyn denies this; while he says he would not oppose a second Scottish independence referendum outright, it would not be a priority in the first couple of years of a Labour government.
Nicola Sturgeon is playing a waiting game. She is tight-lipped in talk of a Plan B, and is waiting to see if there will be a general election, and who she will be dealing with, before making her move.