Since they succeeded in removing Alex Salmond from the conversation, the SNP’s independence strategy has been stunning in its simplicity. It’s encapsulated in a single, overriding quest: how to convince the required sufficiency of voters that you are fighting for independence while at the same time covertly ensuring that it won’t happen any time soon?

It’s an intricate and delicate high-wire act that requires careful management. There are many moving parts in maintaining the chimera. It also involves a secondary deception: that of appearing to rebuke Westminster politics while feeding ravenously from its endless trough.

In turn, this conceals a third grand illusion: that those selfless tribunes of the Scottish people who volunteer for active service behind enemy lines do so reluctantly for the higher purpose of ‘Standing up for Scotland’ (copyright). Spinning all of these plates in the air is a gruelling enterprise, but the rewards are there for all to see.

If you can maintain this complex conjuration right up to – and including – a Holyrood election campaign, you get to add another few years to the pension plan. You can rest easy for a while and get a decent seat beside the buffet carriage on the 24/7 Caledonian Gravy Train express.

Uncle Colm, King Arthur, the Devil and indy: the world as John Swinney might see it

I'm fully prepped: here's the West of Scotland codgers' guide to the new apocalypse

Shame on them: the SNP has become a hostile place for Scotland's Catholics

How failure became Scotland’s most valuable political commodity

Furthermore, you get to augment your already sprawling patronage portfolio of appointments and sinecures so that its tendrils reach into every........

© Herald Scotland