A couple of weeks ago, as the party leaders in the Scottish Parliament were in various central belt locations making obligatory ‘one year to go’ speeches ahead of next year’s election, a new opinion poll was released.

In what was either cheeky, a coincidence, or perhaps a cheeky coincidence, the question and answer sessions at these events were ill-timed, and became dominated by the Survation/True North survey revealing that Reform UK - a party with no leader in Scotland - was attracting 20 per cent of the vote. This was almost double the vote share of the Tories, and ahead even of Labour, a party for which the Scottish political world was measuring the Bute House curtains less than a year ago.

The seat predictions which accompanied the poll predicted that Reform would be the primary party of opposition to the SNP. The SNP would record another heavy victory, and by turning either to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens would be able to make an arrangement to take them well over the 65-seat threshold needed for a majority, making legislation and Budgets easy to pass.

The poll was a shock but, in truth, can’t have been a huge surprise. We can safely assume, certainly, that First Minister John Swinney and his advisers would have been unsurprised by the outcome. We can safely assume this, in fact, based on the Programme for Government which they released just the day before.

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The Programme for Government is the annual set-piece........

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